The Outer Worlds 2 Review - Space Capitalism Strikes Back (And So Do We)
The Outer Worlds 2 improves on its predecessor with sharper combat, better companions, and gripping moral choices—once it gets going. The first half drags, but the second half delivers classic Obsidian RPG excellence. Perfect for Game Pass subscribers. Our full review for gamers over 50.
Affiliate/Advertisement Notice: This article contains affiliate links and sponsored content. We earn a small commission when you purchase through these links, which helps us keep Silver Gamers running.
When Obsidian released the original Outer Worlds back in 2019, Bethesda had just announced Starfield as their grand vision of "Fallout in Space". The Outer Worlds promised something similar—but from the folks who'd already perfected the formula with the legendary Fallout: New Vegas. It delivered a darkly comic romp through corporate-controlled space where capitalism had quite literally conquered the stars, complete with the deep character customization and choice-driven gameplay that Obsidian does best.
Fast forward five years, and Obsidian has just released the much-awaited sequel. The question we're here to answer: Is this a game that belongs on every Silver Gamer's Wishlist, or can you safely give it a miss?
The Good News Up Front
Let me save you some reading time: The Outer Worlds 2 is absolutely worth your attention if you enjoyed the first game or have any fondness for games like Fallout or Mass Effect. It takes nearly everything the original did well and improves it—sharper combat, better companion writing, more meaningful choices, and a world that feels genuinely alive with absurdist corporate dystopia.
The slightly less good news? It takes its sweet time finding its footing, and some design choices might frustrate players who prefer a bit more flexibility in their character builds.
Same Crazy World, Fresh Corporate Nightmares
The Outer Worlds 2 ditches the Halcyon colony from the first game and drops you into Arcadia—a different corner of space with the same fundamental problem: mega-corporations have turned majestic planets into gaudy strip malls where employees are literally owned by their employers. The art style remains that distinctive Art Deco-meets-steampunk-in-space aesthetic, all retro-futuristic propaganda posters and gleaming chrome spaceships held together with duct tape and desperate hope.
You'll hop between four main planets, each controlled by different factions vying for supremacy. There's Auntie's Choice (a mega-corp that would make Amazon look worker-friendly), The Protectorate (fascists who've turned authoritarianism into a lifestyle brand), and The Order of the Ascendant (mathematician-monks who believe they can predict the future through equations—and aren't afraid to commit a few atrocities to keep the timeline on track).
The worldbuilding remains brilliantly absurd. You'll encounter vending machines that cheerfully inform you they're monitoring your purchasing habits for "quality of life improvements," employees who've literally signed away their rights to personal pronouns in their contracts, and entire planets where dissent is classified as a mental illness requiring "treatment." It's satire that hits uncomfortably close to home while remaining entertaining enough that you won't feel lectured.
Character Building: Commitment Required
The character creation system offers the level of customization you'd expect from a modern RPG—you can tweak everything from facial features to backstory to pronouns. Once you're in the game proper, the skill system is wonderfully detailed, letting you specialize in everything from Leadership (making your companions more effective) to Lockpicking, Engineering, Speech, and various combat disciplines.
Here's where Obsidian made their most controversial decision: you cannot respec your character. Every skill point you spend is permanent. Every perk you choose is locked in forever. The game director's reasoning makes sense—this forces you to truly roleplay a character rather than constantly min-maxing for every situation—but it's definitely going to frustrate some players.
Personally, I'm not a fan of it. Yes, there's genuine power in committing to a character build and learning to work within its limitations. My leadership-focused character who could barely hack a terminal but turned my companions into absolute murder machines felt distinctly mine in ways that constantly-optimized builds never would, but I also did spend the first ten hours wishing I could undo some early choices when I realized my planned stealth-sniper build wasn't quite working out as imagined.
The Flaw System Returns (And It's Brilliant)
One of the first game's cleverest mechanics returns and is somehow even better: the Flaw system. The game watches how you play and occasionally offers you either permanent negative traits in exchange for an extra perk point. Each flaw comes with both a drawback and a benefit, making the decision genuinely interesting rather than simply punitive.
