The roleplaying 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.
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