The Outer Worlds fans can rejoice. Despite the game and its DLCs being delisted from most storefronts, including Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, GoG, Epic, and Steam, but not Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PS4 versions. Obsidian has released a Q&A detailing some commonly asked questions surrounding save files, upgrades, and more.

It’s worth quickly explaining what exactly is happening with The Outer Worlds before we dive in, so bear with me as I do my best to catch you up. Essentially, The Outer Worlds and its DLCs are being delisted from most modern storefronts and replaced by The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition going forward.

With that out of the way, fear not, because I’ve gathered together the most important questions and answers right here. Without further ado, let’s jump in.

First off, and perhaps most importantly, Obsidian answered whether saves from the original version of The Outer Worlds will work with Spacer’s Choice Edition. Thankfully, the answer is yes, with Obsidian stating:

“Yes they will. We have done the work to ensure that all saves from the base edition will be able to move forward to the Spacer’s Choice Edition. Though do note that due to new features like grenades, going back to the base edition from the Spacer’s Choice Edition will not work.”

Next up, when discussing whether Game Pass users will still have access to the game, Obsidian said:

“Yes. The Xbox Series X|S Game Pass version has now been updated to Spacer’s Choice Edition.”

For those who may still be somewhat confused about whether existing owners get a free upgrade to Spacer’s Choice Edition, Obsidian also clarified:

“It depends on the platform. PC storefront owners, including Steam, Epic Games Store, GOG, Xbox App, and Windows Store users, will receive the upgrade at no additional cost if the game is already in their digital library.”

I’d say those are the main questions answered. It’s admittedly kind of weird that Obsidian is doing this in the first place, but at least the studio is being considerate of people’s save files, which, unfortunately, is something that doesn’t always happen in this industry. If you wish to read the full Q&A, I’ll have that linked right here, too.

Still, I’d love to hear your thoughts on all of this, and whether you plan on continuing your existing save or perhaps finally jumping into the game now that this new edition is heading to Game Pass. Let me know in the comments, and don’t forget to take part in our poll.

Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your insights and discuss our latest news, reviews, and more.

Regardless of the reason behind the takedowns, it's always a sad day when a video game gets delisted from a digital retailer. And soon, two — including the predecessor to one of Xbox's biggest new first-party 2025 titles — are being removed from a popular PC gaming storefront.

The games in question are Panache Digital Games' open-world survival title Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey and Obsidian Entertainment's narrative sci-fi RPG The Outer Worlds, the prequel to The Outer Worlds 2 — both of which were published by the former Take-Two Interactive subsidiary Private Division (the firm sold it in 2024).

The store they're being delisted from, meanwhile, is GOG, a game distribution platform on PC created by CD PROJEKT (best known for publishing The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077). GOG is a popular alternative to the Epic Games Store and Steam, especially with users applauding its lack of digital rights management (DRM) hooks.

Indeed, the GOG versions of games don't require a constant online connection (unless they're online games, of course) or an authentication of your purchased license to play. Because of this, they're considered to be incredibly valuable for game preservation and ensuring that we can play our beloved titles long after their servers and backend services shut down.

It's all the more unfortunate, then, that Ancestors and The Outer Worlds are leaving the GOG store soon. A team member at the retailer, king_kunat, announced the news on the GOG forums on Monday, confirming that both games will be delisted from the platform on December 15.

"Hey folks, I need to bring some unfortunate news: Both The Outer Worlds and Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey will be removed from the store on December 15th (I don't have an exact hour yet)," they wrote. "We've secured a discount for Ancestors, but couldn't do so for The Outer Worlds. This also includes all editions & add-ons for both games."

"As always, we'll try to bring them back," king_kunat added. It was later confirmed that the 2023 Spacer's Choice Edition of The Outer Worlds (that remasters its visuals and includes all of its DLC) will be delisted at the same time, as will the standalone versions of the expansions available.

The good news? Both Ancestors and The Outer Worlds will remain purchasable and accessible on Steam and Epic, and also on Xbox and PlayStation consoles, too. With The Outer Worlds specifically, fans can also play on the Xbox PC app and with an Xbox Game Pass subscription.

But even so, losing a DRM-free version of these games is tragic, and we don't even know why these delistings are coming. However, given that both games were published by Private Division, I assume it has something to do with Take-Two selling it to Haveli Investments last year and some sort of mix-up with its publishing rights as a result. Windows Central has reached out to Microsoft and Xbox — the current owner of Obsidian and The Outer Worlds franchise — to try and learn more.

I hope the GOG team is able to get both games back on the store at some point, but in the event that they can't, and that you want one or both of these titles without DRM? Make sure you buy them on the platform before December 15. The $39.99 Ancestors is discounted down to $7.99 on GOG, though sadly, The Outer Worlds is still at its normal $29.99 price, and the Spacer's Choice Edition is at its $59.99 MSRP as well.

Game designer Tim Cain is leaving his semi-retirement to rejoin Xbox Game Studios' role-playing game developer Obsidian Entertainment. Cain shared the news on Friday, revealing via his YouTube channel that he's already been back for a short while.

Cain is now working on a new project that hasn't been announced yet, preempting speculation by noting, "Don't bother guessing, you're not gonna guess right."

He adds that he'll be continuing to run his personal channel for as long as he still has stories to share of fun tidbits and game development insights from across his career. You can find Cain's full video and update on the changes below:

Cain has worked on numerous games across the years, including the original Fallout and Fallout 2 at Interplay. After leaving Interplay, he co-founded Troika Games to develop cult classic titles like Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura, as well as Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.

He then joined Obsidian Entertainment for the first time in 2011, where he worked on Pillars of Eternity and co-directed The Outer Worlds.

In June 2020, Cain left the studio and entered quasi-retirement, though he still worked with Obsidian as a contractor on The Outer Worlds 2, which launched back in October 2025.

So...what could he be working on?

I genuinely admire Cain's attempt to stop speculation of just what his next project could be, but obviously, I'll speculate anyway.

I know most people will immediately jump to thinking of Fallout for understandable reasons, but I'm inclined to think it's something entirely new. The real question is just what could be so exciting to get Cain to un-retire and rejoin the studio?

No matter what it is, I'm excited to learn more eventually. Cain's work spans numerous sub-genres of role-playing games, and has helped shape so many iconic titles.

I've been having a blast with The Outer Worlds 2, and it certainly feels more stable than a lot of high-profile video game releases these days — but I'd never go so far as to claim it's perfect.

I've encountered my fair share of bugs and quirks in Obsidian Entertainment's latest masterpiece, and one in particular annoyed me. Well, I suppose The Outer Worlds 2 team is listening in on me, because they just released a new patch that fixes that exact bug.

If you've been locked outside Otto's saferoom and believed you may just be an idiot, fret no more. It was a bug, and the latest update for The Outer Worlds 2 fixes it... Oh, and I guess there are quite a few other crucial patches in this release, too.

Finally, I can get past this dumb lock

The Outer Worlds 2 has been out for a week, now (if you count its 5-day early access run), and the developers at Obsidian are clearly hard at work smoothing over some of the rough spots players have discovered.

The latest effort is a patch rolling out across Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and PlayStation 5 right now, and it brings with it a healthy number of fixes.

Most players will probably be more interested in the fixes for rare crashes, corrupted saves, and progression-breaking bugs in various story and companion quests. Those sensitive to noise may be glad to know the double-jump boots will no longer play at twice the intended volume (hooray!).

That's all good stuff, but I'm most excited for a very specific bug affecting a very specific puzzle in a very specific place. Hidden in Free Market Station is a wall of levers and a cryptic note hinting that there's treasure stashed behind a nearby locked door — if only you can solve the puzzle for how to correctly route power to the door without overloading the levers.

I first found the Otto's Lock puzzle before acquiring the story-related N-Ray Scanner I didn't know I needed, and eventually left. Hours later, I returned, only to find myself stumped once again. Had I truly been bested by the puzzle? Had video games finally crippled my faculties? A quick Google search revealed that, no, I was fine, it's the game that's the problem.

Plenty of other players have been left confounded by this tiny bug, which causes one of the levers to not truly activate when you interact with it. I'm glad I didn't have to wait weeks for a patch that fixed this bug (like I had to wait weeks for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle to fix the bug preventing me from getting 100% of the journal).

Look out for the update on your device at any moment. On my Xbox Series X, it came out to around 1.18GB in size.

Oh, and if you're looking for a sweet new gun in The Outer Worlds 2, there's one hidden in your ship (and an easy way to collect it).

FAQ

Obsidian Entertainment's third game launch this year is available now. Ahead of the launch, I recently had the chance to chat with Brandon Adler and Matthew Singh, game directors on The Outer Worlds 2.

One of the more interesting tidbits that came out of our conversation was the reveal that the Rifts players can find scattered across planets and space stations weren't originally something that could be interacted with.

This came as a surprise to me, since much of the game's plot revolves around finding a way to keep the larger Rifts from completely destroying the solar system. After acquiring a special device partway through the game, players gain the ability to temporarily reset Rifts, exposing new pathways and uncovering interesting secrets.

"We didn't know we actually wanted to do interactible Rifts at the beginning. It wasn't until maybe a year or two in that we were talking about 'Hey, this is a pretty important story point for the player, and we don't really have much interaction with that,'" Alder says.

"And so we were like, 'Hey, let's just do it. Let's come up with a way for players to interact with these in some way, use these as puzzles and we can do some fun stuff."

From here, Alder explains he tasked Singh's team with finding the right places to include Rifts and use them as part of the game's design, something that came as a process and required a decent bit of iteration in order to figure out. That in turn led to other quality-of-life additions, such as making sure a rift was marked on the player's map once it was found.

"I wish we had come up with it even earlier, because I think it would have been even more deeply integrated into what we were doing," Adler says. "But I think that luckily we did do it early enough where we could actually still make those fairly impactful and just fun."

