Game Review: The Outer Worlds 2

The Outer Worlds 2 is a role-playing video game from the fine folk at Obsidian Entertainment.  Serving as a sequel to the original The Outer Worlds which was released back in 2019, the 2nd entry takes advantage of an increased budget and development timeframe thanks to Xbox Game Studios acting as the game’s official publisher.  Development on The Outer Worlds 2 was noted to have begin in its preliminary stages just before the release of the initial entry.  Halfway through production of the original game, Microsoft has acquired Obsidian Entertainment and subsequently the right to publish all future titles in the franchise.  Taking over six years to develop, it was noted that the team did come to face their fair share of internal struggles during the development cycle, one such issue was the departure of the original game’s director Tim Cain from Obsidian in 2020.  Despite his departure from the industry however, Cain took up a special role as a creative consultant on The Outer Worlds 2 to aid where he could.

The Outer Worlds 2 released officially on October 29th 2025 across Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5 and PC. It was slated to be the first Xbox Game Studios title to launch at a whopping $79.99 US dollars but after notable outcry from the public, the publisher rescinded that plan and instead reduced the price down to $69.99.  Upon release the title received a high volume of praise from media outlets, with OpenCritic outlining a solid 83 average score for the title.  Despite its solid impression and respective reviews however, it’s sad to note The Outer Worlds 2 didn’t perform successfully on the commercial side of things.  During a sit-down interview with Bloomberg editor Jason Schreier and studio head Feargus Urquhart, it was revealed both Avowed and Outer Worlds 2 failed to meet the sales expectations outlined by Microsoft; this sadly resulted in Obsidian shuttering any plans or hopes for a 3rd entry in this franchise.  While that is sad news for genuine fans of this series, I for one won’t be losing too much sleep on that fact if my time with The Outer Worlds 2 is anything to go by.

The storyline of The Outer Worlds 2 takes place in outer space in the year 2362 where humanity has spread out across the stars.  You’d think with a new frontier to explore, the new era of humanity would bring forth greater ideals of hope and prosperity; sadly though corporate capitalism has managed to keep its claws firmly ingrained in humanities path among the stars. This means a lot of the key colonies are ran by corporate entities with business and hostile expansion as the main driving force of their goals. You are a division commander of the Earth Directorate; an organization governed from Earth with the express aim of maintaining law and order across the many colonies.  After a routine mission in the Arcadia system goes wrong, you are cryogenically frozen for 10 years and awakened by the remnants of your division.  You awaken to learn the Arcadia system has suffered a massive shift in power balance with the Auntie Cleo corporation absorbing Spacer’s Choice on a hostile takeover. Now known as Auntie’s Choice, the corporation is in a back-and-forth conflict with the Order of the Ascendant in the star system. Your core objective is to find and bring to justice the rogue agent Augustine de Vries who is tied to a conspiracy involving the volatile rifts that have erupted all across the star system.

I’ll just come out and say it; I didn’t like the setting or the narrative behind The Outer Worlds 2. I think the foundation of this world is recognizable if you have played the first entry, but unlike that one, this game doesn’t deliver the same satirical tone.  You can definitely tell that some of the games key narrative components are written in a way to try and be humorous, but it never really delivers the same kind of charm as the first game. Then there’s the opposite issue where the game forgets about its satirical tone and tries to play itself serious with regards to the main narrative and the numerous sub-stories. The mixtures of tone don’t work in my opinion, because it feels hard to register if the plot sequence wants you find it funny or serious on a constant basis.  I also feel the depth of this world is severely shallow when you take into consideration its main plot, side quests and companion plots.  I just don’t get any level of investment from this world because there’s no reason to care for any of it and again that’s down to its struggle to set a defining tone and atmosphere.

While there isn’t much depth to the world’s foundation, what I will make the effort to recognize and praise is the games effort to define your place within it.  Obsidian are the kings of role-playing games because they understand the fundamental focus behind them is the player.  From the very start of the game, you’re given the ability to choose your main characters backstory, character traits and primary skills.  These elements don’t just influence the gameplay, but have a key impact on your interactions with characters and situations you encounter during your time exploring Arcadia.  The fact that having certain traits or skills can potentially opt you into or lock you out of key outcomes in missions gives the player a lot of room to play around with how they want to define their character. As well as all this, there’s a really unique flaw system in which the game will pick up on certain habits and tendencies you form over the course of the game and generate a related-flaw you can opt to take on.  These flaws will provide you a benefit in relation to your habit but also in turn give you a disadvantage to take along with it.  These flaws are frequent and do provide a lot of unique modifiers that can shift the course of your playthrough even further. I have so much respect for the way Obsidian is able to give the player all the options to define their role in their games to their hearts content and it’s one of main things that kept me invested in the game from start to finish.

In terms of technical offerings, The Outer Worlds 2 does feel responsive to play and its explorative offerings are plentiful. You’ll primarily be shooting your way through a lot of enemy encounters in this game, so it helps the gunplay is very tight.  There’s a plethora of unique weapons on offer throughout the game with their own customization options to play around with. I do wish the enemy variety was a little more expanded however, as I feel your primary encounters in the game are humans, robots and animals. There’s just not much dynamic challenge behind the combat when the enemies lack a scale in challenge and depth.  The game’s explorative elements offer a lot to appreciate too.  There’s over eight primary explorable environments in the game, each of these environments are set on large biomes on individual planets and space stations. While these maps may feel small in scope, there’s a lot of detail into their overall design and Obsidian make sure to reward you for taking the time to explore every nook and cranny of the maps with optional missions and unique encounters.

On the presentation front, this game looks incredible.  You can really see the Xbox Studios money on full display on the graphical display alone with The Outer Worlds 2.  There’s so much colour and detail littered across the games general design that it helps the game set a firm impression.  While the model design behind characters is impressive, I do feel the model and facial animations do come off as a bit stiff. The world around these characters feels so fluid in its motion so it makes the slower stiffer animations of its characters a bit more noticeable.  Similar to Fallout, there’s a few radio stations you can listen to in this game, each holding their own original music which does help to give the game a unique feel.  In general though, the musical score by Oleksa Lozowchuk and Antonio Gradanti is a bit forgettable as none of the original tracks really stood out to me as memorable in any sense.

The Outer Worlds 2 has all the components to be a solid and memorable RPG experience; I just think it fails to put them all together in a satisfying order.  The lack of direction on the world and narrative really does hold the game back a lot for me.  It’s hard to really invest yourself as an integral part of the world when the world doesn’t give you any genuine level of reason to fight for it.  What salvages the game though and makes it worth playing through once is its RPG elements and gameplay.  There’s enough value in the games core functionality that you will get some decent mileage out of the experience if you do like role playing games. 

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