The Outer Worlds 2, A Humble Review of a Worthy Sequel

If you grew up with that type of RPG title where your decisions have tangible consequences or where the pen is mightier than the sword (in this case, the written sarcasm that is stronger than a railgun), then you have undoubtedly heard or have buried deep within your cortex the name of the development house – Obsidian. This is a studio, or better said, an institution that for decades has held on like that stubborn, obstinate nerd in the basement who will persistently carry out his experiment no matter how many times the laboratory has burned down in front of his face.

 But whether it was a basement or a design desk, the design philosophy is obvious. Founded in 2003 from the ashes of the legendary Black Isle Studios (players with better memory will undoubtedly recall small but significant titles like Fallout 1 and 2), Obsidian inherited simultaneously the best and worst traits of its predecessor. Far-famed in human civilization, and those are genius and eternal creative chaos.

Their first project, which catapulted them into the stratosphere of the gaming public, is the widely known Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords (our ancestors have probably also heard of it). It immediately showed that this team is not afraid of big franchises or heavy themes. KOTOR 2 was a game that was released in a partially finished state, yet it was full of brilliant ideas that have become legendary. It was there that we could actually master the first lesson relating to the creative philosophy of this team. 

If you are in the mood for another epic game, check out our Battlefield 6 review!

The Outer Worlds 2 and the Legacy of New Vegas' Writing

With time comes progress, and what the studio forever inscribed in gaming history is Fallout: New Vegas, which was released in 2010. Although it was created as a "side project" that Bethesda generously gave to Obsidian (they probably thought it was a great joke to give such a name to this team), New Vegas turned into one of the best RPGs ever. New Vegas is the true Fallout 3. 

Without delving further into polemics, such an opinion is definitely supported by facts. While the original development team was mentally orgasming over Fallout 3 with its mechanics and other trifles that in the grand scheme didn't do much to make you feel like someone who can truly immerse themselves in the Wasteland, New Vegas used what they were always masters at, which is brilliant writing and character development, using which they raised the immersion of the Wasteland to a level that Bethesda's and Todd Howard's crews could only dream of.

Let's emphasize, this is not just nostalgia clouding objectivity. We removed our rose-tinted glasses long ago when discussing such topics. New Vegas had depth of choice, moral grey areas, and a story that changes depending on how pronounced your sociopathic tendencies are. This is definitely cited from a professional standpoint when we delve once more into the New Vegas campaign and see how much they were willing to explore human nature with a smile on their face. Every faction had meaning, every decision had weight, and every NPC had at least one trauma that surfaced with tons of sarcasm.

Embracing the Soul of RPGs Beyond the Bugs

If you follow the story, the reactions were realistic and scripted because that's how the campaign guided you, but even when you were causing chaos, the world reacted logically. That was pure Obsidian magic: chaos in which you feel consistency and the existence of order and meaning.

Now, not everything was so rosy. Those who deal in magic must pay the price, and in this case, it was the curse of "dirty code". New Vegas was launched in a state that was tested by one person with a perception stat at the level of a person in pre-anesthetic preparation. That means complete stupor, non-existent perception, and focus on the level of building material. In translation, there was obviously no test here. Frame rate drops, bugs, and strange glitches adorned this entire "cake". Ironically, the fans loved it because beneath all those bugs hid an RPG with more soul than most modern AAA games can comprehend.

After New Vegas, Obsidian had a turbulent decade. They worked on brilliant but commercially modest projects like Pillars of Eternity (proof that isometric RPG isn't dead yet and that the world is quite hungry for that subgenre), Tyranny (a title where the player is literally the villain by official duty), and, of course, for this text, the famous The Outer Worlds. A game that in 2019 felt to many like a "small Fallout in space". This was a valid parallel, but wasn't entirely accurate. The Outer Worlds was a brilliant experiment, but the familiar scent of "unfinished business" lingered in the air. 