"They were a good space for us to say, 'Hey, let's integrate this threat that is looming over the colony.' We want to show it early and we want to show bits of it, but we can use this as a fun re-traversal tool for the player. That's totally optional, but there's actually a lot of really cool and good stuff you can get out of those things, even going back to the very first area," Singh says, adding that the team tried to "seed" examples of the Rifts to garner players' attention early on, even though most of the Rifts are completely optional to interact with.

The Outer Worlds 2's exploration was shaped by other games and Disneyland

Even outside of the Rifts, one aspect that I found The Outer Worlds 2 to handle much better than its predecessor was general exploration, with larger areas that were more rewarding to traipse through.

While the team ended up pivoting away from this (somewhat) in order to make sure there were plenty of towns to explore and interact with, the studio still looked to open-world RPGs.

Alder explained that the team studied lots of larger games in order to get a better idea of how they could handle expanding the playable space, even if it wasn't truly open world.

"We looked at things like Breath of the Wild. Matt in particular brought that up as something that he thought was really important because they use amazing shape language to draw the player from location to location, even something as simple as the geometry of the terrain," Adler says, adding that another source of inspiration came from a real-world location: Disneyland.

"We actually looked at Disneyland. So they have these things called Weenies, which are like points of visual points of interest around the park and understanding how they actually have people flow from area to area and ride to ride [was important]," Adler says.

"So Tim Kaine, he actually did a presentation. He was one of the game directors on the first game. He gave a big presentation to the team where he broke down the weenies in Disneyland and like how they actually use that to draw people around."

Personally, I've quite enjoyed my first playthrough of this improved sequel, and if you haven't yet, be sure to read my review of The Outer Worlds 2. I'm already looking forward to a vastly different replay where I invest in different skills and take a different Trait or two.

FAQs

The Outer Worlds 2 has arrived, and you can spend dozens of hours exploring this vibrant sci-fi universe and collecting a veritable armory of powerful gear and weapons. It turns out, though, that one unique weapon is safely stashed inside The Incognito, your space-faring ship.

At first glance, it may seem impossible to obtain this special gun in the first half of the game, but there's actually a secret way to access it the moment you get past the prologue. Even better, this gun's unique ability is that it grows more powerful the longer you use it.

Here's everything you need to know about obtaining the Rookie's Reward submachine gun in The Outer Worlds 2, including the secret trick to unlocking its case and whether it's actually worth using during your adventures.

How do you get the Rookie's Reward unique weapon in The Outer Worlds 2?

Following the short prologue section in The Outer Worlds 2 (after you've wakened from hibernation and can travel to Paradise Island on Eden), you'll have free rein to explore the entirety of The Incognito, your trusty ship and home.

It's here you can find a new unique weapon to add to your arsenal, and you can do so the moment you're given the controls. Here are the steps, quick and simple:

1. Find the room in The Incognito with the Workstation, various lockers, and the locked cabinet.
2. Ignore the cabinet (it requires a Lockpicking skill of 11, which is very high), and turn toward the Workstation.
3. Climb on top of the boxes stacked in the corner next to the Workstation, and find the lever hidden behind them.
4. Interact with this lever to power down the cabinet and disable its lock.
5. Return to the cabinet and collect your prize, the Rookie's Reward unique weapon.

I wish I had discovered this secret earlier, because the Rookie's Reward is actually quite an interesting weapon, and its value only increases the longer you have it.

What does the Rookie's Reward gun do in The Outer Worlds 2?

The Rookie's Reward is an "assuming gun" based on its official description, and that largely tracks. This is a straightforward fully automatic submachine gun; unlike most unique weapons with special interactions or damage types, this gun's unique modification doesn't change its fundamentals.

Instead, the Rookie's Reward gains experience from your kills and assists, and it levels up over time. As you earn levels (simply by killing enemies with it), the Rookie's Reward will permanently increase its damage, fire rate, and magazine size — and each level earned will come with a celebratory explosion of confetti. Even among unique gear, it's unique.

You can earn levels relatively quickly with the Rookie's Reward, and the improvements are immediately noticeable. At first, this gun fires quite slowly and doesn't boast a lot of ammo, but even at level 12 (when I found it) I was still able to stay competitive in fire fights — and that's without any skill points in Guns or gun-related perks.

After about an hour of gameplay, the Rookie's Reward had reached level 5 and was considerably more effective at dispatching opponents. I assume this gun does have a maximum level (possibly level 30, the same as the player), but I haven't reached it yet and can't say for certain.

I'm enjoying the Rookie's Reward enough that I'm going to continue relying on it moving forward. My only complaint is that it can't accept a barrel mod, so I can't silence it or change its damage type. That aside, it's a fun unique weapon, and I'm excited to see just how much it can grow.

FAQ

Update, Oct. 30, 2025 — The Azure outage has passed, so you should no longer have any difficulty accessing The Outer Worlds on Xbox.

Original story:

Today marks the general launch of The Outer Worlds 2, a science-fiction role-playing game (RPG) from developer Obsidian Entertainment and publisher Xbox Game Studios.

It's the team's third game this year, following the fantasy RPG Avowed in February and the early access launch of survival title Grounded 2 in July. While it's been available for a few days for anyone that coughed up extra for the Premium Edition, the standard version of The Outer Worlds 2 is live now for everyone...at least in theory.

Unfortunately, if you aren't able to access The Outer Worlds 2 right now, you're not alone. An Azure outage has taken numerous services offline, including the ability for many people to buy games on Xbox.

Obsidian Entertainment directly confirmed on Bluesky that the outage is affecting the team's games, as well as other titles.

Due to an ongoing Azure service outage, The Outer Worlds 2 may be temporarily unavailable to purchase or install on Xbox Series X|S, the Xbox app on PC, and with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass.

— @obsidian.net (@obsidian.net.bsky.social) 2025-10-30T18:26:04.320Z

Your experience may differ slightly based on your location and the what part of Xbox online services you are attempting to use.

In addition to Xbox online connectivity and other Microsoft services like Office, Amazon Web Services is having some intermittent connection issues.

When you can jump in, The Outer Worlds 2 is worth playing

When services are back online, The Outer Worlds 2 is definitely a game worth playing, no matter if you enjoyed the first game or not.

Obsidian Entertainment cleverly combines crunchy role-playing elements with vastly-improved combat, leading to a best-of-both-worlds setup that already has me eager for a replay.

Because it takes place in a new solar system, you don't have to have played the first game in order to understand what's going on.

If you haven't yet, be sure to read my review of The Outer Worlds 2, where I wrote that "If you're a returning fan, diving into The Outer Worlds 2 is a no-brainer. If you were put off by the combat, then I'd still encourage you to give it a try, as the team has vastly improved the moment-to-moment gameplay without sacrificing anything else along the way."

The Outer Worlds 2 is currently available on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC (Battle.net, Steam, and Xbox on PC), and PlayStation 5. Like all Xbox first-party games, it's available in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.

In 2019, legendary role-playing game (RPG) developer Obsidian Entertainment launched The Outer Worlds almost a year after the company had been acquired by Microsoft.

Published by Private Division due to preexisting contracts, The Outer Worlds was a hit, delivering something of a cross between Firefly, Cowboy Bebop, and Fallout. It was a fun, space western romp that leaned heavily into satirizing megacorporations while still handing out handfuls of heartwarming stories.

Fast-forward to 2025, and a sequel is launching in a banner year for Obsidian Entertainment, coming just months after the studio already delivered a fantasy RPG for Xbox Game Studios with Avowed, as well as an early access follow-up to its surprise survival hit, Grounded.

After 40 hours, I'm happy to say that The Outer Worlds 2 is more of the same where it counts, with a couple of key improvements that elevate the whole experience. A few bugs aside, it's a game worth making time for.

This review was made possible thanks to a review code provided by Xbox Game Studios. The company did not see the contents of this review before publishing.

What is The Outer Worlds 2?

The Outer Worlds 2 is a single-player role-playing game (RPG) developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Xbox Game Studios.

The game opens with players in the role of an Earth Directorate agent, someone whose job it is to ensure the law is still being followed and justice is carried out in the farthest colonies where dictatorships and megacorporations attempt to seize control. The agent is dispatched to Arcadia Colony, where things go horribly wrong.

As it is an RPG, players have to make hard choices, building relationships with squadmates and larger factions alike, crafting alliances or creating enemies. When the latter occurs, there is a wide range of weapons available to dispense justice, with flame shotguns, lightning chainguns, rocket launchers, plasma blades, frost rifles, and far more.

Players also have to select different skills, focusing on different abilities like Engineering or Leadership, that, in turn, unlock unique perks.

The Outer Worlds 2 can be played in first-person like its predecessor, but there's also a new third-person option, akin to games like Avowed or Bethesda Game Studios' Starfield.

The Outer Worlds 2 is available on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC (via Battle.net, Steam, and Xbox on PC), and PlayStation 5. Like all Xbox first-party games, it's also available at launch in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.

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The Outer Worlds 2: Story and characters

The Outer Worlds 2 focuses on a few different factions, with Auntie's Choice (the result of a merger between Spacer's Choice and Auntie Cleo's) waging war on Arcadia colony, a system of planets ruled by the iron-fisted dictatorship known as The Protectorate. Also entangled is The Order of the Ascendant, a scientifically-minded group that seeks to solve all chaos through mathematical understanding of...well, everything.

All the while, a strange problem threatens to destroy all of Arcadia, no matter who wins the war.

Because of this dynamic, the focus on tongue-in-cheek unrestrained capitalism takes a slight back seat in the main story in exchange for a darker tone, though it's still a present force affecting the lives of everyday citizens and soldiers.

Some of the best moments in the game come from exploring side stories, as well as interacting with your crewmates. Niles is an engineer and a fellow agent, and so you're given the opportunity to help shape his path and worldview the more you take him with you on assignments, though he (and your other crewmates) will push back and act against you if you aren't careful.