The flaws are often absurdly specific and darkly humorous. The Premium Edition automatically saddles you with "Consumerism"—the game literally diagnoses you with an addiction to buying things before you've been alive for ten minutes. It makes shops cheaper but you sell items for less, plus you get dialogue options that make you sound like you've spent too much time watching shopping channels at 3 AM.
If you're constantly skipping through dialogue (we've all been there), you might be offered "Foot-in-Mouth Syndrome." Accept it, and you'll earn bonus XP—but every dialogue choice now comes with a punishingly short timer. Let it run out and the game picks an option for you randomly, which led to several conversations where my character said things I absolutely did not intend.
These aren't just mechanical changes—they fundamentally alter how you play and think about your character. The flaw system creates emergent storytelling where your character develops quirks based on how you actually play rather than what you intended them to be.
Combat: Actually Good This Time
Let's be honest: the first Outer Worlds had merely "adequate" combat. You pointed guns at things, they fell down, and nobody was writing home about the experience. The sequel makes significant strides.
Gunplay feels snappier and more responsive. Movement is more fluid, with double-jumping adding much-needed verticality to encounters. Most importantly, the weapon variety has exploded. I found shotguns that dissolved targets, rifles that pack a decent punch, and melee weapons that felt genuinely satisfying to use (One even uses Shotgun bullets...).
Where combat stumbles is enemy variety. You'll fight roughly the same three or four creature types on each planet, plus the standard human enemies and occasional robots. By hour twenty, I was thoroughly sick of Raptidons (dinosaur-like creatures from the first game that return here for some reason). Worse, enemies don't respawn—once you've cleared an area, it stays empty forever. This leads to large stretches of map feeling utterly lifeless during backtracking, which is a shame given how lovely the environments are.
Companions: Your Traveling Moral Compass
You'll recruit six companions throughout your journey, each representing one of the game's major factions. Tristan, the heavily-armored Protectorate judge, constantly advocates for authoritarian solutions. Inez, the corporate medic, never misses a chance to remind you of the virtues of free enterprise. Having these walking ideologies in your party makes understanding the political landscape effortless—even if you're not reading every terminal entry or following every subplot, you'll absorb the worldview of each faction through your companions' constant commentary.
The companion writing is notably stronger than the first game. Characters feel like actual people with histories and motivations beyond being quest-dispensers who follow you around. Their personal quests often tie directly into the main story's themes, and your choices during these missions can significantly alter their character arcs.
That said, the companions you recruit earliest (Niles the engineer and Valerie the robot) are noticeably weaker than those who join later. Niles' story can resolve quite early, leaving him with little to contribute for the rest of your playthrough. Valerie has some amusing one-liners but feels disconnected from the broader narrative. Stick with it—the later additions more than make up for this rocky start.
The Story: A Slow Burn That Eventually Ignites
Here's where The Outer Worlds 2 stumbles most noticeably: the main story takes far too long to find its stride. The first half revolves around a frankly underwhelming revenge quest against a scientist who wronged you at the game's opening. I cared so little about this plotline that I genuinely forgot it was supposed to be my primary motivation by the time I reached the credits.
The second half, however, transforms into something genuinely gripping. Once the game shifts focus to the political maneuvering between Arcadia's factions—forcing you to make agonizing decisions about which deeply flawed organization deserves to control the future—it becomes the compelling Obsidian RPG experience we've come to expect. The moral dilemmas are genuinely thorny. There are no clearly "good" options, just varying shades of grey and the constant question of whether the ends justify the means.
I found myself torn between supporting the Order's scientific enlightenment (never mind their casual atrocities in service of their predicted future) and backing Auntie's Choice's supposed freedom (ignoring their oppressive monopolistic practices). The Protectorate, meanwhile, was so openly fascistic that siding with them felt impossible—yet the game still presents compelling reasons why their iron-fisted stability might be preferable to chaotic freedom.