How Microsoft's Backing Fueled The Outer Worlds 2

You play the game and notice that something is missing from that quest, as if a particular story was cut out, or as if the mechanics were thrown in, but you're not sure which one truly belongs there and which doesn't. Over time, most of us who love such games notice when something isn't right, and The Outer Worlds was literally a textbook example of that. The developers had an idea, but lacked sufficient resources or motivation to cross the finish line.

Over time, the opinion formed that Obsidian would forever remain at the level of a studio that "has great ideas but bad deadlines," but a miracle happened. Microsoft swoops in, empties a bag of money on the table, and says, "Don't worry, we've got your back, you're ours." Over time, a person standing on the sidelines of the "field" and passively observing everything remembers the ancient proverb, "Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes." For the uninitiated – Don't trust the Greeks even when they are bearing gifts. 

People learn the lesson after hundreds of corporate tales about business renaissances of small studios under a big boot. Fortunately, and as if written by an Obsidian scenario, Microsoft gave them what they lacked the most: time, budget, and peace,the result of all that is The Outer Worlds 2. We won't mention Avowed!

After more than a decade of wandering through Kickstarter campaigns and similar business ventures, the Obsidian crew has finally landed at a base on a planet where everything functions well. From the very start, you will have one thing immediately in the foreground. 

The Philosophical Core of The Outer Worlds 2

This sequel does not try to imitate New Vegas; on the contrary, it attempts to evolve its formula in an entirely new universe, which serves as an excellent blueprint for a creative and satirical anti-corporate playground. It has that recognizable mix of absurdity, philosophy, and corporate madness, only now it's technically more polished, broader, and wittier. And we will have much more to say about technical polish, but for starters, straight out of the box, Outer Worlds 2 performs slightly better than Outer Worlds 1, despite being developed on the Unreal Engine 5.

This is a studio that has survived all the adversities that can be thrown at a player with an evil game master in a D&D session using a D20 die. Failed publishers, half-baked engines, budgets smaller than the average indie project, and yet they manage to deliver an RPG that feels as if it were born out of spite for all the problems that accumulated over the years. 

The Outer Worlds 2 is not just a game; it is the embodiment of a question we have been asking ourselves for the last 15 years while wandering the Mojave desert and wondering: "Is karma a real mechanic or just another illusion of choice?" After such self-interrogation, you feel like taking the disc out of the console or PC and "yeeting" it through the window without much thought.

A Return to Form with Brilliant, Layered Satire

After all this, the moment is discreetly etched into your mind when you first hear the corporate jingle in this work. Already then, the fact slowly settles in that Obsidian is back in form. That moment has returned where you can expect every sentence to be a brilliant and layered joke, while every mission brims with moral dilemmas. Cynicism is the primary weapon, and in those moments, you can let your imagination run wild because the development team has enabled you to do so.

The Outer Worlds 2 is literally everything the original wanted to be. Bigger, better, wiser, and most beautifully, wittier. They managed to retain that mix of sarcastic dialogues and absurdly likeable NPCs, while everything is spiced with the most essential mechanic ever in such games. Your decisions influence the behavior of NPCs and change the course of the story. Decisions and moves are crucial for the campaign's further development. There is no illusion of choice!

From the first minute you turn on the game and start the campaign, it's clear that the focus is again on exploration. Everything that was in the predecessor can also be practiced here. You can shoot, steal everything that isn't screwed to the wall or floor, and hack everything that has a wire and a display. 

The real charm lies in the fact that the game doesn't force you to be a mass murderer or Hannibal Lecter in every situation. Instead of sneaking around with a shotgun, you might crawl through an air vent, find an alternative route via cables or the attic, or persuade an opponent to open the door themselves without the need to use the explosives skill. Sometimes a sweet word opens the door without a bomb.

How The Outer Worlds 2 Makes Words Matter

This work does not restrict you to only one universal path to the goal; instead, it rewards the player for creativity in problem-solving. Namely, by personal decision, we created a character who was focused on Guns, Engineering, and Conversation.