It's a delicate balance that could've easily felt annoying, but the result is that I was genuinely invested in everyone's life path and trying to help them be the best they could be. Even Aza, who appears to be a murderous psychopath, has some hidden depths worth exploring.

The Outer Worlds 2: Gameplay and features

While The Outer Worlds was a great game, filled with fun characters and interesting dialogue, it had one fairly major problem: the combat simply wasn't fun. Past a few hours, it felt entirely the same. That's a problem Obsidian Entertainment has massively corrected for The Outer Worlds 2.

Guns simply feel good, with every aspect like aiming and even reloading refined to be smoother, while landing headshots or ripping into foes with a machine gun has meaningful feedback. Over the 40 hours I played, blasting foes to smithereens with every armament I could get my hands on never got old.

That ties well into another aspect of the game that's improved over the first entry: The Flaw system. Every so often, you'll be offered a Flaw that provides a benefit in exchange for another penalty.

Early on, I was offered a Flaw that would've given me 3 skill points every level-up (a 50% increase that adds up meaningfully over time) in exchange for being required to distribute my skill points evenly through every available option. I didn't end up picking it, but having to sit and debate it with myself for a few minutes felt awesome, as a meaningful decision that struck at the heart of the actual game mechanics.

I also deeply appreciate how crunchy the skill system is. Simply put, if you don't invest in something, you may not have the best option for getting through a problem, tough luck!

Toward the end of the game, my character (with high Speech) was able to persuade antagonists to stand down and work together...but my lack of Science meant I couldn't solve many problems I encountered throughout missions.

It's a good approach that commits to its own design, and one that has me extremely curious to replay The Outer Worlds 2 with vastly different character builds.

The Outer Worlds 2: Visuals and audio

The Outer Worlds 2 looks good overall. While it's not the most visually demanding game around, the art direction goes a long way in aiding its presentation, bringing truly gorgeous alien worlds filled with crystal forests and ponds brimming with bioluminescence.

The game has Visual and Performance options on Xbox Series X. I opted to play in Performance mode, where it ran at 60 FPS in exchange for lowering the resolution. The framerate was fairly solid in moment-to-moment gameplay, though I did notice a few drops in pitched battles where explosions were constantly going off.

It's also worth noting that due to most planets being a bit larger and having more to explore than the first Outer Worlds, there are far fewer loading screens. You'll still encounter them aplenty if you're fast-traveling everywhere, but it's not as grating to explore and wander as before.

The audio design is likewise solid, though I do have to note the soundtrack seemed oddly subdued throughout much of the game. There are some good tracks, but they seem few and far between.

The Outer Worlds 2: Accessibility and approachability

The Outer Worlds 2 features a large number of different accessibility options. You can customize the user interface to your liking, including removing most of it or setting it to fade, increasing the size of text, and adjusting the colors (and background colors) of subtitles to make them more readable.

If you're worried about trying out this game without having played the first one, don't. Because The Outer Worlds 2 is set in an entirely new colony with a new cast of characters, you're not missing out on much by just hopping in here. You might miss a couple of jokes by not being as familiar with the corporations, but that's it.

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My final thoughts

✅You should buy this if ...

• You've enjoyed other Obsidian games like Fallout: New Vegas, The Outer Worlds and Avowed.
• You enjoy role-playing games that focus on player choices and skills.
• You're a fan of first-person and third-person shooting combat systems.

❌You should not buy this if ...

• You're not a fan of role-playing games with extensive dialogue and reading.
• You don't like science-fiction that heavily focus on human factions and space western settings.

The Outer Worlds 2 is what most players of the first game would hope and expect it to be: A slightly bigger game that keeps most of what made the formula work in the first place, improving on the handful of areas where players raised complaints.

I suspect and hope there'll be some fun conversations surrounding what Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2 do differently in the months to come, and there are things I prefer about each game. Ultimately, I'm happy to have played both in the same year.

If you're a returning fan, diving into The Outer Worlds 2 is a no-brainer. If you were put off by the combat, then I'd still encourage you to give it a try, as the team has vastly improved the moment-to-moment gameplay without sacrificing anything else along the way.

With two story expansions promised to be on the way, I'm hoping to set foot on new strange worlds threatened by hyper-capitalism before long.

The Outer Worlds 2 launches on October 29 for Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and PlayStation 5.

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A flurry of Xbox first-party games is launching over the next few weeks, including yet another title from Obsidian Entertainment with The Outer Worlds 2.

Ahead of the game's launch, we've got some details on what the game's directors are up to and how they're working with other Xbox studios, not just on this game but on future projects as well.

Speaking with Luke Lohr on Xbox Expansion Pass, Obsidian Entertainment game directors Brandon Adler and Matt Singh discussed how they are encouraged to collaborate and take advantage of feedback from other Xbox teams.

"Matt just recently reached out to Ninja Theory, because we're very curious about their mocap and [performance capture], how their entire process works," Adler explains.

"They were really great with us, we were able to get lots of information about the process they go through when doing conversations or cinematics, and what kind of stuff we can incorporate into future games when we're working on those kinds of things as well."

"It's definitely one of the benefits of being in that Xbox umbrella now, we're encouraged to reach out to different studios and talk to them," Singh says.

That process goes both ways, with Singh adding that the team has been encouraged not just to garner advice, but to give it as well.

"Brandon and I went to talk with [Double Fine Productions CEO] Tim Schafer and see if we could offer any kind of feedback on some of the stuff they're working on," adding that "...because we were in Japan recently, got an opportunity to talk to Kojima Productions a little bit."

Back in June, when I went hands-on with The Outer Worlds 2, Adler mentioned how the team approached Halo Studios (formerly 343 Industries) for a list of ways to improve on the gunplay for The Outer Worlds 2, something Adler reiterates in this latest interview.

Personally, I always like hearing these kinds of details, learning how teams can build each other up by providing a second look or feedback in a way that may not have occurred to another studio at all.

A banner year for Obsidian Entertainment

In a year that's been dizzy with Xbox game launches, Obsidian Entertainment manages to stand out, with the team set to launch three different games across 2025.

Obsidian kicked the year off with Avowed, a fantasy role-playing game set in the world of Eora, the same setting as the Pillars of Eternity games. In July, the team launched Grounded 2 into early access just weeks after it was announced.

With The Outer Worlds 2 set to complete the trifecta, I am expecting things to be a hair quieter on the Obsidian front in 2026, but I'll still be curious to learn just what the different teams are up to for the future.

The Outer Worlds 2 is slated to launch on Oct. 29, 2025 (October 24 for Premium Edition buyers) on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC (Battle.net, Steam, and Xbox on PC), and PlayStation 5. Like all Xbox first-party games, the standard edition is included day one in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.

Obsidian Entertainment is determined to be the MVP of Xbox this year, with three high-profile releases on its plate. The third and arguably most important of the year is The Outer Worlds 2, coming in a few short months with some adequately ambitious promises for an open-world, sci-fi RPG. And it's coming to Xbox Game Pass at launch.

I leapt at the opportunity to preview The Outer Worlds 2 at home, and while I was disappointed by the scope of the preview build provided to me, I still got a good enough feel for this upcoming Xbox game to be properly excited about the full release. Obsidian rarely misses, and fate isn't set to be challenged by this sequel.

If you're thinking to yourself, "I wasn't a big fan of the first game, I wonder if the second will win me over," though, then I still suggest some caution. Obsidian is sticking to its guns with The Outer Worlds 2 — I argue for the better, but certain RPG fans will claim it's for the worse.

One area, four characters, and a whole lot of bodies left behind

I had hoped my The Outer Worlds 2 preview would be similar to my Avowed preview from late last year, in that I’d be given mostly unrestricted access to the first major area of the game with a chunk of that area’s story.

Sadly, this preview was far more limited, only allowing me to play through the initial hour or so of the game — effectively the tutorial prologue. So, I decided to play through this singular mission four separate times to get a feel for TOW2’s branching gameplay options.

My first character was a snarky and sneaky renegade, able to stealthily dispatch all their foes with a sassy quip at their lips. Next, I played as a violent and reckless ex-convict, using their talent for brutality to pursue the most straightforward path forward — regardless of the consequences.

My third run was in the shoes of a sickly but intensely capable professor, whose intellect and versatile kit of abilities more than made up for their subpar combat skills. Finally — and even though this preview didn’t give me any opportunity to interact with companions — I played as a charismatic and well-spoken lawbringer, aiming to talk rather than shoot my way through every obstacle.

No matter which path I took, though, there were quite a few bodies; don't expect to play The Outer Worlds 2 without shedding blood, unless you're a fan of punishing yourself.

Despite only being able to explore such a modest section of The Outer Worlds 2, I managed to get a good feel for the core gameplay loop and how much flexibility players will have in how they approach different missions and quests.

My initial run as a knife-wielding renegade is how I tend to play most RPGs — a lone wolf that sticks to the shadows. It also felt very familiar to my original The Outer Worlds playthrough, although it highlighted something crucial — how much better movement feels now.

Your character still has proper weight in the world and to their movements, but The Outer Worlds 2 feels more responsive and fluid overall, with upgraded traversal and smoother animations. I had fun stealth-ing my way through this branching area.

My fourth playthrough as a charismatic leader is how I initially believed I'd end up playing The Outer Worlds 2, but now I'm not so sure. On one hand, I was able to successfully talk my way through multiple obstacles — and that was incredibly satisfying. On the other hand, I never had a chance to actually play with any of the new companions, giving another playthrough a chance to impress me.

That would be the nerdiest of the bunch, whose varied skillset opened up a lot of avenues for me, including hacking the area's entire droid security system, rigging explosives to wipe out a squadron of enemies, and translating obfuscated research notes into usable information.

Being able to uncover so many new mysteries on my third go around more than made up for my diminished combat abilities, and I can already see how having a companion at my back would further bring out those positive qualities.

