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One of my favorite side quests in The Outer Worlds 2 tasked me with ending a worker strike. Megacorporation Auntie's Choice sent me to a remote part of a vicious planet to resolve this and earn their favor. I could've gone in and union-busted like I was playing Mafia: The Old Country, but instead, I heard out the arguments of both sides and used my skill points invested in Speech to ensure both sides could come to a compromise that balanced better working conditions and consistent production. It was a highlight of my adventure through Arcadia, and I never had to fire a single bullet during the quest. Going through all of that reminded me once again just how special Obsidian Entertainment's RPGs are. They have some of the best writing you can find in video games, while still accounting for emergent player choices and actions that could reshape the game's narrative. Even if this game doesn't have the most iconic set of companions I've met in an RPG and some planets have some dead space in their open worlds, The Outer Worlds 2 is an amazingly written, malleable, and surprisingly timely RPG. If you're subscribed to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or enjoyed games like Fallout: New Vegas and Avowed, play The Outer Worlds 2. A review code was provided by the publisher of The Outer Worlds 2, Xbox Game Studios. The game was tested on an Xbox Series X. Price and availability The Outer Worlds 2 will be released on October 29 across PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5, in both digital and physical formats. Like all first-party Microsoft games, it will be part of the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate catalog from day one. There are two different editions of the game that you can purchase. Standard Edition ($70): The base game, which Xbox Game Studios brought back down to $70 after trying to price it at $80. Pre-orders come with the Commander Zane's Battle Pack DLC. Premium Edition ($100): Includes the base game, its two upcoming expansions, a digital art book, the Corporate Appreciation Prize Pack DLC, and early access to play The Outer Worlds 2 on October 24. The game's wacky sci-fi universe is concerningly believable It's a darkly funny game The Outer Worlds 2 offers a fairly clear break from its predecessor, following a new crew's expeditions in the Arcadia colony rather than the Halcyon colony, where the first game took place. Despite that, the universe's satirical take on a dystopic, corporate-driven, space-age future remains. In fact, many of its story elements about a higher social class seeking to prevail at the cost of others' lives feel even more relevant in 2025 than they did in 2019. The game kicks off with an exciting opening, as players a betrayed by a supposed Earth Directorate ally when investigating a space station that seems connected to rifts opening across Arcadia. Players are left drifting in space for nearly a decade, and awakening in a galaxy different than before, with rifts popping up all over the place and different factions like Auntie's Choice, The Order of the Ascendant, and the Protectarate all vying for power. The Protectarate serves as the game's main antagonist because it seeks to use the rifts to recreate the galaxy in its own image. That said, no faction is truly good. Auntie's Choice is always trying to find a way to make a quick buck, no matter the cost to even its most loyal workers. The Order relies on science and academia, but to the point where they become elitists disconnected from the realities of the galaxy. While you can play The Outer Worlds 2 as a hero, the game mirrors our own reality by reflecting the fact that no one in power trying to benefit from others' work is ever truly benevolent. It's a little ironic to see this all come from a game studio owned by a controversial big tech company like Microsoft, but I'm at least relieved to see that reality didn't dull The Outer Worlds 2's satirical edge at all. This is one of the best-written games of the year If you like to talk rather than fight in RPGs, you'll love The Outer Worlds 2 As a player, you get to choose where you fit in The Outer Worlds 2's very imperfect universe, and make decisions with major consequences for the narrative. If you've played an Obsidian Entertainment RPG before, you know the drill: every conversation is full of different choices that can change the ebb and flow of conversations. Depending on your character's specific skills and perks, the dialogue options available to you differ. A lot of times, The Outer Worlds 2 also rewards players for exploring the game world, completing every side quest, and reading every note and terminal by also allowing those to expose new information that can be brought up in conversation. All of those systems work together to create conversations that feel like they can flow in lots of different directions. As someone drawn to Charisma or Speech-focused builds in RPGs like this, I always adore an RPG that properly awards me for investing in that. The Outer Worlds 2 does just that, but all the options I say I couldn't pick because of my character build leave me excited to replay The Outer Worlds 2 just