‘The Outer Worlds 2 ‘ Let Me Play As A Big Dumb Idiot, and I Loved It

After playing through the opening of The Outer Worlds 2, what please me the most about it is that it supports my biggest RPG hobby — playing as an absolute idiot. Sure, the sequel to Obsidian’s space-faring adventure has better shooting and shinier graphics, but I’m just happy I can play a hapless bozo that, somehow, manages to stumble their way through every situation, including getting a gate to open by telling a guard, “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

The Outer Worlds 2 is a direct sequel to the 2019 sci-fi role-playing game, which takes place in an alternate future that started diverging from the real-world timeline in 1901, with United States President William McKinley escaping assassination. Because of this, Theodore Roosevelt never became president, so the megaconglomerate businesses of the era were not broken up after all. Now, in the future, capitalism rules the universe, with colonies ruled by megacorporations that shape daily life and lead a class-centric society.

This gave the first Outer Worlds a biting satirical comedy element that constantly riffed on the idea of corporate greed and oppression, although it sometimes felt like it didn’t go far enough. While two hours with the game isn’t enough for me to say if Outer Worlds 2 takes that theme even further, it is enough to say the game still has the same shrewd wit.

The beginning of the game kicks off with a literal scene-setter. You’re watching one of the films from in-universe movie house Odeon Pictures, portraying a propaganda piece for the Earth Directorate — a military administration that acts as a go-between for Earth and the colonies. The schmaltzy ad is dripping in melodrama before dropping you into the character creator, where you make your own Earth Directorate captain. Your task is to infiltrate a totalitarian administration in the Arcadia Colony called the Protectorate, and investigate rifts in the fabric of space and time.

Right off the bat, it’s immediately clear that The Outer Worlds 2 is putting even more emphasis on player choice, giving you a wide array of options for Personal Background, Traits, and Skills. All of these factors heavily into the opening mission and how you make your way. Investing in lockpicking means you can stealth your way through air ducts and around security systems. The Professor Background can let you decode some of the science in labs for further insight into the base’s operations. Or investing in Speech might let you talk your way through a couple of guards. The entire mission is essentially one big black box that can be solved in a dozen different ways.

But while creating my character, my eyes were immediately drawn to the Roustabout character background — which essentially states you accidentally took down a notorious brigand and became a hero to the Directorate, but don’t know how. This is the Fallout: New Vegas low-intelligence run I crave in Obsidian-style RPGs, and pairing it with a high Speech skill is a blast.

In a pre-mission briefing, the infiltration agent my team worked with sighed with disdain when I exclaimed I had no idea what she was talking about. In the base, I pilfered an ID card from a deceased soldier and convinced the person on the intercom that I was him, after he’d gone through a sort of “Mental Refreshment.” When I ran into that same guard at the drawbridge to the facility, he bemoaned how I tricked him and he’d now get in trouble. When I simply said that I don’t really know what I’m doing and just making it up, the guard was dumbfounded. But he respected my honesty so much that there’s no way an idiot like me could lie, and then fully believed when I said I’d put in a good word with the grand leader. Of course, any of that complex science mumbo-jumbo in the rest of the facility might as well have been gibberish to me.

That opportunity to play as a bumbling fool is the single most enticing thing to me about Outer Worlds 2 now, because it really does match my playstyle (whatever that says about me). I don’t typically concern myself with being good at stealth or planning things out; I dive in headfirst and try to talk my way out of things. And if I can literally make the game’s characters exasperated, all the better.

On a technical level, it’s clear Outer Worlds 2 is a pretty drastic step up from the first game. The shooting feels a lot smoother and more intuitive, with streamlined options for swapping weapons. Facial animations are also a huge step up, much like this year’s earlier release of Avowed. And from a visual front, there’s a kind of Spartan sheen to everything in the facility I explored, like it’s all just a bit too clean and tidy — matching the obsessive capitalist nature of the game’s theming.

The concept of a better-looking and playing Outer Worlds is enticing enough, but Obsidian’s games have always been about rich personality and role-playing potential. And that’s exactly what feels shines the most about Outer Worlds 2 right now, the ability to inhabit a character.

And I, for one, can’t wait to see what my wonderfully charming, but dumb as a brick, captain will get themselves into in the full game.

The Outer Worlds 2 launches on October 29 for Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC.