STACK #252 October 2025

GAMING FEATURE

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OUTER SIGHT! Promising a new crew armed with new weapons facing new enemies in a new colony, this month’s The Outer Worlds 2 offers a lot of new for action RPG fans. Game director at Obsidian, Brandon Adler, elaborates. Words Bec Summer FORMAT: GENRE: Action RPG MULTIPLAYER: No

THE OUTER WORLDS FOR DUMMIES The original was a wild space-faring RPG where you woke from cryo-sleep to find corporate chaos ruling the galaxy. With a snarky AI, oddball companions, and choices that actually mattered, you’d shoot, sneak, or sweet-talk your way through hilariously dystopian colonies. Capitalism gone wild – but made hilarious! With The Outer Worlds 2 , expect more space shenanigans, questionable ethics, and quite likely a moon mascot with a thousand yard stare.

“B efore The Outer Worlds shipped, we knew we wanted to do a second one,” says Adler. “We knew we wanted to plan for that. I knew I wanted to be a part of it.” The decision to go bigger was inspired by issues that players raised about that first foray into Obsidian’s new sci-world. “The worlds themselves were a little small. And some of that was the size of the map," Adler admits. There were also alluring waypoints that offered little or nothing to players. “In the very first area, there’s a volcano, and it looks really cool,” he offers as an example. “And you're like, ‘I’m going to go to that volcano, it looks cool’. And you go to the volcano, and there’s nothing there… “We can’t do that,” Adler continues. “If something looks awesome, the player needs to be rewarded for going there. And now the player feels like the world is

bigger because they're actually exploring.” Consequences are a very real thing in The Outer Worlds 2 , as Adler explains. “Typically, with most Obsidian games, there are lots of story points where things change, but we tried to go a lot further on that. Even things like how do you treat your companions? Do you treat them poorly? Well, there are points in the story where that's going

to matter, and they’ll push back at you, or they won't listen, or they’ll back you because you were there for them and you kind of helped them out when something went wrong, or something like that.” While some sequels can dilute the experience for wider appeal, Adler says that’s not the Obsidian way. “Yeah, we want to make a game that people want to continue playing for a long time, obviously, but sometimes you just have to pick a lane. I’m not going to make a game for literally everybody, because then I feel it waters down the experience.”

• The Outer Worlds 2 is out Oct 25

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