A deeper and more refined RPG, but still "The Outer Worlds"

I was only able to sink a handful of hours into The Outer Worlds 2 (for now), but I'm decently confident Obsidian has another win on its hands here. Visually, the game retains the cartoonish artistic style of its predecessor but with superior cinematics, animations, and environmental details.

Story-wise, writing feels like it has gone up a notch, and I'm more intrigued by the blossoming narrative than I was with the first game. Gameplay is familiar but more polished, buttressed by improved movement, satisfying audio design, and even more dynamic environments.

I'm curious if the character creator I had access to is the complete version planned for launch, as it felt a little light on customization features for your character's appearance and traits. I'm also conscious of performance and stability in the final release, as I only played a small slice (and while I didn't encounter any bugs, I did notice some framerate drops and brief freezes at times).

The moral of the story, though, is that this is still The Outer Worlds. It's a colorful concoction of morbid themes and goofy humor, with intentionally "heavy" gameplay where your player skill, character, companions, story decisions, and the world itself all play major roles. So far, The Outer Worlds 2 feels like more of the first game, but with years of refinement layered on top and the promise of a bigger, bolder universe and narrative.

I can't tell you quite yet just how well The Outer Worlds 2 delivers on that promise, but I can say I'm very excited to play more. The Outer Worlds 2 officially releases on Oct. 29, 2025 for Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Game Pass, and you can expect a full review on Windows Central around that time.

Three things in life are inevitable: death, taxes, and price increases. Although that last one comes with caveats, for once.

A few weeks ago, Microsoft announced that the base price of its Xbox games at retail would hit frankly staggering $80, underpinning what has been an incredibly tough year for consumers and businesses alike with regards to spiralling costs. Whether it's supply chains being impacted by arbitrary trade wars or sticky inflation from Covid quantitative easing, the market has been relatively unstable for the past few years for a variety of reasons.

In response, various businesses have put up their prices to varying degrees. Microsoft and Sony both raised the price of their Xbox and PlayStation hardware bundles over the past couple of years, and for a short while, it looked like the industry was poised to raise the base price of their mainline games to $80. It started with Nintendo's Mario Kart World hitting $79.99 at retail, and then back and forth over whether Borderlands 4 would hit $79.99 as well — it ended up being $69.99.

Then, Microsoft announced it would also be targeting $79.99 for upcoming Xbox games, starting with FPS space odyssey The Outer Worlds 2. That is, until today.

Announced across Xbox social channels, Microsoft and Obsidian revealed that The Outer Worlds 2 will no longer be $79.99 at launch, returning to the current industry standard of $69.99.

"We’re focused on bringing players incredible worlds to explore, and will keep our full priced holiday releases, including The Outer Worlds 2, at $69.99 – in line with current market conditions," an Xbox spokesperson explained in a statement to Windows Central.

If you've already pre-ordered The Outer Worlds 2 at the $79.99 price point, you will have to grab refunds at the point of purchase if you've already paid up. Microsoft says some retailers will light up with refunds today, but some will start accepting refunds from tomorrow. Then, you can pre-order again at the new $69.99 price tier.

Absolutely the right call

As good as The Outer Worlds 2 looks, I think $79.99 would have been a tough pill to swallow for gamers who are already dealing with rising costs elsewhere, who are also increasingly looking to free-to-play games to offset the rising costs of living.

Cynically, it wouldn't be a stretch to think the $79.99 price tag was an attempt to push people over to Xbox Game Pass, which would've represented a significant saving for those wanting to play Obsidian's new sci-fi epic. There have already been questions swirling around Xbox Game Pass' viability as a business model, particularly for replacing the sales metrics cannibalized from internal studios.

In any case, it's a rare win for consumers in a world where everything seems to get perpetually more expensive with no sign of stopping. Part of me wonders if Microsoft did some kind of analysis on what kind of sales impact $79.99 would have on the upcoming Call of Duty Black Ops 7, and decided they didn't like what they saw ...

The Outer Worlds 2 launches on October 29, 2025, for Xbox Series X|S, PC, and PS5, also for Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Cloud Gaming.

Obsidian Entertainment's 2010 title Fallout: New Vegas is widely regarded as one of the best RPGs ever made in the video game medium, and despite its aging visuals and notorious bugs and glitches, it's stood the test of time and remains a truly phenomenal game. In particular, it's one many Fallout fans return to frequently, as many disliked the way Bethesda's Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 veered away from the franchise's classic RPG roots.

Another game that evokes that classic Fallout feel and was seen by some as a spiritual New Vegas successor was Obsidian's 2019 title The Outer Worlds. But while the sci-fi RPG was generally well-liked and gave New Vegas lovers a taste of something similar, many felt it lacked the roleplaying depth and narrative nuance that made the studio's Fallout entry truly special. I certainly do, and for that reason, I've gone back to it far less than I have with New Vegas.

The developer recently gave players an in-depth look at its sequel — The Outer Worlds 2 — during the Xbox Games Showcase, though, and what Obsidian showed has me confident that its second entry in the series will be a major step up from the first installment. In fact, I'd go as far as to say it looks like the Fallout: New Vegas sequel we never got, and there are five reasons why — all of which I'll go over below.

It's got New Vegas-style character building

While Fallout: New Vegas' character creation and progression options are quite dated today in terms of options for your appearance and cosmetics, the impact they have on gameplay is substantial, and that influence even surpasses that of many modern RPGs. Your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats established what your character was and wasn't naturally good at with broad strokes, with skills narrowing down your specialties and perks giving you special bonuses or capabilities. There were also traits — quirks that gave you unique buffs in exchange for also taking a downside. For example, Trigger Discipline — a trait I almost always take during my replays — improves the accuracy of your weapons by 20% in exchange for a 20% reduction to their fire rate.

The first The Outer Worlds had a simpler system by comparison, with perks that generally felt less meaningful and nothing quite like New Vegas' traits. The sequel, though, takes stronger inspiration from Obsidian's classic RPG with a near-identical system complete with many more perk options and an initial choice of background that establishes your character's place in the setting while also unlocking some unique gameplay opportunities.

What looks to be the star of the show in The Outer Worlds 2, though, are flaws. Flaws return from the first game, but instead of simply being debuffs you take to get an extra perk point, they're now more like New Vegas traits — and Obsidian has gotten very creative with the positive and negative effects they bring.

There's one hilarious flaw called Bad Knees that gives you a permanent speed buff, but makes your knees crack loudly whenever you stand from a crouching position, effectively making stealth much harder. Another, called Foot-in-Mouth, awards you a flat +15% experience buff for the entire game, but forces you to choose dialogue options quickly or else one will be chosen for you randomly. Overall, stuff like this feels like an evolution of the traits in the classic Fallout games, and I can't wait to mess around with it.

Player freedom and agency are at its core

One of the best things about New Vegas was that it let you approach its story, quests, and world any way that you wanted to, with countless solutions and outcomes for everything in the game. Remarkably, you could even play through the entire experience by doing something ridiculously extreme like killing every single NPC you came across and its structure would support that — something unheard of today, when most RPGs have major characters tagged with immortality.

The Outer Worlds' various quests and encounters offered a similar level of freedom, with a variety of different solutions for each present in order to support every possible character build and playstyle. In The Outer Worlds 2, Obsidian is expanding on that support further by adding even more options and exploring more opportunities to make your character's skillset feel impactful.

For instance, it's been shown that an explosives expert can spray explosive gel on a locked door and detonate it to get through; in most games, lockpicking the door or hacking a computer to get through would be your only options outside of getting a key the "normal" way. I'm sure you'll also be able to lift a keycard off a guard in typical thief fashion, and I wouldn't be surprised if you can talk your way inside with a silver tongue, either.

"When you build your character your way, we're there for you," said a developer speaking during The Outer Worlds 2 Direct. "We really want you to have the experience you want out of this."

The story has factions woven deeply into it

The factions of The Outer Worlds were mostly relegated to its side quests, and while I appreciated how immensely they added to the game's worldbuilding, I did find myself wishing they had stronger ties to the overarching narrative about the fate of the survivors aboard the lost colony ship Hope. With The Outer Worlds 2, though, Obsidian is focused on crafting a story in which the sequel's three main factions play far more central roles and are woven deeply into the writing.

At the heart of the narrative is a critical issue with skip drives (think Star Wars hyperdrives) causing dangerous rifts to tear open throughout the universe, leading the Earth Directorate government to send you — an agent — to Arcadia, the colony where they were invented.

There, you quickly find that the planet is embroiled in a three-way war between three groups: the authoritarian Protectorate faction responsible for skip drive creation that trades personal freedoms for heightened, militarized security; Auntie's Choice, a coalition of Auntie Cleo and Spacer's Choice from the first game that's invading the Protectorate to take control; and the Order of the Ascendant, an altruistic but zealous group with a scientific religion founded on the goal of finding a way to predict the future for the betterment of mankind.

Similar to the NCR, Caesar's Legion, and Mr. House in New Vegas, Obsidian says these factions will directly affect and influence the narrative in direct and dynamic ways as it unfolds. And overall, I expect this will lead to its writing feeling far more cohesive and far less disjointed than it was in the original The Outer Worlds.

Obsidian is making reactivity to your choices a priority

Deep integration of its factions was a major reason why the story of New Vegas was so strong, but it's not the only one. Another huge part of why both the writing and the game as a whole was so enjoyable to play through was its reactivity — the ways groups and NPCs reacted to actions and choices made throughout your playthrough.

Everything from minor decisions in side quests to pivotal encounters in the story often gave you Fame or Infamy with New Vegas' communities and companions; this dictated how much these parties liked or disliked you, and depending on your reputation with a group, you could unlock unique dialogue options, questing opportunities, special rewards, and more. In extreme cases, factions were even known to offer to reinforce you if called upon (when liked greatly) or send out hunting parties for you (if disliked to the point of open hostility).