as much as I did its predecessor. Also, I'd be remiss to not mention how clever, polished, and engaging The Outer Worlds 2's writing is. It's truly some of the best that you can find in a video game, deftly switching between being funny, serious, or another emotion that best suits that moment. I'll admit that I didn't find myself endeared to this game's companions as I have in other Obsidian RPGs, though. Maybe more playthroughs will change that, but it's worth noting while otherwise praising The Outer Worlds 2's writing. The Outer Worlds 2 isn't afraid to be a hardcore RPG Skills, perks, traits, and more will make every playthrough distinct Whereas Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 disappointed me by not embracing its RPG side enough in pursuit of a narrative adventure, The Outer Worlds 2 excels at doing so. At the start of the game, players choose different skills and perks to create their character. Skills aren't standard RPG stats, though, but much more specific things like Hacking and Leadership. Traits chosen at the start of the game and perks obtained throughout the adventure further deepen your particular character build. These have direct impacts on how you play The Outer Worlds 2, both in conversations and while exploring. At times, the game goes full-on Immersive Sim as you use your abilities to manipulate the environment and take down enemies. I played through the game prioritizing Speech, Engineering, and Lockpicking, but I know I could've had a much different experience if I focused on skills like Hacking or Science. The Outer Worlds 2 also has no problems pushing back on the player. If you try to rush through the story, you will hit some difficulty spikes. What success looks like for your character will differ depending on your skills, perks, and traits. From the time you create a character, you can choose to have two innate traits to help you, at the cost of one massive negative trait that will also remain throughout your playthrough. As you play, pop-ups will ask you whether you want to take on flaws. Flaws come with both benefits and trade-offs. For example, the Bad Knees flaw increased my crouching movement speed by 50%, but massively increased the radius in which enemies could hear me moving. That not only makes everyone's The Outer Worlds 2 playthrough unique to them, but also reflects the narrative's themes of the dire costs that can come from self-preservation. The Outer Worlds 2 finds beauty in restraint This isn't the most ambitious RPG, but it doesn't need to be You can beat the game in under 15 hours, but I can easily see it taking upwards of 30 if you want to see all it has to offer. It's the perfect length for the kind of RPG it is, and avoids the pitfalls games like Starfield have run into by cutting out most of the fluff that isn't the compelling RPG gameplay people come to games like this for. For the more casual player, The Outer Worlds 2 does still have appeal. Shooting guns or swinging a melee weapon feels as good here as it did in Avowed. There are a lot of fun weapons to find and ways to mod them with additional abilities. Companions, while not the most interesting characters, can also galvanize you during a tough encounter with their special abilities. Ammo is scarce early on, too, which made me more mindful of how I approached my playthrough. I also appreciated the more bespoke design of each of its planets. Whereas Starfield was full of planets that felt like they were made up from copy-paste templates, each of The Outer Worlds 2's locales is intricately detailed in design. They all supported an overall visual style that feels like a vibrant version of Star Wars' run-down universe. Some weird facial animation can take me out of it, but that's a commonplace issue in all of Obsidian and Bethesda's games. The only real pitfall to The Outer Worlds 2's plenary design is that I feel like some of the levels are too big. While quite detailed, there are large swaths of many of its planets that have nothing beyond their looks. With how compact an RPG The Outer Worlds 2 already is, I shouldn't have felt the need to use fast-travel so much. Obsidian Entertainment's quest design and art direction are top-notch, but they could make the journeys between those points of interest more captivating. The Outer Worlds 2 is a top-form RPG from Obsidian Entertainment It and Avowed are some of my favorite games of the year The original The Outer Worlds was one of my favorite games of 2019, and Avowed has been one of the games I've liked the most so far this year. The Outer Worlds 2 does not miss a step and is another worthwhile RPG that any self-respecting fan of the genre should check out. It's an expertly written, socially relevant RPG about how those with wealth and power will constantly fight over control of others, even as the universe tears itself apart. Its skills and perks aren't afraid to impact your playthrough in ultra-specific ways, and its hand-crafted planets ensure the entirety of the adventure is memorable. I'm glad The Outer Worlds is now a full-blown Xbox franchise, and I hope Obsidian Entertainment continues to have the opportunity to explore other colonies and keep telling stories in this universe.
