We waited six years for this to happen, and it can’t arrive soon enough. On October 29th, Obsidian Entertainment will take us through a new journey within another colony in alternate Earth and its own set of disasters to mitigate. As a sworn peacekeeper of the Earth and its colonies, you will partake in a grand mission filled with twists, turns, and all-out action into The Outer Worlds 2.

Right before that, though, they were gracious enough to give us a glimpse on the action and chaos to experience in The Outer Worlds 2. In the near 20-25 minutes worth of gameplay, here’s my initial two cents on the much awaited sequel:

Fight or flight, do or die

The Outer Worlds 2 returns to its 2019 roots in terms of how you play it — role-playing, NPC shooting, and witty dialoguing. In this game, you play as a member of the Earth Directorate whose main objective is to make sure nothing is amiss between Earth and its colonies. Your task at hand takes you another colony in the realm, Arcadia where you are not particularly welcomed, but a job has to be done.

Throughout the whole preview, it covered all the basic gameplay mechanics: overworld movement, combat, stealth, and inventory management, just to name a few. It didn’t feel any different from how the prequel did it, which is a good thing so as to avoid alienating long-time players too much. Plus, they retained the Tactical Time Dilation module to give you an opportunity to make decisions on the fly with precision.

Conversing with the different characters in the game is also still as dynamic and witty as they could be. Of course, they brought back the skill-based dialoguing in which you can respond to prompts differently depending on your expertise.

Even in the preview, this was a highlight as you can provide insightful observations or simply sweet-talk your way to turn things in your favor. Other skill-based overworld activities are present, so it’s important that players choose their skillsets and upgrades wisely.

More ways to identify yourself

After the opening sequence in the preview, the customization start screen appears and immediately, there are a lot of things to tinker with. Compared to the first game, adjusting every little feature on your character looks and feels more personal and true-to-scale. From facial features to even aging your character ever so slightly, it allows for a ton of creativity to the overall design that wasn’t present before.

Another thing they improved from its predecessor was assigning a background and, subsequently, traits and set of skills for your desired being. Similar to The Outer Worlds, you dictate your character’s background prior to joining the main faction or entity they represent and the buffs they get along with it.

However, not only did Obsidian expand the backgrounds to account for more potential career paths to get out of, but they made it completely agnostic to the traits you assign. I found that to be a nice touch so that you can’t get locked down to a specific set per career!

Speaking of those traits, you actually get to choose either one or two positive traits this time around. These positive traits heavily influence the skills you will get at the start, which as mentioned earlier is an integral part of the overworld gameplay.

Along with this, the game also introduced the choice of a negative trait to balance you out whenever you opt to have two positive traits. It’s just their way of reminding you that even in futuristic Earth, nobody’s perfect!

A glimpse of Arcadia

The whole preview takes place in a command outpost in Arcadia, another future Earth colony handled by megacorporations. From the tech rooms to the battle stations, Obsidian made sure to include just a big enough space to battle-test a lot of the mechanics in one go.

The only thing though is that it isn’t as open of a world just yet, especially as the first couple of scenes are held inside your carrier to Arcadia. However, that didn’t stop me from exploring the level as much as possible to find all sorts of ammo, useful items and information to use against the enemies.

While there really isn’t much to show just yet, the game showcases the dreary and techonlogical motifs quite nicely. They did a fantastic job bringing in the Unreal Engine 5 to improve on the overall aesthetic compared to its predecessor. You will also enjoy a ton of the combat sequences without so much as drastically affecting the background.

However, I would like to see more greenery, or at the very least different locations within Arcadia to fully appreciate the graphical work done.

So many features, and more to come?

Admittedly, The Outer Worlds 2 presents itself with the delicate balance of having a lot of features, old and new, intertwined with a faimiliar feel to the frontier you play in. While gameplay options were highly limited, it didn’t stray away too much from its predecessor. Also, customization right out of the box looks a lot more robust, while already making you be a lot more choiceful.

It’s still too early to tell, but there’s still a lot to be excited about the game in the coming weeks. Hopefully the full length version of it will continue the exhilerating action while touching on some hard-hitting social commentary like its predecessor.

The Outer Worlds 2 will be available on October 29, 2025 for the Playstation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on Steam.