It's unclear if The Outer Worlds 2 will work like that or not specifically, but Obsidian has emphasized that the world of Arcadia and its inhabitants will be very reactive to your choices. Notably, it's going to have a radio like the Fallout games, and when you tune into a faction's station, you'll be able to hear its reactions to things you do during your playthrough. Its companions, too, will respond to your actions based on their background and values, and can be influenced significantly over time.

It's adding tons of wild new weapons

Many of the most memorable weapons in New Vegas (and all of the Fallout games, really) were the weird and wacky ones that felt right at home with the series' satirical and comedic nature. From a toy ray gun that can call down massive laser strikes from orbit and a BB gun with higher crit damage than a sniper rifle to sonic emitters that paralyze targets and a pair of golden boxing gloves that deal almost no damage but ragdoll foes to the ground in seconds, New Vegas is full of silly armaments like this — and The Outer Worlds 2 will be, too.

Recently, Obsidian showed off several of the strange and bizarre weapons you'll be able to get in the sequel, including a heavy weapon that fires exploding tumors you can also eat for health, a rifle that levels up with you as you use it throughout the entire game, a hilarious firearm that shoots corporate ad drones that distract enemies, and a unique sword that does more damage if it's swung to the beat of a song it plays.

These are just a handful of the wild pieces of gear you'll find on Arcadia, and I'm glad Obsidian is going all in with weapons like these. They presented golden opportunities for crafting unique and special builds in New Vegas, and together with the aforementioned traits, perks, and flaws you can take during character creation and progression, I have no doubt they'll do the same in The Outer Worlds 2.

The Outer Worlds 2 is scheduled to launch on October 29, 2025 on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC (Battle.net, Steam, Xbox PC), PS5, and Xbox Cloud Gaming. It has serious potential to be one of the best Xbox games and best PC games of the year, and notably, as a first-party Xbox title, it'll also be playable day one on PC Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.

Last weekend's Xbox Games Showcase was quite a big "Not-E3" showing from Microsoft, with the publisher sharing tons of news about Xbox games on the horizon, the upcoming Xbox Ally handheld hardware, and more. Perhaps the highlight of the show was a meaty The Outer Worlds 2 Direct that revealed a ton about what players can expect from Obsidian Entertainment's RPG sequel; however, The Outer Worlds 2's unveiled $80 price tag also generated quite a bit of controversy.

That MSRP isn't terribly surprising, given that Nintendo set the tone with Mario Kart World and that Microsoft recently announced widespread Xbox price increases amid economic headwinds. Still, it's an unwelcome one, as it signals the industry is heading towards an era of $80 releases being normal. And it's one that The Outer Worlds 2's director, Brandon Adler, doesn't like either.

When asked about the game's price in a Summer Game Fest interview (thanks, GamesRadar+), he said that Obsidian isn't responsible for it, and that he wishes everyone could play the RPG he's worked hard to build.

"We're a game developer. We love to make games. We don't set the prices for our games," he said. "Like, personally, as a game developer, I wish everybody could play my game, because that's what I want out of this whole thing."

Ultimately, Microsoft made the decision to price The Outer Worlds 2 at $80, and Adler says only it knows why: "But for the reasons and so like, why the $79.99 price point, you'd have to honestly talk to the Xbox folks," he added.

Adler commented he didn't want to get into his "own personal feelings" on the matter, but it seems clear he wishes The Outer Worlds 2 was more affordable. With problems like rising development costs, inflation, and economic disruptions from geopolitical issues affecting the industry, though, its price may have been an unfortunate necessity.

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Again, The Outer Worlds 2 isn't the first game to be taking this step, though it is the first one from Microsoft's corner to do so. Mario Kart World is $80, too, and there's a chance Gearbox's upcoming Borderlands 4 will be as well. Adler's response here is decidedly much, much better than Randy Pitchford saying you'll find a way to pay $80 if you're a "real fan."

It's worth noting you can circumvent that $80 barrier-to-entry entirely with Obsidian's sequel by subscribing to Microsoft's $20/month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate service that gives you access to hundreds of games — including new first-party Xbox titles on day one. There's a part of me that wonders if encouraging Game Pass subscriptions was the plan with The Outer Worlds 2's price; if it was, I expect it's going to work.

Some more good news is the fact that Obsidian's third game this year, Grounded 2, will launch into Early Access at just $29.99 (it, too, will be on Xbox Game Pass). The follow-up to the incredibly creative 2020 survival game releases next month on July 29, and will feature plenty of new gear and mutations, ridable "buggy" mounts, and a colossal new park map that dwarfs the original game's Backyard zone.

We're all searching for paradise. It's an unavoidable facet of life — we grow through hardship, but we desire peace.

Well, the joke's on all of you, because I'm heading to paradise twice in 2025, and you're not invited.

That's right, my favorite musical artist and my favorite video games studio has (or is) releasing new media this year inspired by the fictional paradise of Arcadia, an idyllic utopia of rest for the gods and the dead.

Let's just forget that the former released an album where Arcadia symbolizes reaching new heights only to discover that pain both new and old still exist, while the latter is releasing an RPG exploring the depthless dark side of capitalism and its unyielding bias toward the rich.

Okay, it may not be true paradise, but I'm still eating up every morsel.

My first trek into the paradise known as Arcadia

I love music, and I don't tend to ruin it for myself and others by becoming overtly attached to reductive genres, like some of you do (you know who you are). Good music is good music.

I absolutely have favorite artists, though, and sitting very pretty at the top right now is Sleep Token, the genre-bending masked collective fronted by lyricist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist, Vessel.

I've already been to Vessel's version of Arcadia, the pseudo-paradise explored in Sleep Token's fourth studio album, Even in Arcadia, which released earlier this year after months of anticipation.

The gorgeous title track I linked above does a far better job encapsulating the themes of the album than an idiot like myself ever could, but I'll do my best to summarize anyway.

After finally accepting that he can never return to the nostalgic paradise of Eden, Vessel at long last reaches a new paradise... Only to find that the demons of old have joined forces with new enemies in an attempt to drag him down.

The album expands Sleep Token's established lore, heavily inspired by fantastical and mythological elements, but also explores Vessel's relationship with the band's sudden rise to fame.

It goes to show that no paradise is free of strife, but I'll surprisingly have another opportunity to explore a different Arcadia later this year.

The Outer Worlds 2 and its lawless "paradise"

As much as I could make a whole career off blabbing about Vessel and Sleep Token, my editors would likely frown on that. So, enough yapping, I'll get to the point of this article.

During the recent Xbox Games Showcase 2025, one upcoming first-party Xbox game took the spotlight as the main event: The Outer Worlds 2, the hotly anticipated sci-fi RPG sequel from the wizards at Obsidian Entertainment.

We got a gameplay trailer revealing that The Outer Worlds 2 is officially releasing on Oct. 29, 2025 for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox PC, Steam, and Battle.net, and PlayStation 5. We also got an in-depth breakdown of The Outer Worlds 2 sharing a ton of new information on this upcoming sci-fi fantasy RPG.

Part of that information? The Outer Worlds 2 is departing the Halcyon Colony in which the first game was set in favor of Arcadia, an even more remote colony originally designed for the wealthy — but now a war-stricken dystopia torn between opposing factions.

In The Outer Worlds 2, you're not even given the option of pretending that Arcadia is a paradise. Caught between the militaristic Protectorate, religious Order of the Ascendant, and greedy Auntie's Choice megacorporation, there's never an opportunity to delude yourself.

This Arcadia was never a paradise, and now it's unequivocally broken beyond repair. All you can do is react, using your power to guide the aftermath into the mess of your choosing.

Obsidian is dominating Xbox's second half of 2025

Sleep Token and Obsidian Entertainment are both crafting entirely different versions of Arcadia, but I still can't help but imagine the experience of delving into the latter with the former as the musical backdrop.

At the end of the day, "Arcadia" being the focal point of both was a funny happenstance that appealed to the incredibly obnoxious nerd inside me. Even in Arcadia is easily my album of the year so far, and I was already looking forward to The Outer Worlds 2... Which is now officially set in another fictional Arcadia.

If there's any lesson to be learned here beyond appreciating the coincidence, it's that Obsidian is easily the MVP of Xbox's 2025, and is absolutely dominating the second half of 2025. It's not just The Outer Worlds 2, it's also the arrival of Grounded 2 in early access.

I actually already wrote about how I can't believe we're already getting Grounded 2, and that's after I reviewed and loved Avowed earlier this year. Now we're getting The Outer Worlds 2, an ambitiously expanded sequel that aims to be deeper, wider, and more dynamic than ever.

Entirely new ways to build your characters, expanded combat and more creative weaponry and abilities, a more dynamic and reactive world, The Outer Worlds 2 claims to have it all. All that remains is seeing if Obsidian's Arcadia can even begin to capture my attention the way Sleep Token's did.

Microsoft's annually held summer game bash, the Xbox Games Showcase, has come and gone once again. A huge range of different and diverse developers showed off projects they're bringing to Xbox, PC, and Xbox Ally handheld players soon, but one studio in particular stood out: Obsidian Entertainment.

Following up on the release of Avowed earlier this year, the storied RPG developer also showed off two more games coming later in 2025 with The Outer Worlds 2 Direct — a follow-up presentation to the main show in which we got a deep look at both The Outer Worlds 2 and Grounded 2.

The former is headed our way on October 29, 2025 (you'll get Early Access if you preorder the Premium Edition) and the latter is coming in Early Access at the end of June, with both set to launch on Xbox Game Pass. Notably, The Outer Worlds 2 is Microsoft's first $80 game, though after seeing everything shown today, I'd say there's a good chance it's worth that asking price.

Indeed, there was a ton of information in Obsidian's presentation; so much, in fact, that a standard news article wouldn't have been nearly enough to cover everything the studio had to share. Below, though, I've broken down everything revealed about both The Outer Worlds 2 and Grounded 2 in detail. Without further ado, here are seven big The Outer Worlds 2 highlights from the show, along with a look at Obsidian's survival game sequel.

