The Outer Worlds 2 preview: Obsidian’s doing what it does best

The Outer Worlds 2 is the long-awaited sequel to a 2019 action role-playing game (RPG) that, despite its flaws, I had a lot of love for.

While the original was a disappointingly linear experience that didn’t reward player agency as much as I’d have liked (especially given developer Obsidian’s superb track record), its hilariously dark hyper-capitalist sci-fi setting and endearing characters still made it well worth a playthrough.

I spent around an hour with The Outer Worlds 2 at Gamescom 2025, and the introductory mission alone felt leagues ahead of anything in the original game in terms of options and interactions afforded to the player. So much so that I’m hoping this first hour represents a vertical slice of what you can expect in the full game.

Obsidian, traditionally, is no slouch when it comes to immersive role-playing games – Pentiment, Fallout: New Vegas, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 are all proof of that.

The Outer Worlds 2, then, is giving me much the same vibes here. Not necessarily in terms of setting, but in the way it encourages players to use level design to their character build’s advantage. There’s no shortage of non-player characters (NPCs) to interact with, secret compartments to uncover, terminals to hack, and, of course, baddies to blast.

Bumbling across the galaxy

The Outer Worlds 2 puts you in the well-trodden space shoes of an Earth Directorate agent. The (very pretty and very funny) introductory cutscene acts as a public service announcement for the group, lending them a bumbling if well-meaning air.

Much like the first game, you’ll start by creating your own character. This involves assigning them their looks, backstory, and traits. One thing I love here is you’re able to select up to two positive traits – such as the ability to powerslide into enemies or affording you unique dialogue options.

The kicker here is that if you choose two positive traits instead of one, you have to balance that out with at least one negative trait. There were only three in the demo, but they were all comically devastating. My favorite being the ‘dumb’ trait, which entirely prevents you from improving most of the game’s skills, including science and speech.

Another great one is ‘abrasive’, which is described as other characters simply finding you insufferable to talk to. As a result, faction reputation can never progress past a neutral state, locking out any bonuses that would otherwise come with improved relations.

‘Sickly’ is perhaps the least interesting, simply reducing base health by 15% and making you more prone to injuries. All very funny options if you’re keen on a challenge run, though.

The character creation process overall is impressively robust. Appearance options, like in Avowed, are plentiful, and you should have little trouble going for a look that you prefer. I would’ve loved to have spent an hour here alone, but time was unfortunately precious.

Before we can even get started on our main task of infiltrating a large space station to meet with an operative there, we’ve got to make sure our ship can actually get there. Hilariously named the ‘Incognito’ despite having a comically massive propulsion system, we’ve got to retrieve our credentials from our personal quarters.

Annoyingly, the door to our quarters is jammed, thus we begin something of an immersive sim microcosm, to introduce us to the kinds of decision-making and exploration we’ll be undertaking in the game proper. Now, if you specialize in strength, you can just force the door open. But those of svelter frames can look around for other forms of access, such as the trusty old immersive sim air duct.

Our options expand greatly once we reach the space station proper. There are two main options of engagement here, stealth and espionage, or all-guns-blazing, and there comes a point where the path will branch into two, each best-suited to either style.

But at a more intimate level, there are several opportunities to find secret compartments for extra loot, hackable terminals, and locked doors ripe for the picking. The level is impressively laid out so that you’ll naturally be guided towards challenges best suited to your character’s skill set, though I imagine careful exploration will be much more of a focus in the full game once environments open up.

And now we have the yapper

The highlight for me, though, as someone who likes to roll a stealthy gobshite in games like this, was an opportunity to convince a security guard to let me into the facility’s most secure area. That’s also where our main objective is supposed to be located.

The faction the guard belongs to prizes absolute perfection above all else. In fact, the very notion of our presence has the guard panicking; being unable to intercept us has thrown his idea of a pristine record to the wolves.

We have a few ways to use this dilemma to our advantage. We can either convince the guard to turn himself in and let us through, of course. But the more interesting option involves us convincing him that turning himself in would expose that failure to uphold this illusion of perfection. Thus, we help him erase his record and allow him to start with a perfectly clean slate, and he lets us by for the trouble.

This was, for me, the best way to deal with things, especially as the alternative would be to take on a small battalion of soldiers and mechs. Gunslinger-focused builds would likely have an easier time here, but for me, having a gun was nothing more than a thinly-veiled suggestion of a threat.