Not to be confused with Obsidian's usual third-party sequels.
Obsidian and Xbox’s marketing teams are leaning heavily into the fact that The Outer Worlds 2 is a sequel. Pillars of Eternity aside, Obsidian has a strange relationship with sequels, creating a number of a said games for third-party franchises like Fallout, Star Wars, Neverwinter Knights, and, in a roundabout way, South Park.
Speaking ahead of The Outer World 2‘s early availability release, directors Brandon Adler and Matthew Singh spoke about creating not only a sequel, but a sequel to something that Obsidian itself had originally conceived.
“We knew very early on, even before The Outer Worlds 1 had shipped, that we knew that we wanted to do a second one,” Brandon Adler told me. “We were having a good time with it, and we knew it would be a bigger thing.”
Adler continued to say that Obsidian, “thought it was a great base to work from,” and added that “the thing that truly makes me excited to work on a sequel is you can see where you could be taking it.”
Even before The Outer Worlds had shipped, Adler said, “I had done a breakdown of things that I think that we could be improving.” Those items included refinements to combat, gunplay, and encounters.
“We knew that we [could] push harder on the RPG stuff,” he said. “We [wanted] to make bigger areas, or at least make them feel more contiguous. These are larger spaces that people are playing through, and we knew that we wanted more content inside of them.”
“Brandon and I have both been at Obsidian for quite a while,” added Matt Singh. “17 years for me and about 20 for Brandon. And, so, we’ve gone through different phases of Obsidian, right?
“A lot of Obsidian has been trying to find the next project — a lot of those opportunities were, ‘hey, work on this sequel of this other, you know, popular thing and do something with it’,” he continued. “So, we were used to like working on these foundations.”
Singh said those foundations applied regardless of the original being something that Obsidian had conceived — such as Grounded or The Outer Worlds — or in the case of third-party IP that led to sequels like Fallout New Vegas or Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2.
“One of the big benefits of working on sequels in general is, ‘I’ve got this starting point, I’ve got this base to work from,’ instead of trying to reinvent the wheel on every element. How do we take this thing and elevate it in meaningful ways?
“I mean, maybe we did for Pillars [of Eternity] 2, but it’s rare for us to be able to take that from something we built and then build on top of it. That was actually a really, really cool experience for us on this one.”
The Outer Worlds was full of tongue-in-cheek humour that I gravitated towards — and that obviously continues, as evidenced through marketing videos such as the one above — but others may find distracting. According to Adler, building on that with this sequel came naturally, and even matured to some extent.
“We make the kind of game that we’re going to make, and for some people it may work for them,” he said. “For some people it may not; [they may] consider it too silly. Compared to The Outer Worlds 1, The Outer Worlds 2 is a little bit more serious and a little bit darker in tone.”
Adler said that it still has “the same trademark humour we like to have,” but it now has “a little bit of an edge on it”.
“The corporations in the first game, for example, come off like bumbling fools — you kind of start questioning, ‘how did these people that can’t get anything right, how did they actually get an entire colony? How are they controlling this whole thing?'”
Now, corporations like Auntie’s Choice — which originated in the original game but was expanded ahead of the sequel thanks to an episode of Prime Video’s Secret Level — are portrayed as more “cutthroat”, according to Adler.
“They’re all about advancing not only capitalism, but the freedom of choice and your own determinism of what you want to do. Behind-the-scenes, when you’re looking at how things play out, you’re laughing at some of the absurd things that are going on. That’s where a lot of that humour comes from, right?
“They think it’s very normal to turn yourself in for brainwashing, if you’re part of the Protectorate,” Adler continued. “That’s insane; we can play off the humour of those types of things. But, if you take it straight inside the world itself, it’s actually terrifying and scary.”
“I think there’s a little bit of both [humour and seriousness] for everyone,” Adler summarised. “If somebody wants to focus in more on one than the other, they can do that pretty effectively.”
Expect The Outer Worlds 2 from 29 October on Windows PC via Steam and Battle.net, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, and PS5. It’ll also be available via Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Play Anywhere, and slightly earlier if you want to pay for a pricier version.
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The Outer Worlds 229 October 2025PC PS5 Xbox Series S & X
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