The role-playing game experts at Obsidian Entertainment kicked off 2025 with the release of their fantasy action RPG Avowed, and they’re set to wrap up the year with a sequel to their 2019 sci-fi first-person shooter with RPG elements, The Outer Worlds. After playing through The Outer Worlds 2, it’s clear the developers have built on nearly every aspect of the original, making it one of the best RPGs released this year.
The Outer Worlds 2 refines the RPG formula Obsidian first honed with Fallout: New Vegas in 2010, giving players a range of ways to progress, from talking and sneaking to fighting their way through obstacles. What the team improved most, thankfully, is making the action-FPS RPG truly feel like one.
In The Outer Worlds 2, players step into the role of an agent for the Earth Directorate, an organization that works with Earth and various space colonies, in a distant future. What seemed like a routine mission ends with an incredible betrayal, and it’s up to you to track down the person behind the plot that ruined your life. If that weren’t interesting enough, you’ll also contend with an intergalactic conflict within the space colony where the game takes place — between the Protectorate, a totalitarian faction with faster-than-light travel, and a megacorporation called Auntie’s Choice, born from the merger of Auntie Cleo and Spacer’s Choice from the first game. Clearly, the satire of consumerism continues.
Just like in the first game, The Outer Worlds 2 packs in plenty of text and dialogue to shape its story, building a rich universe of politics and class struggle. But that epic tone often gets undercut by the satire. While it doesn’t ruin the experience, dialing the jokes back even 5% would make it easier to stay immersed in the serious sci-fi world I want to play in, rather than the one filled with too many tension-popping quips.
As expected with this kind of setup, Obsidian leaves how the story will unfold up to you. Are you going to stick it to the man and try to bring down space capitalism? Will you be the courageous hero who always does the right thing? Or maybe the bad guy who’s willing to do anything for a buck? That decision is entirely yours.
A whole new you
At the heart of The Outer Worlds 2 is character creation. After choosing your appearance, you’ll decide on a background, traits, flaws, skills and perks — choices that directly shape how the game unfolds.
Your character’s background occasionally unlocks unique dialogue options, while traits and flaws have a bigger impact on gameplay. For example, one of my chosen traits was «lucky,» and every now and then I’d come across a broken door with an extra option to «try something random,» and sure enough, thanks to that trait, it worked.
Flaws are a returning feature, but they’re more interesting this time around because they come with both positive and negative effects. Unlike traits, which you choose only at the start of the game, flaws are offered throughout your playthrough as a way to complicate your character and spice up gameplay. One flaw I picked early on was Foot-in-Mouth Syndrome, which grants a 15% boost to experience points. What I didn’t realize is that if I take more than three seconds to make a dialogue choice, the flaw picks one at random for me, which definitely livens things up.
Skills are all positive and really change how the game is played. They’re the standard skills such as hacking, lock picking, melee, guns and engineering that you’ll find in shooter RPG games such as Fallout. You start by choosing two skills to specialize in, and as you level up, you earn two points to invest wherever you like. It might seem smart to spread those points around, but doing so actually locks you out of valuable rewards. As the game progresses, challenges require higher skill levels, whether you’re trying to unlock doors, hack terminals or crack open safes.
In my case, I wanted the benefits of talking my way into and out of sticky situations, so I boosted my speech skill, which actually let me skip an entire boss fight. Later, I noticed that engineering helped repair broken items, so I invested more points there. That backfired with the next boss; my speech skill wasn’t high enough to choose the most diplomatic option, which meant I ended up fighting even though I was close to talking him down. The Outer Worlds 2 makes it clear that specializing in a few key skills pays off, while trying to master everything leaves you with fewer unique ways to get out of tough spots.
Along with skills are perks. These are passive buffs available at every two experience levels and are based on how many points you have in your skills. With just one point in guns, for example, you can unlock an additional weapon slot. Raise that to 20 points, and your critical attacks hit for 100% more damage, with 20% of that carrying over to nearby enemies. It’s another example of how the developers encourage unique character builds, adding depth and replayability as each playthrough can feel entirely different depending on which skills you focus on.
Far-off worlds, sharper combat thrills
During my time with the previous Outer Worlds game, there was something that just felt off during combat. It was clear that gunplay and stealth were not the focal points for the developers, as enemies hardly used any tactics and weapons didn’t have any weight to them, making them feel more like firing foam Nerf darts rather than hefty bullets or laser bolts. Outer Worlds 2, however, is a totally different story.
