It's safe to say that 2025 has been a prolific time for Xbox studio Obsidian Entertainment. The team kicked off the year with the well-received Avowed, before rolling into Grounded 2's early access launch in the summer - and now The Outer Worlds 2 is almost here. So, has the team gone and done the unthinkable in delivering three big successes in one calendar year? Well, our early playtime with this sci-fi RPG sequel suggests that they have.
So far, we've dug into the opening few hours of The Outer Worlds 2; allowing Obsidian to set up the story and open up its first few locations for us to explore. We've already done plenty of alien monster slaying, taken down our fair share of corporate drones, and have made some questionable conversation choices leading us down a story path we may not have intended to walk when we first started playing. Typical Obsidian so far, then.
We've spent most of our spacefaring adventure up to this point hunting down a certain someone who hasn't exactly been truthful to our crew, and it's safe to say the early story beats have us pretty engaged so far. The game has already allowed us to decide on taking a more destructive path or being somewhat diplomatic in reaching our ultimate goals - any guesses on which route we've gone down? We're definitely, very subtle in getting our own back, we might add.
You've got your typical array of perks, traits and abilities to pick out as well when establishing your character in The Outer Worlds 2, and we're already feeling the effects of those choices even in the early game. Picking a build that's focused on combat ability is all well and good when you need to hack your way into someone's crib that has a malfunctioning main entrance; leaving you scratching your head as to how to proceed. There already feels like depth in how to tackle each scenario in The Outer Worlds 2, which we're very much enjoying so far.
As for combat, Obsidian said that it had drafted in some help from other Xbox studios to help refine its gunplay, and we can feel that already. The Outer Worlds 2 combat is very much an evolution of its systems from The Outer Worlds, but nevertheless - shooting feels snappy, responsive and engaging, and that's across multiple weapon types that we've messed around with already. It's not perfect, mind you, but in an RPG like this where shooting isn't the core of the experience, the combat is more than serviceable here.
One big feature that the team has implemented this time around is third-person gameplay - in fact, there are two over-the-shoulder options here in The Outer Worlds 2. Alongside your standard first-person mode, players can switch to 'Third-Person Near' and 'Third-Person Far' at any point in the options menu - so if you prefer to play that way, Obsidian has you covered. We've spent most of our time so far sticking to first-person, but here's a look at what that other perspective looks like in-game:
Before we wrap up here and go get stuck back into The Outer Worlds 2, we'll quickly touch on the game's performance options. On Xbox Series X we've got Quality, Balanced and Performance modes - and we stuck with the 60FPS Performance option during our early playtime. Quality is your standard 30FPS experience with improved visuals, while Balanced aims to sit somewhere in the middle. However, that in between option doesn't hit a smooth frame rate with or without VRR (at least before a day one patch anyway), so we'd definitely recommend sticking to Performance for the time being.
So far, then, The Outer Worlds 2 is everything we expected from Obsidian's spacefaring sequel. The graphics are prettier, the combat is snappier, and the story has us intrigued so far - so it's touching on all the right notes for this to be another success for Xbox. There already feels like a ton of options to play around with in terms of systems, abilities, conversations and such, so it's not lacking any depth either - at least in the opening few hours. We'll have to see how the experience grows and expands further into the story, but so far this is feeling like another Obsidian treat, and one definitely worth tasting on Xbox Game Pass.