Everything will be bigger and deeper than the original

Obsidian went into plenty of detail about both The Outer Worlds 2 and Grounded 2 during its Direct presentation, and rest assured, I'll get into all the juicy stuff below. In its opening few minutes, though, the developer gave a broad overview of what to expect from the former sequel that I'll summarize here.

With The Outer Worlds 2, Obsidian has focused on making the follow-up RPG a larger and deeper experience than its predecessor, with the studio taking advantage of more development time and a larger budget. Players can look forward to expanded and/or more impactful options for character building, combat, roleplaying, along with a meatier story and more reactivity to their actions on Arcadia and beyond.

Treating the first The Outer Worlds as a baseline, Obsidian has expanded all of these gameplay pillars in the sequel to better support player freedom and expression — with a particularly large focus on skills, traits, and how they come into play throughout the experience.

Fallout: New Vegas-style traits and skills are here

One of The Outer Worlds 2's biggest advancements comes in the form of deeper character creation options, with Obsidian looking to its widely beloved, critically acclaimed 2010 RPG Fallout: New Vegas for strong inspiration. The first step of the process is selecting one of many backgrounds; this gives you a basic idea of where your character comes from and how they fit into the game's setting, and will give you unique options in conversations and gameplay scenarios.

Then, you'll pick traits, which have replaced The Outer World's attributes and are very similar to the traits from classic Fallout titles. These come in both positive and negative varieties, and provide you with sizable buffs and debuffs while also making some unique interactions available like your choice of background does. Lucky, for example, raises your base critical hit chance by 5% and will lead to options you wouldn't have otherwise too.

Skills are next, and these govern how effective you are at using different types of gear or solving problems in a given way, and in The Outer Worlds 2, they've been condensed to address bloat in the first game while simultaneously making each point you put into skills as you level up more impactful. Your skills also dictate what kinds of perks you can take; these open up new gameplay options and abilities, with The Outer Worlds 2 said to feature more perks than Fallout: New Vegas.

Last but certainly not least are Flaws, which return from the first game with a rework that transforms them from purely negative attributes to quirks that have both positive and negative gameplay effects. One, called Bad Knees, permanently buffs your movement speed but causes your character's knees to make a loud popping sound when you stand up after crouching — ruining any chance of stealth. Another, Kleptomaniac, lets you sell stolen items for more money, but can cause you to automatically steal an item owned by someone else if you get close to it.

There's a huge emphasis on player freedom

Supporting player agency and choice is a massive part of what makes any open RPG like The Outer Worlds 2 fun to play, and Obsidian has assured players that they won't feel restricted in the sequel. During the presentation, it showed how there are a multitude of different ways to lower and cross a bridge in one of the game's early quests.

Talking your way past its security checkpoint with a silver tongue is one way, as is going in guns blazing to storm the bridge itself. You can also sneak in, lower the bridge, and then sneak under it to cross, and certain items you find like a gas shield or double-jump boots can allow you to circumvent the bridge entirely by safely crossing the hazards it was built to deal with.

There's even one particularly dark solution in which you can sell out one of your companions wanted by the faction guarding the bridge, earning yourself a pass to cross it in the process. The developer said it best during the Direct: "When you build your character your way, we're there for you. We really want you to have the experience you want out of this."

Arcadia, factions, and the story it's telling

Whereas the first The Outer Worlds took place in the Halcyon system, the sequel primarily features a new colony world called Arcadia where a three-way war is being fought over the planet. It's controlled by a heavily militarized and authoritarian group called the Protectorate that sacrifices personal freedoms for security, and was founded by the inventor of the skip drives that enable faster-than-light travel in the setting.

These skip drives have begun to cause mysterious and dangerous rifts in space time, however, leading the Earth Directorate governmental body to send you — an agent of the organization — to Arcadia to try and find answers. As you investigate, you'll also interact with the other big players in the war: The Order of the Ascendant, an offshoot of the Order of Scientific Inquiry with a scientific religion about finding a way to predict the future for mankind's benefit, and the Auntie's Choice megacorporation — a merger of Auntie Cleo and Space's Choice from the first game.

The Protectorate wants to find a solution for the rifts to protect its legacy and wealth, while the Order seeks to fix them so they don't threaten innocent life and stop complicating their efforts to "solve the universal equation." Auntie's Choice, meanwhile, just wants to find a way to control the rifts so it can exploit them to manipulate intergalactic trade.

Obsidian says the three factions are integrated into the story far more deeply than they were in The Outer Worlds, complete with distinct types of satirical humor and high reactivity to the player's choices. Notably, the studio is bringing a Fallout-style radio to the experience with faction-specific stations you can tune into; depending on the decisions you've made and actions you've taken, you'll be able to hear them react positively or negatively to your influence.

Meet the game's companions

The Outer Worlds had six companions in total, and its follow-up sequel has six as well. Each one has their own questline to progress through during your adventure, as well as interesting ties to the game's three factions and character arcs you can influence.

Five of them were introduced during the Direct, so here's a quick overview of each one:

• Niles: Another Earth Directorate agent at a crossroads trying to decide if he wants to keep the job or turn his back on the Directorate. Has an automech drone named Val, too.
• Marisol: An aging, but ruthless assassin working for the Order of the Ascendant that has "unfinished business" to attend to. The player can help her with it.
• Aza: A cultist that worships the skip drive rifts and is obsessed with violence; you can either try to turn her away from her fanaticism or encourage her to further embrace it.
• Inez: A combat medic that survived a failed Auntie's Choice experiment to graft animal parts onto soldiers. You'll be able to help her fix her graft.
• Tristan: A loyal Protectorate adjudicator that wears heavy armor from head to toe. You can help him dole out his sentences or "show him what true justice looks like."

Obsidian says that similar to the factions, the companions will each react to your choices based on how they align with their own values as well as how you've influenced them over time. It's also suggested something drastic will happen at the end of the game "if you haven't been treating them well."

The "World War 1-like setting in space" aesthetic

Obsidian's first The Outer Worlds title was notable for its bright, vibrant colors and sci-fi space frontier style, but the sequel is going for something a bit different. With Auntie's Choice's invasion of Arcadia and the conflict between both groups and the Order of the Ascendant at the heart of the RPG, the developer has chosen an aesthetic that's noticeably darker and grittier — describing it as "World War 1-like setting in space" during the show.

In line with this direction, the game's three factions and its various settlements are characterized by heavy militarization and the frequent use of propaganda, with one example being Fairfield — a Protectorate town taken over by Auntie's Choice in which the latter has repainted structures, spread propaganda holograms, and posted guards on every street corner.

The studio has also prioritized making sure each group and faction has distinct and recognizable styles for their clothing, armor, and structures, ensuring that players aren't confused about who they're talking to or fighting throughout the game.

New weapons and gameplay enhancements

In the final segment of The Outer Worlds 2 portion of the Direct, Obsidian showed off many of the new gameplay additions, weapons, and more that players can expect from the sequel. Mobility and movement options, for example, have been greatly expanded with sprinting, sliding, double jumping, and mantling. Also, you can go into the third-person perspective if you'd like to, allowing you to appreciate the look of your character and gear.

The developer also focused heavily on elevating gunplay with improved animations, recoil impact, and sound effects, and has introduced new weapon types as well as throwables and bespoke unique weapons and armors, too. Of these, the following were shown:

• Boarst Blaster: A firearm that shoots exploding tumors you can also eat yourself to regain health
• Rookie's Reward: A rifle that levels up with you as you use it throughout the game
• Pop-Up: This weapon fires out drones that play corporate ads and distract enemies; the drones can be made to explode to hurt them
• Armageddon: A launcher that fires little arm tendrils that stick to surfaces and repeatedly damage any target that comes close to them
• Spectrum Dance Saber: This sword gets damage bonuses if you swing it to the beat of a song, essentially creating a rhythm game minigame
• Big Bang: A huge gun that shoots rift energy, vaporizing anything in its path; ammo is very, very scarce
• Gary: An armor that's essentially a wearable monster that lashes out at enemies that get close to you

Oh, and the Shrink Ray is returning from The Outer Worlds, now with longer-lasting shrinkage and the ability to squish any enemy you hit with it under your boot like an ant for an instant kill. And, speaking of bugs...

Everything we know about Grounded 2

The Outer Worlds 2 was definitely the primary focus of Obsidian's Direct, but Grounded 2 also got its own segment as well. In it, the developer revealed that the sequel to its 2020 survival game — widely praised for the unique concept of shrinking humans down to bug-size and forcing them to contend with backyard creepy crawlies — is on the way, with an Early Access release scheduled for July 29, 2025 next month.

Being developed in partnership with Eidos-Montréal (Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy) and with community feedback from Early Access, Grounded 2 takes place two years after the first game did in 1992 and will feature the same four characters in Brookhollow Community Park — a map three times the size of Grounded's Backyard setting.

Brookhollow will have multiple different biomes to explore as a result of man's influence, such as a toppled over ice cream cart that serves as a wintry region on the map. Fans can also look forward to an expanded combat system with dashes, light and heavy attacks, and blocking; these maneuvers are used by enemies, too, and interact with one another in a rock-paper-scissors manner.

There are also many new types of passive and active mutations to support creative buildcrafting, and notably, Obsidian is even adding mounts — a highly requested feature that never made it into the first Grounded. These "buggies" will help you fight as well as transport materials and travel faster; at launch, there will be red ant soldiers and orb weaver spiders, but further "buggies" will come in future updates.

The developer says that with Grounded 2, fans can expect updates to be larger and more substantial than they were with the original, though they might take a bit longer as a result. The sequel is also launching with a public roadmap that will be updated as Obsidian grows the scope of the title.

Back in 2019, Obsidian Entertainment, the acclaimed developer behind Fallout: New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity, Grounded, and Avowed, created a new sci-fi RPG called The Outer Worlds. This game was loved by critics and fans for its engrossing world-building, stellar combat system, witty writing, and dark humor.

