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It’s a real shame that role-playing game Outer worlds 2 Developer Ossidian Entertainment currently operates under the Microsoft umbrella. It’s a company that, in the past two years alone, has laid off an unimaginable number of workers, dramatically raised prices on its hardware and subscription models, and completed the most expensive acquisition in the medium’s history. All this on top of canceling games and shuttering studios.
This is especially true of such a domineering capitalist mentality Outer worlds 2 It’s a bone to pick with, and it’s left me with some complicated feelings. On the one hand, the game’s critique of late-stage capitalism is harsh and steeped in the developer’s trademark wit. On the other hand, I can’t help but find it all a bit hollow when the target of said criticisms is also a funding and publication. Outer worlds 2.
Review the review information
Platform reviewed: Xbox Series X, PC
Available: PS5, Xbox Series X, Series S, PC
Release Date: October 29, 2025
Ultimately, Ossidian itself deserves credit for producing yet another fantastic choice-driven role-playing game (RPG). Like The result: New Vegas, Penitencefor , for , for , . And avowed before that, Outer worlds 2 Provides an emotional world to explore, full of interesting characters and quests, and countless opportunities to build as many as you choose.
Expertise in Outer worlds 2 There aren’t just doors to bypass or speech checks to clear. Like many of the best RPGs, some can really open up the game in meaningful ways. The skill of observation, for example, is something I cannot do without. Especially not after he led me to a secret room that revealed a struggle to win favor with a lucrative black market vendor. Even weapon-based skills like guns or science! (yes, formatted that way) are good for more than just shooting, and can be used to intimidate characters during dialogue.
One of my favorite things about outer worlds 2, Then again, it’s that you won’t really be able to solve every problem, bypassing every single lock in a single playthrough. You’ll have times where your charms don’t affect an NPC, and then stumble upon a quest or advancement opportunity that sets your skills to a tee. It is forever a satisfying gameplay experience.
This correlation between success and failure is not exactly an optimal balance, however. Across my playthroughs, I noticed that some skills and traits restricted development more than others (for example, engineering is used to get through jammed doors much more often than hack or lockpicking skills are in their respective fields).
There are also some packing issues through the mid-game, especially when quests pose themselves and enemies’ health suffers but most of the character’s guns have to be dealt with.
Minor issues aside, I won’t soon forget my time in the hypercapitalist nightmare that is Arcadia’s system, and chances are I’ll be diving back in with a completely different perspective and finish in mind.
shoot the moon
In terms of background, Outer worlds 2 Giving you something else to work on than your character, your character is an established and respected agent of the Earth Directorate. Turns out, though, the Earth Directorate won’t be very good at their jobs.
The opening mission, an infiltration of a space station known as the Protectorate, goes horribly wrong when a fellow agent double-crosses us, detonates the station and kills everyone on board, himself and a previously injured squad member named Nels Ibra.
Ten years later, you are awakened from an extended period of hibernation by Nilus, who informs you that an explosion has caused a rupture in the fabric of space that threatens to destroy the entire system in an undetermined amount of time. It’s a race against the clock to track down the double-crossing agent and save the Arcadia system from a dire fate.
Your quest for justice (whatever form that may take of your own choosing) is not one you will emerge without someone’s blood on your hands. Like it or not, you often have to side with a shady faction or two to get your way. This could be an already established protector, or Auntie’s Choice – a mega-corporation resulting from a hostile merger of the earlier game’s Auntie Cleo and Spacer’s Choice companies.
You won’t always like who you’re choosing to work for, but there’s at least a good taste for dialogue to make your character respond in a way that suits your desired personality—whether it’s good-natured or uncharacteristically cruel, or everything in between.
Choices, lots of choices
like that, The outside world 2 As opposed to having one large map ALA, explorable planets are small, individual biomes. The result: the new Vegas. For this game, it’s an approach that really works. Each major planet has its own central conflict, even if most feature a general theme of the Auntie’s choice and the Protectorate battling it out for control.
The best bit
Player choice is first and foremost in Outworlds 2, building both variety and choice-based decision-making. The game is designed in a way that means you never quite know when your character’s particular skill set will come in handy, making exploration and experimentation almost always enjoyable.
With characters to meet on each map, there’s no shortage of side quests to take on, buildings to explore, and secrets to uncover. Research is indeed the focal point of development Outer worlds 2. Combat, of course, is a way of working. And in terms of feel and feedback, it’s a huge improvement over the first game, with plenty of gunplay and weapon variety – from stealthy knives and silent pistols to ammo-hungry SMGs and energy weapons.
