The Outer Worlds 2 from developer Obsidian Entertainment and Xbox Game Studios brings a host of new to a budding RPG series wrapped in a familiar-feeling, cozy experience.
When The Outer Worlds launched back in 2019, the nostalgic vibe was a proverbial breath of fresh air, with Obsidian’s Fallout: New Vegas impossible to miss.
A mostly first-person, story-driven RPG sequel, Outer Worlds 2 pays careful attention to where the debut lacked, tacks on more player agency and appears to mindfully step around some of the landmines recent RPG releases have suffered, too.
Older-feeling in a good way but offering plenty of fresh, immersive RPG-goodness, Outer Worlds 2 appears to have just the right mix to put it in Game of the Year conversations.
On a sheer immersiveness level, Outer Worlds 2 hits all the right notes.
Upgraded to Unreal Engine 5, some of the lip-synching issues and charming jank from the first game is out, though it comes with the still-new, glossy sheen of the new engine. Whether players love UE5 or not, the graphical fidelity and surrounding lighting systems are clearly an upgrade.
Obsidian games and similar have never been about sheer firepower backing the experience, anyway. More importantly, there’s charming character throughout the experience, in a corporations-ruling-the-galaxy-with-advertisements-everywhere sort of way, anyway. The overarching theme is pervasive and fun, though the game does take its brief moments to explore some beautiful locations, again begging a No Man’s Sky comparison.
It helps that sound design is once again fantastic, whether it’s ambient noise or some seriously impressive voice-acting found throughout. Conversations and personality are the backbones of these games and this might just be Obsidian’s best in that regard.
Unlike the first, Outer Worlds 2 lets players pull back the perspective into third-person at the press of a button. It’s not a bad option to have, but players who see the option and purposely forget it can’t be blamed.
Players start the game by picking a background, which comes with certain benefits. They also pick traits. In what will feel familiar to many, the first is free. The second offers benefits, but also comes with drawbacks. Think, offsetting base health for a bonus elsewhere. There’s a robust character creator in there, too.
Outer Worlds 2 hasn’t been afraid to boast that it is more combat-focused than the first, and improved in that area, too.
And darn if it isn’t right.
Combat is just smooth and fun. That’s especially the case with overall movement, which is quicker than before and comes with plenty of great mid-fight options, like sliding and firing. We’re not talking Call of Duty silliness, but a notable, good-feeling improvement from the first.
The game’s Time Dilation mechanic (TTD for short) is essentially VATS from Fallout, but better.
Like the first game and Fallout, stealth is a very viable option, if not even more fun for those with Sam Fisher-like leanings.
This time, stealth feels similar in a lot of ways, but with the added wrinkle that enemies can and will find fallen foes and go on alert.
Where the first game struggled with weapon weight and the impact of damage dished out, there’s a more methodical, heavier-feeling experience here. It’s not the top FPS on the market by any means, but decisions made in combat almost feel as consequential as decisions made while chatting.
Outside of combat, there are more dialogue skill checks than players might expect, too, plus a whole range of companions to influence. They’re a nice all-around help too within level and mission designs that clearly have been built from scratch to give players as many ways as possible to creatively tackle them.
Tasked with serving as a mediator between Earth and communities in space, players go to the Isolated colony of Arcadia and stumble into a factional war.
Said war pits the local government against a megacorporation. Up for grabs? Access to FTL travel, and therefore all of the very important trade routes in space. Oh, and there’s also unexplained rifts tearing things up in space and cutting off settlements from Earth itself.
The series’ intense focus on megacorporations as a backdrop and antagonist remains. In short, the series takes place in an alternate timeline where Theodore Roosevelt never became president, creating a branch of reality where corporations boomed and colonized space.
This sequel very proudly continues to lean into satire as a storytelling device and it works super well. It helps that most of the characters encountered are fully realized with their own motivations and the environments themselves do plenty of heavy lifting in the storytelling department through sheer detail.
Dialogue trees are once again massive and the skill checks throughout really feel like players have a big impact on how the story plays out.
Which, given the presence of a branching story, is totally true. Scuffing a save just to see how things play out differently on small things is proof enough of that. Companions react to the player, have their own things they need help with and can perhaps permanently part from the player over time, too, should things go a certain way.
All of that is to say there’s a serious, actual role playing thing going on here, when combining the mind-boggling amount of build and background story options with actual in-game choices.
Progression follows a similar flow to the last game, giving players the freedom to experiment with all sorts of builds while leaving up specific skills.
What’s perhaps more impressive than anything else is the presence of roughly 90 perks. Not to get cliche, but it’s going to be hard to find two players who do the exact same builds, which is fantastic. And the replayability factor, then, is frankly massive.
For the most part, Outer Worlds runs well and addresses some complaints from the first game, such as the slog that was the game’s map. There’s a strong suite of options to pick through, too, letting players tweak the experience.
Outer Worlds 2 is a sequel done right.
Simple description, sure, yet fitting. The game takes the best bits of the series debut, upgrades them, listens to feedback and enhances key things like the feel of combat to an impressive degree.
Those who bounced off the first game might not find themselves wooed, sure. But Outer Worlds 2 is a smashing success for those who want that old-school-feeling immersive RPG that harkens back to the glory days of Fallout and a handful of others.
At a time when games like Starfield have struggled to capture that golden era in modern times, Outer Worlds 2 does so almost effortlessly, creating one of the better, deeper RPG experiences with broad appeal to enter the market in a long time.