Combat flows smoothly, with a wide variety of weapons that use different types of ammo and include melee options. Guns range from fast-shooting pistols and powerful sniper rifles to futuristic gear like the Auto-Hacker 5000, a rapid-fire weapon that can even scramble a robot’s wiring to make it fight for you. Firefights can play out tactically, with cover-based shooting and patience, or chaotically, by charging in guns blazing. There are plenty of ways to build a character suited to either play style.
At your side are six companions you come across throughout the game, another returning hallmark from the first Outer Wilds. They join your crew after you complete certain quests for them. And once they’re part of your crew, you can learn more about their backgrounds and take on special loyalty missions to unlock additional abilities.
This time around, companions seem to have much more impact on the flow of the story. Taking on a boss with a certain companion might help you intimidate them into backing down, thanks to that character’s reputation. But if you leave behind a companion who’s been vocal about wanting to face that boss, expect them to be furious. Some choices can even push companions to leave your crew, or turn on you entirely if you don’t say the right things to keep them around. Just don’t expect to romance anyone; that still isn’t an option.
All of this variety is what makes The Outer Worlds 2 so enjoyably complex to play. How you create your character, which companions you choose, how much you explore and what skills you invest in can lead to so many different paths. I have no doubt that while I only found two or three ways to tackle most problems, there were probably several more I didn’t even notice. That’s what makes this game so compelling; you know the opportunities are out there, even if you can’t see them yet. Locked dialogue options often remind you that you’re missing the right skill points, item or piece of information, serving as the developers’ way of encouraging exploration and thinking outside the box.
Am I a joke to you?
If I had to name one weakness in The Outer Worlds 2, it’d be the humor. Obsidian carries over the same writing tone as in the original, where it feels like 90% of the dialogue is serious and dramatic, and then you have 10% that’s just silly, often leaning into the capitalist satire. You might be reading through someone’s emails or chatting with an NPC when, out of nowhere, a random joke gets thrown in.
For example, one of the flaws I picked at the start of the game was Abrasive. When talking to other characters, it sometimes unlocked an aggressive dialogue option along the lines of, «Do what I say, or I’ll kill you.» The problem is that these obviously over-the-top responses are usually shrugged off by NPCs, who just reply with something like, «Okay, that’s rude,» before continuing as if nothing happened. When being a jerk or a weirdo doesn’t affect NPC opinions or provoke a real reaction, it breaks the immersion.
Valerie, the robot companion and one of the first members of your crew, is a walking — or rather, floating — example of this. She’ll drop random robotic one-liners that state the obvious, like reminding you that if you stay on a ship that’s about to explode, you have a 99.99% chance of expiring. The same goes for certain characters you meet who act flamboyant simply for the sake of being flamboyant.
Not every bit of humor fell flat for me. In one instance, you’re faced with an almost literal trolley problem, and if you choose the «bad» option, the boss who set it up is genuinely confused, insisting something must be wrong with you for not wasting time doing the right thing. Moments like that work. But when the game constantly crams in silly one-liners the way Obsidian does here, it gets old. I know that this is an extension of the satirical, humorous style of the Fallout franchise, and that The Outer Worlds is itself a satire aimed at capitalism and corporate power. But it doesn’t always feel that way while playing. I want to get lost in the space politics and drama, yet the random jokes keep reminding me it’s satire, bleeding away the tension with weak jabs.
If Obsidian had leaned into a more serious tone for The Outer Worlds 2 — something closer to the Mass Effect franchise — I could easily see it becoming one of the best sci-fi RPGs since BioWare’s classic space operas. The presentation here is fantastic: The worlds are lush and colorful, and while you can’t explore an entire planet, each location feels distinct. The cities, ships and interiors all have their own style, so you never feel like you’re walking through copy-pasted environments (something that can’t be said for Starfield, Bethesda’s take on the sci-fi RPG). The score adds cinematic weight, the voice acting is excellent and every big moment feels like it’s building toward something epic. But then, right before a major boss fight, you’ll get a dialogue option that’s just a throwaway joke, a reminder that the game can’t quite resist returning to the satire well.
The Outer Worlds 2 is one of my favorite RPGs released this year, and it’s so close to greatness. It has practically everything I wanted in a game (enough that I could have considered it even better than Mass Effect), but Obsidian just missed the mark with its tone. Who knows, maybe the company will figure it out with the third game in the series.
The Outer World 2 will be released on Oct. 29 for $70 on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X and S consoles. It will be available for Xbox Game Pass on Day 1.