Personally, I preferred a low-key approach to progressing through the game’s main missions. Problems can be solved with combat, sure, but as the game goes on, the frustrating tendency to deplete enemy health bars often makes such encounters a painful affair.
As a result, I developed a charismatic character capable of speech checks to bypass combat wherever possible. Some stealth and observation points also helped in sneaking through busy areas and finding secret passages. You can play a completely passive role outer worlds 2, And you don’t get paid for doing it.
One piece of advice I would have is to think very carefully about your skills when initially creating your character. Take comfort in the idea that as a trade-off to specialize in two or three areas instead, you’ll be overwhelmed with choices and solutions. After the tutorial section you’ll get a chance to reply, but beyond that, there’s no such option.
I like this change overall. Not being able to take any serious breaths meant that I had to approach most scenarios with my chosen skill sets in mind. To me, that largely meant that guns blazing was just off the table. On the other hand, I can see inflexible players — or those who want to take a flexible approach based on the situation — might struggle with this. I definitely restarted the game a handful of times until I settled on skills that met my preferences.
One returning feature of the first game that I really enjoy, though, is the flaws. These are reactive, passive effects that you can achieve, and they’re basically a game to add an extra challenge to your playstyle. Flaws pop up if you adopt a certain way of playing coffee. Based on a hoarding mentality, it lowers the vendor’s prices but also reduces the money you make from the sale.
Another flaw runs on inconsistency, where you only level up with zero points, or the lowest total you have, the upside is that you’ll get an extra skill point to spend on each level. Flaws are optional, but if you accept them, they’re with you for good, so think carefully about how useful you think they are in the long run.
Horizon point
I got it Outer worlds 2 As the campaign progressed, it began to lose its luster. It’s not the longest RPG out there, coming in at around 40-50 hours, but it’s definitely one that started to feel a little formulaic. With just too many firefights to endure, air ducts to crawl, or terminals to hack the game starts to feel like it’s shown its full hand. And it works long before the credit roll. It’s an enjoyable game throughout, but I definitely had the most fun solving problems in the first big biome when it still felt fresh and expansive.
This repetition also hurts the overall packaging of the game. There are some nice surprises here and there. Recruiting new teammates for your squad is often something you just stumble across, rather than where you can pick them up. And digging deep into an installation or base to uncover cool weapons or decision-making opportunities is always a satisfying reward. But moments like this felt a little more distant between getting from settlement to outpost, and bumping into different elements of busywork in hopes of expanding my choices for the main quest.
Which I can’t fault Outer worlds 2 It has a beautiful visual style. This is something that I find really inspiring avowed, And it is the same case here. The exteriors are awe-inspiring with color and interesting markings, while the interiors often feel cold and oppressive at best. While the soundtrack didn’t do much to move me, I often found myself taking in the impressive amount of environmental detail on offer.
It’s also a winner on the performance front, and I only saw a handful of dips at 60fps on both Xbox Series X and PC. Load times can be uncomfortably long on occasion (exacerbated by reloading quick saves to try alternate routes), but overall game performance is acceptable.
Should you play The Outer Worlds 2?
If you play it…
If you don’t play it…
access
As is the case with many Xbox Game Studios titles, Outer worlds 2 Offers a solid amount of accessible options for gamers of all stripes. For starters, you can adjust motion blur and field of view to a granular degree, as well as apply subtitles to normal, background and audio log speech.
There are also two motion sickness modes to reduce on-screen motion to varying degrees. You can adjust overall text size and HUD scaling, as well as color and outline subtitles and their backgrounds.
How I Explored the Outer Worlds
i play Outer worlds 2 For 40 hours on both my Xbox Series X Digital Edition and my gaming PC. I was able to transfer my saves between both versions thanks to Xbox’s handy Play Anywhere feature. During my playthrough, I chose a character capable of hacking and uncovering secrets through observation skills, with some points in speech and guns to get myself out of tight situations in a pinch.
I primarily played on console using a Razer Wolverine V3 Pro Xbox controller, on an LG CX OLED TV display. My audio device of choice here was the Rig R5 Spare Pro, a multi-platform wired gaming headset that delivered exceptional, immersive audio during my playthroughs.
First reviewed October 2025