These are the kinds of choices that linger after you've turned off the console. I just wish the game had led with this compelling material rather than making us trudge through twenty hours of revenge-quest filler first.
Time Investment & Difficulty: Respectfully Balanced
A completionist playthrough will run you 60-70 hours. Mainlining the story while doing some side content? You're looking at 30-45 hours. Either way, this is a substantial time investment—but the game respects that time in ways many modern RPGs don't.
There's no inventory weight limit, meaning you can hoover up every piece of junk without constant menu management. The healing system uses food items at the press of a button rather than forcing you into menus mid-combat. Quest objectives are clearly marked, and the map system actually works (revolutionary, I know).
The difficulty options are genuinely well-balanced:
Story Mode: Combat is very forgiving, letting you focus on dialogue choices and exploration. You can still die if you're truly careless, but the game gives you every advantage.
Normal: Provides a satisfying challenge without feeling punishing. Perfect for most Silver Gamers who want the complete experience without constant frustration.
Hard: For masochists and people with better muscle memory than me. Expect to die frequently and plan every encounter carefully.
Supernova: An unlockable permadeath mode with survival elements. Absolutely not recommended unless you enjoy suffering.
I played on Normal and found it perfectly pitched—challenging enough to require tactical thinking but forgiving enough that I could experiment with different approaches without being punished for curiosity.
Accessibility: Obsidian Gets It
The Outer Worlds 2 includes robust accessibility options that put many AAA titles to shame:
- Fully customizable subtitles with adjustable size, color, and background opacity
- Colorblind modes with extensive customization
- Motion sickness reduction options (field of view adjustment, motion blur toggle, camera shake reduction)
- Extensive control remapping for both keyboard/mouse and controller
- Difficulty modifiers you can adjust on the fly (enemy damage, player damage, etc)
- UI scaling for better readability
- Toggle vs. hold options for all sustained actions
The text is comfortably readable even on a TV from across the room, and the UI is clean and uncluttered. I never found myself squinting at quest text or struggling to parse menu options—something I absolutely cannot say for many recent RPGs.
Technical Performance: Mostly Solid
Playing on Xbox Series X (via Game Pass), performance was generally excellent. The game runs at a smooth 60fps in performance mode, with occasional very minor dips during particularly chaotic combat encounters. Load times are pleasantly brief—death means you're back in action within 10-15 seconds, not long enough to contemplate your life choices.
I did encounter a handful of bugs: NPCs occasionally getting stuck in geometry, quest markers not updating until I reloaded a save - enough rough edges to remind you this is an Obsidian RPG (which means some jank is part of the charm).
Platform & Pricing
The Outer Worlds 2 is available on:
- PlayStation 5: £59.99 / $69.99 - Buy on Amazon
- Xbox Series X/S: £59.99 / $69.99 (also available day one on Game Pass) - Buy on Amazon
- PC (Steam/Epic/Windows Store): £49.99 / $59.99 - Buy on Amazon
The Silver Gamer Verdict
The Outer Worlds 2 is a solid, entertaining RPG that improves on its predecessor in almost every way. The combat is better, the companions are more memorable, and when the story finally gets going, it delivers the morally complex decision-making that Obsidian does best.
It's not without frustrations, though. The no-respec system will irritate some players and the first half of the story is a slog. Enemy variety is poor, and the empty maps after you've cleared areas feel lifeless. It's also a substantial time investment—not something you'll casually finish in a week of evening sessions.
Perfect for you if:
- You enjoyed the first Outer Worlds or Fallout: New Vegas
- You appreciate dark humor
- You like planning detailed character builds
- You want an RPG that respects your time with quality-of-life features
Skip it if:
- You're looking for innovative gun play
- You want a more serious, grounded sci-fi experience
- You've got a backlog of other RPGs waiting
For me? I genuinely enjoyed my journey through Arcadia despite its flaws. It's not perfect, but it's exactly the kind of substantial, choice-driven RPG we don't get enough of these days.
Have you taken the plunge into Arcadia? Share your character build disasters and moral dilemmas in the comments below.