Fast forward to 2025, and Obsidian Entertainment is now looking to expand this franchise’s universe with The Outer Worlds 2.

This upcoming Xbox title with its own upcoming PC launch promises to take players to grander worlds with improved, immersive visuals, more customization options for players to forge their character with, more intriguing companions to recruit, and a gripping storyline that goes in wild, galaxy-altering directions depending on the player’s choices.

Here's everything you need to know about The Outer Worlds 2.

The Outer Worlds 2 – Release date and platforms

While The Outer Worlds 2 has no firmly concrete release date as of yet, it has been confirmed The Outer Worlds will be released sometime during 2025 and that it will be coming to Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC via Windows and Steam.

The Outer Worlds 2 – What is The Outer Worlds 2?

The Outer Worlds 2 is a single-player, narrative-focused, first-person RPG developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Xbox Game Studios.

The story is set in a faraway galaxy that’s currently experiencing a crisis where unnatural rifts are threatening to destroy all of mankind. As the Earth Directorate agent, you are tasked to investigate the cause of this phenomenon, which leads you to a colony called Arcadia.

Arcadia, in the midst of a bloody war between the colony’s ruling Protectorate, a religious order, and an invading corporation, all vying for control.

If you hope to get to the bottom of the rift mystery and save humanity, you will need to deal with Arcadia’s factions by any means you deem necessary, whether it's through diplomacy or through good old-fashioned violence.

The Outer Worlds 2 – Xbox Game Pass

Obsidian Entertainment has confirmed that The Outer Worlds 2 will be added to the vast library of Xbox Game Pass games on the same date the game launches.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers will be able to play The Outer Worlds 2 via Xbox Game Pass on consoles, PC Game Pass, and Xbox Cloud Gaming.

The Outer Worlds 2 – Gameplay

The gameplay of The Outer Worlds 2 will have you exploring Arcadia, other worlds, and their moons to solve the mystery of the rifts and deal with Arcadia’s factions. The direction of the story will be based on dialogue choices the player makes throughout the game, and there will be tons of them.

These dialogue choices can lead to joining forces or making enemies with one of the factions, resolving conflicts without starting a fight, recruiting companions to join your crew, and much more.

However, there will be times when talking your way out of trouble isn’t an option and fighting is the best solution. The Outer Worlds 2’s combat system will have you wield a huge arsenal of futuristic, deadly guns and melee weapons, along with powerful skills and abilities to dispatch your enemies with.

You can take the stealthy approach, killing enemies one by one without notice, blowing them up with heavy ordinance, charging at them with shotguns and scythes, and much more.

How you choose to dispatch your enemies is up to your preferred playstyle and how you build your character during character creation.

According to an interview with IGN, Obsidian Entertainment says that The Outer Worlds 2 will feature a more complex character creation system than the first game.

It will include with lots of new Perks to play with like ‘Psychopath’ and ‘Serial Killer’ which grant permanent health boosts if you go around killing every NPC in sight, ‘Run & Gun’ which allows you shoot guns while sliding, sprinting and activating Tactical Time Dilation, and ‘Space Ranger’ which gives you a damage buff based on your Speech stat and unique dialogue options.

Character creation goes even further with the reworked Trait system, which will give you massive buffs towards certain playstyles at the cost of nerfing certain aspects of your character (with hilarious results).

How it works is if you take a Positive Trait to enhance your character, you will be forced to take a Negative Trait that weakens your character to compensate for it.

Some of these Positive and Negative Traits include but are not limited to ‘Brawny’ which gives you the ability to knock down enemies with sprinting into them, ‘Brilliant’ which grants you extra Skill points, ‘Dumb’ which prevents you from investing Skills points into five Skills, and ‘Sickly’ which permanently decreases your base health and toxicity tolerance stats.

What’s important to note is that Obsidian Entertainment has confirmed that there will be no respeccing of your character’s stats, skills, and Traits in the game after you’re done with character creation.

So you will need to think carefully about what kind of character you want to make before jumping into the universe of The Outer Worlds 2.

We've got a new look at The Outer Worlds 2 gameplay, courtesy of IGN. This dive into Obsidian Entertainment and Xbox Game Studios' upcoming sci-fi role-playing game shows off the combat, stealth, and more that players can expect across about 11 minutes.

While a trailer for The Outer Worlds 2 at the Game Awards 2024 showed off some snippets of action, this is the first true gameplay segment for the game that's been available. You can watch the new gameplay below:

Overall, this is a solid look at The Outer Worlds 2, with clearly better visuals and smoother gameplay compared to its 2019 predecessor.

That being said, I'd really prefer to see gameplay that has Vsync on. Screen tearing really bothers me, and it's visually distracting to see that flickering throughout the gameplay. Hopefully that won't be the case in future showings.

The good news is that we won't be waiting long to learn more about The Outer Worlds 2, as it'll be the star of a Direct presentation right after the Xbox Games Showcase 2025, which kicks off on June 8, 2025 at 10:00 a.m PT / 1:00 p.m. ET.

This continues the tradition of Xbox giving a deep dive into one particular first-party game after its general showcase, with Starfield in 2023 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 in 2024.

Outside of The Outer Worlds 2, there's some other first-party games slated to launch in the second half of this year, including Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4 and Ninja Gaiden 4.

Obsidian Entertainment is set to pull off a double feature, with the studio shipping its fantasy role-playing game Avowed earlier in the year. At the time, the studio's CEO Feargus Urquhart noted that Obsidian Entertainment has grown significantly since being acquired by Microsoft.

The Outer Worlds 2 is also coming to Battle.net at launch, continuing the recent trend of launching Xbox first-party games on Blizzard Entertainment's PC platform.

The Outer Worlds 2 is coming to Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and PlayStation 5. Like all Xbox first-party games, it's also included day one in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.

We've got more exciting news about what Xbox players will be diving into next year.

During the Game Awards 2024 , the teams from Obsidian Entertainment and Xbox Game Studios showed up to share a look at gameplay for The Outer Worlds 2. First announced with a tongue-in-cheek teaser all the way back at the 2021 Xbox games showcase, The Outer Worlds 2 is a follow-up to Obsidian’s 2019 science-fiction role-playing game, taking place in a far future of space colonization and hyper-capitalism.

You can check out the trailer below, which shows a fair bit of destruction and combat taking place in a new solar system with a new crew:

Additionally, the team revealed that The Outer Worlds is now slated to launch in 2025, marking the first time the game has had a release window.

When it was initially announced, Obsidian revealed that The Outer Worlds 2 would be launching on Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC. Now, we also know that it'll be launching on PlayStation 5 as well. Like all Xbox first-party games, it’ll also be available at launch in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.

RELATED: The Game Awards 2024 LIVE blog

The Xbox lineup continues to grow for 2025 and beyond

While the global pandemic that began in 2020 naturally delayed a number of titles across the industry, the machine of Microsoft's investments in Xbox is now roaring, with the company closing out 2024 by delivering games such as Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

The Outer Worlds 2 joins an increasingly large list of Xbox first-party games that are slated to roll out in 2025 and beyond from across the many studios under Activision Blizzard, Bethesda Softworks, and Xbox Game Studios.

The year is set to begin with Obsidian Entertainment's other big upcoming title, Avowed, a role-playing game initially scheduled to arrive in 2024 but delayed to February 2025 in order to give the game more space. Assuming The Outer Worlds 2 doesn’t get hit with a similar delay (which is entirely possible) then this studio will be launching two role-playing games in the same calendar year, which is no small feat.

Following Avowed, Compulsion Games' South of Midnight, id Software's DOOM: The Dark Ages, and Playground Games' Fable are all currently penciled in to arrive across Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate/PC Game Pass. It’s also fair to expect we’ll get some sort of new entry in the Call of Duty franchise, but nothing has technically been confirmed at this time.

I'm THRILLED with how many big role-playing games are on the way, so I just hope these games are spaced out enough to let each one breathe.

• Prime Gaming's latest free titles celebrate the new Secret Level show.
• The Outer Worlds, Baldur's Gate, and Warhammer all feature.
• All you need to get them is an active Prime subscription.

You may have heard of Secret Level, Amazon's new gaming-focused TV series that launched today on Prime Video, perhaps because it will feature the ill-fated Concord.

But in happier news, to celebrate the launch of the series, Prime Gaming is giving away a slate of related titles right now, and they're definitely worth getting your hands on.

Some big names are featured, including Baldur's Gate (but not the latest release so don't get too excited), along with The Outer Worlds, and a selection of title's from the Warhammer universe.

Here's the full list of what you can currently claim:

• The Outer Worlds
• Mega Man 11
• Spelunky
• Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition
• Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition
• Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War
• Space Hulk Deathwing: Enhanced Edition
• Necromunda: Hired Gun
• Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine
• Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition

That's on top of other titles that include Quake 2, Star Wars Bounty Hunter, and Tomb Raider Underworld.

Of those listed above, sure, most are older games, but older games are still fun to play. With more recent hype for Space Marine 2 and Baldur's Gate 3, it's a good opportunity to check out what came before. And The Outer Worlds is fantastic.

The titles are available across a variety of PC storefronts, including Epic Games, GOG, and Amazon's own launcher. That's probably the only negative, but free is free, right?

So how do you get them? As long as you have an active Amazon Prime subscription, simply head to the Prime Gaming homepage and start claiming. If it's available on Amazon's own platform, it'll just get added to your account. Epic Games can be linked up so you can add games to your library there, too, but for GOG you'll be given a code you need to go and redeem over there.

They all expire at different times, too. The Outer Worlds will be there into 2025, but some expire in eight days, so don't miss out.

What you need to know

• Take-Two Interactive, owner of Rockstar Games and 2K Games, has sold its Private Division publishing label.
• Private Division previously published games like Obsidian's The Outer Worlds and Moon Studios' No Rest for the Wicked.
• The buyer for Private Division is currently unknown, though sources have confirmed to Windows Central that it wasn't Microsoft.
• Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick says the sale happened because the company is interested in making "big hits" like Grand Theft Auto.

