Obsidian are firing on all cylinders this year. Their Pillars of Eternity spin off Avowed released in February, Grounded 2 hit early access in July, and now they’re launching The Outer Worlds 2 in October. A sequel to their brand-new IP from 2019, The Outer Worlds 2 is another space-faring, semi-open world RPG packed with wacky guns, glowing xenofauna and what is perhaps an overabundance of humour.
Taking place in a completely different star system to the first game, you play as an Earth Directorate agent on a mission to investigate the mysterious space-time rifts that have appeared across Arcadia. Along with an ever-growing crew of misfits and malfeasants, you pilot your ship, The Incognito, to various planets chasing down leads and resolving conflicts.
Like Fallout: New Vegas, Starfield and the original Outer Worlds, the majority of the story sees you juggling the desires of multiple factions who are in direct conflict with each other. Each planet has a central mission for you to navigate, with multiple opportunities for you to side with one group over the other. This certainly feels less black and white when compared to the original, which presented the player with high stake decisions that lost a lot of their impact when you realise there are literally only two possible outcomes.
In The Outer Worlds 2, these decisions are still there, but there are more possible outcomes and these choices are far more influenced by how you’ve built your character. Even if you are unable to pursue them due to not having enough points in the right skill, you can see the option listed. Whether this is an illusion of greater freedom or not is hard to say without playing the game multiple times, but at the very least the illusion makes the game feel deeper and the choices more important than the original.
The skill and perk system will be familiar to anyone who has played immersive sims, or other games of this ilk by Bethesda and Obsidian. By putting points into things like hacking, engineering, medicine, science (among many others), you will be able to progress through quest lines and the world in unique ways. Something as simple as a locked door can be overcome in a myriad of ways. An engineer or hacker could use the existing mechanics of the door to get it open, whereas someone skilled with explosives or lock picking could force their way through.
The flaw system makes a return, which I’m having a lot of fun with, perhaps to the detriment of my overall run. Flaws are opportunities to alter your character based on how you play the game, and based on how you play games in general. For example, you will be given the opportunity to adopt the Bad Knees flaw if you spend a lot of time crouching. This will allow you to move faster while crouching, but every time you move in or out of a crouch, your knees will crack loudly, alerting nearby enemies to your presence. I chose not to adopt this one.
A flaw I did take on was Overprepared, which allows my guns to hold far more ammo in each clip, but if my clip ever empties completely I do significantly less damage for eight seconds. The one that really screwed me, however, is Easily Distracted. This gives you three skill points each time you level up instead of two, but you can only spend them on skills one or more points below your highest. This basically makes it impossible to specialise in anything, which quickly led to some dire situations in the main story.
Despite this self-inflicted cul-de-sac, I continued to have fun precisely because I chose to adopt that flaw. Additionally, I was only offered that flaw because of the way I was playing the game. So, I was happy to deal with the less than ideal circumstances I found myself in because it felt like a situation unique to my character, which is what role-playing games are all about.
Skills and flaws can influence dialogue too. Oftentimes this is just for flavour, but in certain instances it can be really helpful. Saying the right thing to the right person can allow you to skip busy work, save money, or avoid a tough fight.
You could hold a gun to my head, and I still don’t think I could name a single thing about the original game’s story or companions. The Outer Worlds 2 improves on this, thankfully. Each new companion that joins your crew fulfils a logical role, both in the narrative and in a fight. Whether it’s a mercenary whose genetically altered arm can be grafted with different monstrous abilities, or a silver-haired spy who can slow your foes to a crawl, each companion is distinct and memorable.
It’s unfortunate, then, that so many of the other characters you meet across Arcadia are so one-dimensional. The majority of characters you’ll meet owe their allegiance to one of three groups. The Protectorate, a society of law-abiding yet strangely bloodthirsty bureaucrats, Auntie’s Choice, capitalism as a religion taken literally, or the Order of Ascendants, a faction who believe everything in life can be predicted by equations.
Each faction is patently absurd by design, this is the world Obsidian has created. The problem is that so much of the dialogue relies on humour in lieu of any real character, which gets exhausting pretty quickly. The jokes are so overt that not only do they fail to be funny, they also detract from the parts of the world that feel somewhat realistic or meaningful. It becomes difficult to care about a bloodthirsty zealot executing his own people when half the people you come across spouts things like “Gee golly, I just got out of jail for being one minute late to a shift!”
The Outer Worlds 2 immediately impresses with its visuals. Unreal Engine 5 is well-utilised; with the scale of some environments really stopping me in my tracks. Character models, facial animations, and vegetation may leave a little to be desired, although to be fair Obsidian are clearly aiming for a much lower ceiling than other huge budget RPGs. Don’t go in expecting the visual fidelity of Cyberpunk 2077 or even Dragon Age: Veilguard, for example. After all, they know people don’t necessarily play these games for the graphics.
All that said, I don’t want to undersell the visuals, either. The art style is certainly a garish one, by design, but it really shines here. Whether it’s a war-torn, art-deco-adjacent tramicular station, or a space bazaar built inside a massive freighter that crashed into an asteroid, The Outer Worlds 2 offers plenty of visual splendour.
Combat is another element that is significantly improved over the original. Thanks to improved sound design, UI, animations and visual feedback, getting into gunfights is a blast. There are a plethora of grenades, gadgets and ammo types to utilise, all with their own sound and feel. Combat was certainly one of the more dull and repetitive elements of the first game so it’s great to see it get some real attention here.
You can bring two companions with you at any one time, each with their own abilities, weapons and armour. Instead of being able to fully customise them, each companion has a unique upgrade path tied to their side quests. This is a fun alternative to being able to fully kit out your crew, and makes completing their associated quests all the more rewarding.
The Outer Worlds 2 is a great sequel. Core aspects have been vastly improved upon, from the delightful skill and flaws system, to the feel and flow of combat, to the wacky visuals. That said, it hasn’t quite managed to shake off all the problems of the first game. The humour and somewhat shallow nature of a lot of this world’s satire gets grating pretty fast. The factions and their many members are far too often cartoonish and goofy, which doesn’t always make for compelling storytelling. Despite this, The Outer Worlds 2 remains a bold step in the right direction and a title well worth checking out if you’re a fan of Obsidian’s work.
Rating: 8/10
The Outer Worlds 2 was reviewed on PC with a code provided by Microsoft.