I've been a fan of Obsidian Entertainment ever since it took on the sequel to Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic and smashed it out of the park. Following BioWare was no easy task, but its follow-up was arguably a better game.
The same is true with other sequels it subsequently worked on, including Fallout: New Vegas – for many the best Fallout game to date. But while I loved its Pillars of Eternity RPGs, it wasn't until The Outer Worlds that I realised that rather than follow the likes of BioWare and Bethesda, it had the potential to surpass them.
Witty, inventive and beautifully styled, it was the role-player/shooter that, for me, took the studio to the next level. Yes, it owed much to the Fallout formula (and game mechanics), but also offered something fresh and, well, funny.
That the next-gen remaster came out around the same time as Starfield and was a more enjoyable experience says it all.
Now we have the sequel on the horizon – coming 29 October – and I've managed to play the first hour or so to get a taste of what to expect. I'm already hooked.
The game will release on PC and PS5, although I played it on the Xbox Series X (it'll also be available for Xbox Series S). And it must be said that I enjoyed myself so much that it's made me look at the console in a new light again.
Having recently bought a Nintendo Switch 2, while also getting heavily into Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 on the PS5, I've had little extra time to invest in games on my Xbox. I still haven't managed to finish Avowed, for example, which released at the same time as a swathe of other great titles I had to write about.
But The Outer Worlds 2 gripped me from the off with a cheesy matinee-style propaganda show about the Earth Directorate, and didn't let go until I'd finished the preview build I was sent by Xbox.
You play a said member of the Directorate – a captain of a strike team who has been assigned a mission to discover the truth about space anomalies. This takes you through character generation, prompts you to chat to several crew mates, and then head to a research station to find out the truth.
This was a great introduction to the game, with a modicum of exploration, use of power ups and stimulants, plus a decent slice of combat to give you the ropes without being too tutorial-like.
It's clear even at this stage that there's been a lot of effort and tweaking made to the FPS action, to make the sequel flow more quickly. Indeed, it can be argued – from the brief section I've played – that this is a shooter with RPG and puzzle elements this time, with the first game being the opposite. Think Mass Effect 2 and 3 in comparison with the original.
There's still a lot of speaking, character interactions and inventory management, but weapons feel smoother and more tangible – not just an extension of a number-crunching RPG sim.
That benefits, of course, from the 60fps gameplay. I haven't tested the frame rate completely at this stage (and there were no alternative settings to try), but it ran buttery throughout the preview with no visible drops.
The preview build also introduced me to Niles – one of the crew that is destined to be a companion in the final game – and the instant you start to talk to him you realise how much extra work Obsidian has put it on animation. One constant through The Outer Worlds and Fallout: New Vegas before it is that the facial and character animations have owed more to street side puppet shows than blockbuster movies.
Not so here – the game looks gorgeous, and that includes the way NPCs move and talk. There's a slight smoothing of the graphical fidelity that makes the game look as stylised as before, but with a far higher level of detail and definition.
It ups the presentation and rounds out the game world and Obsidian's original vision more than ever before.
Sadly, the preview was short – basically encompassing the prologue of the final game – but that's in stark contrast to what we've been told about the final game. According to the developer, it is much bigger than the first game, which took around 20-30 hours to complete.
Based on what I've played so far, that will be to its benefit, as there's so much more I'd like to do and explore in the game. In the meantime, guess I'll go back to Avowed and give that a full run – especially now that I've rediscovered my Xbox Series X.
