The primary Outer Worlds has a really tight scope. The 2019 Obsidian Leisure RPG, in line with our assessment on the time, is “expansive when it must be, however by no means falls into the lure of believing that greater is all the time higher.” You possibly can beat the sport in 15 hours should you wished — not like, say, Obsidian’s Fallout: New Vegas. However that additionally meant Outer Worlds’ anti-capitalist satire might solely go so deep. In an interview at Summer time Sport Fest 2025, design director Matt Singh and inventive director Leonard Boyarsky instructed me about how the scope has widened in Outer Worlds 2 — ideally with out the workforce dropping sight of what made the primary sport work.
“In the beginning, we’re an Obsidian RPG, and we need to guarantee that that’s the muse,” mentioned Singh. “However what’s good is, we had that basis constructed from the primary sport, and what we checked out was, what are the facets that we need to enhance on? OK, we all know how you can make Obsidian role-playing video games. Oh, right here’s an avenue for enchancment, which is, how will we improve our gunplay? How will we get extra selection in there, proper? How will we add extra to our stealth toolkit that enables folks extra methods to precise their character construct? Which is in the end the place we’re coming from. Our motto is ‘your world, your means.’ What we’re actually saying is, we worth participant company. And so if you wish to go simply shoot, you need to simply interact with all of that fight loop, you really don’t even need to do an entire lot of the dialog stuff — OK, you may completely do this. We’re leaning into all of these conversations, we’re leaning into all of that reactivity — however we allow you to play it nevertheless you’d like.”
Picture: Obsidian Leisure/Xbox Sport Studios
A key a part of Outer Worlds is its humorousness and social satire, which is one thing else the builders wished to develop upon within the second sport. “I used to be actually pleased with the primary sport,” Boyarsky instructed me. “I believe it got here out very well, but it surely was smaller. We had been introducing folks to the world. So it was very a lot sort of like — just a little an excessive amount of the identical joke again and again, just a little one-note. I imply, I believe we did a superb job with it, however I nonetheless felt prefer it might have been extra.
“On this one, we now have the totally different factions,” he continued. “Every has their very own sort of taste of humor. So we’re capable of juxtapose these issues, or have moments which can be combined in with lots of the darkness — with the silliness just a little bit greater than we had been within the first sport. It’s simply sort of like with all the pieces right here, we’re simply sort of increasing the entire world. We’re increasing the universe, we’re increasing the themes.”
Every of the factions has its personal motivations and in-game propaganda. One of many factions, known as Auntie’s Selection, isn’t a lot a faction as an organization; it represents a company merger between two factions from the primary sport, Auntie Cleo’s and Spacer’s Selection. And in Outer Worlds 2, Auntie’s Selection is all about promoting its merchandise — “that’s a part of their identification,” as Singh put it. That’s expressed via dialogue, in fact, however the devs additionally wished to discover a method to flip the faction’s devotion to commercialism into an in-game weapon.
Picture: Obsidian Leisure/Xbox Sport Studios
Right here’s the consequence, by way of Singh: “You may shoot out advert drones to distract your enemies. And they also’ll come out they usually’ll simply do slogans and stuff, and individuals are like, ‘What the f? Get away from me!’ However then now you should use that as a distraction, so that you could capitalize on taking them out or you may even detonate them as little distant minds that may go sort of scurry across the place.”
That’s removed from the one comedy weapon within the sport. “So we had the shrink ray within the first sport the place you could possibly sort of shrink anyone all the way down to half dimension,” mentioned Singh. “I actually wished to complete that gameplay fantasy. And so in the second, you shrink [your enemies] all the way down to this dimension” — he held his fingers about an inch aside — “after which you may run over ’em after which simply get ’em, and it’s tremendous enjoyable. It by no means will get outdated. So I really like that one.
“However I imply, with the sport as an entire — weapons, we wished to extend the number of them, after which make the second to second gunplay really feel higher. We additionally wished to synergize properly with all of our perks and flaws and companion skills. So we spent lots of time making an attempt to determine how the entire totally different expertise and perks might play properly with these weapons throughout a pair variety of totally different archetypes that we outlined so that you could do some actually cool stuff relying on what your objectives are.”
Outer Worlds 2 can have extra perks than its predecessor, together with some that sound like they’re going to result in very humorous outcomes. “You possibly can take one the place it’s like, you may inform probably the most outlandish lies and other people consider you,” Boyarsky mentioned. “However should you take that flaw the place it forces you to choose the lie each time, if it occurs to be one which’s additionally tied to a ability, it ignores the ability necessities.” The consequence, Singh added, is “lots of enjoyable.”
Outer Worlds 2 shall be launched Oct. 29 on PlayStation 5, Home windows PC, and Xbox Sequence X.
