Even six years out from its launch, there are few AAA RPGs as tightly-crafted and – as our The Outer Worlds review put it – "contained" as 2019's The Outer Worlds. Across its 25-30 hour runtime, Obsidian Entertainment landed with a story to tell, delivered it with the dry wit we've long come to expect from the studio, and hopped back in its rocket before overstaying its welcome. The Outer Worlds 2, then, is Obsidian coming back for a far longer round two.
Set to be a significantly expanded sequel with far more emphasis on optional exploration and quests, game director Brandon Adler tells me the "core" story of The Outer Worlds 2 represents "maybe 10-15%" of the game's whole. It's in direct response to fans who wished the first game was longer – yet it also marks a return to the deeper RPG systems that Obsidian is known for.
It's not like Obsidian didn't want to do this from the get-go. As work on the sequel began, Adler recalls the first game's directors, Fallout co-creators Leonard Boyarsky and Tim Cain, telling him of the "deeper RPG" systems and areas for improvement they would have chased if time and money had permitted.
"Now that we've had more time and more money from Microsoft to be able to expand that stuff out, we're able to put that together for everybody," explains Adler. "It's really what we wanted in the first place, right? So it's just realizing that dream from the beginning – and I feel The Outer Worlds 2 has actually done that. It's gotten to where we want it to be, in terms of that crunchy RPG."
Re-roll
Now, though, the landscape for RPGs has changed. The success of Baldur's Gate 3, and to a lesser extent games like Dragon's Dogma 2 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, show that there is still plenty of demand for intricate, often narrative-heavy RPGs. It's a return to the genre's more old-school sensibilities that Leonard Boyarsky, creative director for The Outer Worlds 2 and a veteran developer who has worked on the likes of Fallout and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, has noticed.
"In the first game, one of our tag lines was 'an RPG with RPG elements' because, for a very long time and even when we were pitching the original Outer Worlds to different publishers, you'd think that was a no-brainer, right? Obsidian making a new RPG – it's like, come on! You know people would be interested in that," says Boyarsky. "And as they're making all these games with [air quotes] 'RPG Elements' and way more role-playing, there was still a kind of trepidation. Now, with things like Baldur's Gate 3 and Outer Worlds having come out, I think people are a lot more open to it again. It feels like we had to prove ourselves all over again, to a certain degree."
"I love seeing it," adds Adler. "But again, Baldur's Gate 3? Seeing its success gives us heart that people really, actually want these kinds of games and we're on the right track. It's good to bring that stuff to the forefront again."
During my own time with The Outer Worlds 2 hands-on, a few of those priorities are immediately obvious. Numerous dialog trees are influenced by the traits and background I chose for my character (which was Rouseabout, slacker-turned-interstellar-agent). During one conversation with a guard, I used my Sickly trait to call out one guard for being so nervous that he looked on the precipice of throwing up, followed by Rouseabout to connect with him on a human level – no, I don't know what I'm doing either, but it'll be fine!
Even the dialogue by itself is sharp, witty, and incredibly funny. I self-consciously giggled frequently during the hands-on, from the lunar-faced mascot who can't help but air his woes – "I used to be somebody" – during the introduction to having no clue what an important-looking equation meant because I didn't take the Professor background. The original game's anti-corporate messaging and satirical bite is still here, too – and arguably takes an even stronger stance, which is interesting, given Obsidian Entertainment is now a part of Microsoft. Do the pair ever become keenly aware that they're making fun of their bosses?
"The Outer Worlds was originally conceived before we were purchased by Microsoft, but it would be ridiculous to say that we don't notice that – like, we obviously do," says Adler. "We think it's funny, and we play into it. Sometimes you even see it in our trailers and things like that, we poke fun at that. We get a little wink and nod. So we realize that whole situation, but you know, we still have a message that we're trying to tell - regardless of who's funding it, we're still trying to tell that."
"The people we work with really love the game, so yeah, no dictates or anything like that," adds Boyarsky.
Going deeper
I knew that if I could make a game that I would want to go and buy and play, we were on the right track
Leonard Boyarsky, creative director
The Outer Worlds 2 isn't the only RPG Obsidian has launched this year. Back in February, the studio released Avowed – a slick, combat-heavy action-RPG which brought the genre's more modern leanings and streamlining to the fore. Yet the two games appear to be going in entirely different directions, as Boyarsky points out that The Outer Worlds 2's team "wanted to go a little bit in the other direction" – that direction being backwards.
"I would say that The Outer Worlds 2's goals harken back to more of the traditional Obsidian style of RPG, whereas Avowed, to your point, is taking a more streamlined approach to make it a little bit easier for folks to jump in[to something more] action-focused," he says, clarifying that The Outer Worlds 2 still has a lot of "great action" – which we can certainly vouch for.
"But really, at the core [...] I knew that if I could make a game that I would want to go and buy and play, we were on the right track," says Boyarsky. "I love RPGs, and we wanted that to come through. That's why we made a game that you can go very deep with how you build your character and equipment, you want lots of synergy between things, and we wanted to display it in the game. So there's lots of interactions in the game that build on, like, whatever your character build is – things like that. And yeah, we knew that there was a group of people – hopefully a large group of people - that really want that."
In The Outer Worlds 2, Obsidian has more freedom to push back on players. Some of those speed bumps are immediate, like being offered a second powerful trait at the start of the game – if you're willing to pick a mandatory negative trait. Others are bigger picture, such as your decisions having firmer consequences. Ultimately, Boyarsky says that added texture comes back to building upon the original game.
"When you have a game that's 20-30 hours long, you can't have a decision you can make that's going to cut off 10% of that content," he explains. "But in this game we have the square footage where we can be like, 'You made this choice - you don't get to do that'. You might be able to go over there and kill everybody, but you can't engage with any of that quest content, which again is something we always really wanted to do, but had to make the choice to limit some of that. It was just a natural progression where now that we have the time to do it, we really wanted to do it."
That, Boyarsky adds, is where the studio's classic role-playing heritage truly lives. "That feeling, like you're a person in this world, like it's your story and the world's reacting to what you're doing? I think [for] Obsidian as a whole, that's what we strive for."