This approach enabled a wide range of creative solutions to problems. When we say creative, we mean that we could get out of a situation by surfing on a wave of NPC corpses that were the result of our Gun skill, or we could rely on the character's verbal abilities and wheedle an access card without the need for escalating conflict.

Although all this has been seen before as a principle, in Outer Worlds 2, it has a special charm because it was achieved through lengthy dialogue and the employment of creative sweet-talking. 

The offered responses were well-written, ensuring that the dialogue always maintained a natural flow without any pronounced forcedness or tropes that many game writers now rely on. If you choose a good option in the dialogue, a sea of new conversation paths opens up, and you don't know where that story can take you. Maybe you'll find out that in the base, there is an experimental singularity gun worth your effort, or that at the local farm, there is a half-crazy revolutionary who wanted to prove her political conviction and threw herself into the jaws of the combine harvester on her farm. 

Specialization Over Balance

Although all this could have ended in a pool of blood, it ended with a tavern conversation. Additionally, a notable feature is the progression mechanics throughout the maps, particularly how you can overcome the issue of stuck doors. If you have the misfortune of encountering doors that, in the room, hide a juicy chest with good loot, then you have to figure out a way to open them.

Depending on your characteristics, the mechanics for solving that problem are varied. Either you look for the cables that power the doors, or you need to have a strong enough Engineering skill to properly lubricate the doors and place the hammer where it belongs.

Of course, systems in Obsidian games have their own perks and flaws. As the end of the game approaches, the "perks" begin to show their bad side. To unlock exciting possibilities for your character, you must seriously dedicate yourself to just one "branch". That means you can forget about balanced builds, but when you think about it better, here's an opportunity for a replay. 

The game provides ample space for experimentation and discovering a style that will be dear to your heart. Some players may see limitations in this, while another group will view it as the natural development of the character through the narrative. Definitely, through Obsidian's games, it's nicer to go with a silver tongue than with a polished bazooka, although resolving disputes with aggressive explosive devices seems more fun. 

Everything gives the feeling that a gigantic game master is watching you and wagging a finger, encouraging you to play openly and creatively. Even during gameplay, this is openly encouraged in players because creative or non-shooting problem-solving rewards additional exp.

 How Exploration is Rewarded in The Outer Worlds 2

This creative team wouldn't bear the name it does if it didn't deliver satire worthy of a "Mark Twain" literary award. If you thought you knew enough corporate memes and quality call-outs, you were mistaken. This game will weave all that into a cohesive narrative and pour it out onto your smiling face, much like savoring warm tea for breakfast during a winter holiday.

 From the very intro menu where the Moon Man calls you out for decisions you made in the previous session, all the way to the alternative names of corporations that are equally nonsensical as they are indicative. Every mission, advertisement, and dialogue with silly NPCs can remind you how cunning this universe is and somewhat "on its own terms". We have humble workers, outlaws, managers, and managerlings, as well as all those who try to navigate between these layers. 

While some secure the ideology of the corporation, others try to preserve the little soul they have left and resist selling themselves to those same conglomerates. "We work, we have a salary, come on, it's not that good, but we have something to eat and we have a roof over our heads." A brilliant statement that is very much familiar to a large number of people in modern times. Be clever, smile, and be in good form, because a healthy and happy worker is a productive one. The number of jokes on this topic that run through the game is infinite.

The world of The Outer Worlds 2 is full of little things that reward you for exploration. Persistence in wandering around the map is the main thing, and believe me, it will pay off. 

A Densely Packed, Reward-Driven World

From abandoned ship unloading stations, where you can find the diary of a character who literally died of boredom, to a captain who refuses to help his soldiers in the corporate private army because he is at odds with everyone, and HR doesn't plan to address that issue. On top of all that, we get ruins that hide easter eggs dedicated to other Obsidian games.

The map on each planet has a proportional size and isn't overcrowded with elements that would require 200 hours of gameplay from a completionist. There are no "fetch" missions where you have to bring four pieces of silver dust from another system, and for that, you get a handful of misery in EXP. Zones are well differentiated, characterized by a distinct visual presentation, flora and fauna, and unique design, and thus possess their own distinct identity. They aren't just "copy-pasted" or thrown-in assets. There is sense in the design of a large part of the sections in The Outer Worlds 2. Those who want to explore will be richly rewarded.

Now we come to the main "punchline" we all hoped for, especially those familiar with Obsidian's creative philosophy. Here, the side missions are better designed and written compared to the main quest. Each of these missions has its own little creative twist, because of which you might want to play it again, or you'll hit reload because you realized you made a terrible mistake a few hours ago in deciding on the approach. 

The most beautiful part of this game is definitely the writing. This development team has been a master in its craft for a long time, and it has seasoned professionals who know how to develop stories and dialogues. 

The Deep Characterization in The Outer Worlds 2

Yes, it is infused with politics and modern achievements that are now slowly waning, but here it is still wrapped in a dose of parody. The characters aren't just "quest givers"; they are occasionally real social princesses and princes with their own flaws and problems that they are unwilling or insufficiently capable of solving.

Just don't get into a polemic with the AI on the ship because you will very quickly be verbally "encouraged". Considering the AI has a bug in its code for "supportive routines," you will have a great experience reading its sociopathic comments. You will see that evil trait, exclusive content only for corporate HR officials. What can we say except that this is a brilliant quip for bringing this world closer to the players?

Let's turn to the visual part that The Outer Worlds can certainly offer. Graphically, this title looks very nice because, well, Unreal 5 does its job, but as always, the Unreal five ailments in teams like Obsidian's show their face. 

They didn't suddenly become gods of visual presentation. Still, the world is detailed, each planet has its characteristic look, the maps are well populated, there isn't a lot of meaningless space, and a lot happens on them that can easily distract you. The graphics are stylized and fit very well into the overall "vibe" that the game tries to offer us. There aren't any excessive complaints, except for the performance itself, which, in some moments, is, to put it mildly, questionable.

Gameplay vs. Engine Ailments in The Outer Worlds 2

The performance is stable, but optimization of textures, the virtual heightfield mesh that renders before your eyes, and occasionally poor caching can lead to the infamous ailment of this engine: stuttering. On some planets, it's almost unnoticeable, but in some locations, a bit more time should have been dedicated to polishing.

 All of this is just one small step that had to be taken for us to achieve an overall excellent package, and as it stands, it's just a good package that needs a quality ribbon to enhance the overall impression. As far as Obsidian's history is concerned, this is a cosmic leap forward.

In Conclusion

It is a title that corrects all the mistakes of its predecessor and adds a creative streak that can easily make you look the other way and try to forgive its problems. The creative team at Obsidian knows its identity, and they know how to make a game for an adequate target audience. A significant improvement compared to its predecessor, and we don't mean The Outer Worlds. If this is the future of open-world games, where we have smaller maps with much more significant content, then this is a formula we warmly welcome!

If you love RPGs with meaning and if you are attracted to worlds full of corporate madness, sarcastic robots, and moral decisions, then The Outer Worlds 2 is the right game for you. This is Obsidian in the true sense of the word!

Game Rating:9/10

I rate The Outer Worlds 2 a 9.0/10 because it masterfully evolves Obsidian's signature RPG formula, featuring brilliant writing, meaningful player choice, and a satirical world. However, it is slightly held back by some technical performance issues typical of Unreal Engine 5.

Age Recommendation:16+

I would recommend this game for players aged 16 and older due to its complex moral themes, satirical corporate critique, and instances of violence and sarcastic humor that require a more mature understanding to appreciate fully.

Gemini AI Summary

This text is a detailed review and historical analysis of Obsidian Entertainment, culminating in a highly positive assessment of their 2025 game, The Outer Worlds 2. It praises the game for its brilliant writing, meaningful player choices, satirical portrayal of the corporate world, and significant improvement over its predecessor, while noting some minor technical issues; ultimately, it awards it a 9/10.