Another game publishing label has changed hands, and this time, what's most notable is what we don't know about it.

Take-Two Interactive confirms that it has sold Private Division, a publisher that the company (which also owns Rockstar Games, 2K Games, and Zynga) previously held in order to work on smaller titles alongside mostly-independent studios. The buyer is currently unknown, though Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick tells GamesIndustry.biz that the purchaser will be known "relatively soon."

One party that can be ruled out is Microsoft, with Windows Central's sources confirming that the Xbox platform holder is not behind the deal. The unknown buyer holds the rights to most of Private Division's catalogue, including the upcoming Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings Game, though Take-Two is continuing to support Moon Studios' No Rest for the Wicked.

Private Division previously partnered with Obsidian Entertainment for The Outer Worlds, though the game ended up launching in 2019, well after Obsidian was acquired by Microsoft in 2018 and added to Xbox Game Studios. Private Division still holds the publishing rights to the first game in The Outer Worlds franchise, but the sequel is being published by Xbox.

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Building bigger blockbusters

Take-Two Interactive was rumored to be interested in selling off Private Division earlier in the year after the company shuttered Intercept Games and Roll7, the two internal studios under the Private Division label. The reason, per Zelnick, is that the company is interested in big hits like Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto franchise.

"We're really best at these big AAA experiences. We have the biggest intellectual properties in the interactive entertainment business, some of the biggest intellectual properties in the overall entertainment business and to make sequels to existing beloved franchises as well as to create new hit intellectual properties is our mission," Zelnick tells GamesIndustry.biz.

"The team of Private Division did a great job supporting independent developers and, almost to a one, every project they supported did well. However, the scale of those projects was, candidly, on the smaller side, and we're in the business of making great big hits."

Looking ahead, Take-Two Interactive plans to launch Grand Theft Auto 6 in Fall 2025, a title that's widely expected to be an utter commercial juggernaut on Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 consoles. Grand Theft Auto 5, which first launched all the way back in 2013 on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, has crossed 205 million copies sold, firmly cementing it as the second best-selling game of all time behind Minecraft.

What you need to know

• Xbox studio Obsidian Entertainment is currently working on multiple projects, including  fantasy RPG Avowed and a science-fiction sequel, The Outer Worlds 2.
• Speaking with the Hit the Limit Break podcast, Obsidian Entertainment CEO Feargus Urquhart shared that work on The Outer Worlds 2 is "going really well."
• Feargus added that Obsidian struggled early on with COVID, and that the studio considered canceling projects to focus entirely on Avowed, but was able to come together and find the right balance eventually. 

Even if it's a ways off, it sounds like another science-fiction Xbox role-playing game (RPG) is shaping up nicely. 

Speaking with Tom Caswell on the newly-launched Hit the Limit Break podcast (thanks, @HazzadorGamin), Obsidian Entertainment CEO Feargus Urquhart explained that development on The Outer Worlds 2 is "going really well," with the team coming together and figuring out how to support development simultaneously with multiple projects, including the studio's upcoming fantasy RPG Avowed.

"I've actually been really impressed. We had a really hard time at the studio in COVID," he says. Urquhart went on to share that Obsidian was having a very hard time in the early months of COVID figuring out how to handle different projects, including briefly considering just putting the entire studio on Avowed.

"I appreciate Microsoft and the teams and everybody and that we kinda said 'No, we will get there. We will get there with all these games. Are they gonna be on the timelines that we originally thought? No. But we're gonna get there,'" he says. "And I think that's proven, right? Grounded turned out awesome, Pentiment turned out awesome, Avowed is gonna be great, Outer Worlds 2 is looking incredible." 

You can listen to the full podcast below, though you do need to be aware that it was recorded before Avowed was officially delayed to February 2025.

In the full podcast, Urquhart touches on several other topics, including the nature of the Fallout TV series giving the franchise a resurgence, Xbox studio closures, and more. 

When will The Outer Worlds 2 launch?

The Outer Worlds first launched in 2019, giving players a solar system to explore and a story to progress in classic Obsidian role-playing game fashion, including options for double-crossing the different factions and corporations that dominated nearby life. 

The Outer Worlds 2 was first announced at E3 2021 with a tongue-in-cheek trailer poking fun at how little work had actually been accomplished on the game so far. Since then, Obsidian has released co-op survival game Grounded and the truly unique medieval narrative game Pentiment, while the studio's next big Xbox game, Avowed, is slated to launch on Feb. 18, 2025. 

There's been few updates on The Outer Worlds 2, bar Feargus's comments, so it's hard to gauge exactly when the game will arrive. Depending on the scope and level of improvements the team is aiming to implement, it's certainly possible that we could see it arrive in 2026, but we'll have a better idea of what to expect when we learn more.

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Analysis: I will be eagerly waiting

Obsidian is a storied developer for good reason, and I'm eagerly looking forward to both The Outer Worlds 2. Hopefully we won't be waiting too much longer for more information on the latter, but as someone that really enjoyed the first game, I'll just remain excited for now. 

In the meantime, I'm certainly also looking forward to Avowed, which is coming to Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC next year. Like all Xbox first-party games, it's also launching day one in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.

What you need to know

• Epic Games Store frequently gives away free games.
• This week, The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition and Thief are free.
• The Outer Worlds was nominate for 20 award, winning role-playing game of the year at the D.I.C.E. Awards.
• Both are available until April 11.

Outer Worlds is a highly praised open-world RPG that offers an immersive experience through its engaging mechanics and storyline. The game follows the journey of a colonist who becomes stranded in space during their travel to the Halcyon system. Decades later, after being awakened by a peculiar scientist, the player takes control of the narrative and embarks on an exhilarating adventure.

Outer Worlds has amassed a huge following and garnered rave reviews from fans and critics alike. It was nominated for four awards at the Game Awards show and won role-playing game of the year at the D.I.C.E. Awards. In total, it earned 20 nominations from various outlets. No wonder they're making a sequel!

In our review, Jez Corden awarded it an impressive 4.5/5 stars. However, the Spacer's Choice Edition launched confusingly only two years later. Initially, it faced some issues, especially on my PC. But now, it has evolved into the definitive version of Outer Worlds, offering enhanced performance and a compelling reason to upgrade.

With great pleasure, I share the exciting news that The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition is now available for free on the Epic Games Store! Yes, you read that right. For the unbeatable price of zero dollars, you can now experience the game that all colonists deserve. Download the Epic Games Store and start your adventure.

On another note, Thief is also free! While I don't have nearly as many glowing things to say about Thief, I remember playing it on Xbox One and being used as a huge talking point for console wars. It launched to lukewarm reviews, earning a 67 on Metacritic.

That said, I don't see any reason for players not to jump on these deals. While I realize that the Epic Games Store isn't the ideal place for many to play, it's free. If you love Big Macs, you're telling me you wouldn't eat a free one if it came in a Burger King box? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Both are free until April 11. Please pick up Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition at a minimum. It's, quite honestly, my game of the year from 2019. There's a reason it was nominated for the same at the Game Awards. You won't be disappointed. 

What you need to know

• The Outer Worlds Spacer's Choice Edition is a new, current-gen version of Obsidian Entertainment's sci-fi RPG.
• The game has already been criticized for charging for visual upgrades with no way to transfer save progress from the original.
• However, the game is getting torn apart by negative Steam reviews due to generally terrible performance.
• Even players with extremely high-end systems are struggling to get more than 30FPS, alongside other issues.

The Outer Worlds Spacer's Choice Edition is once again proving the ironic accuracy of its unfortunate name, except for entirely different reasons this time. The just-released "next-gen" version of Obsidian Entertainment's critically acclaimed sci-fi RPG is currently being bombarded by endless negative reviews on Steam, and it's all due to horrifically terrible performance.

The Outer Worlds has been begging for a current-gen upgrade since the release of the Xbox Series X|S and more powerful PC hardware, but Private Division and third-party studio Virtuos Games are being criticized for their methods of updating Obsidian Entertainment's game. The Steam version of The Outer Worlds Spacer's Choice Edition is currently afflicted by a "Very negative" review tag, with the majority of reviews lambasting the game for awful, unstable, and buggy performance on Windows PCs.

Many negative reviews are coming from players with objectively high-end systems, like one player equipped with an Intel Core i7-12700K, an NVIDIA RTX 4090, and 32GB of RAM struggling to obtain even 30FPS. Other negative reviews tell similar tales of awful performance, with flickering textures, frequent stutters, and unacceptable framerates.

The Outer Worlds in its original form was one of the best PC games at the time, and many fans were excited for a potential current-gen upgrade blessing the game with improved visuals, performance, and quality-of-life features. Unfortunately, the Spacer's Choice Edition is not living up to expectations.

In my editorial covering The Outer Worlds Spacer's Choice Edition, I heavily criticized the game for being seemingly motivated by greed. Private Division is charging full-price for the Spacer's Choice Edition and its visual upgrades without updating the original game, giving returning players and fans no way to transfer their progress, and only providing one upgrade path — $10 if you already own the original game and both DLC expansions. Now, the game is also apparently afflicted with unacceptable performance issues on PC.

Windows Central's take

I concluded that The Outer Worlds Spacer's Choice Edition is still a good option for those who have never played the original in my editorial, but even that may not be true. I encountered minimal performance issues on my Xbox Series X (fewer, really, than when I played the original), but I admittedly did not see late-game content. Still, players on PC are being met with abysmal performance even in the opening minutes of the Spacer's Choice Edition.

The Spacer's Choice Edition is, sadly, fully embracing its name, and is now difficult to recommend for any reason. Aside from controversies surrounding its high price, lack of save transfers, and the abandoment of the original version, The Outer Worlds Spacer's Choice Edition simply doesn't run well on Steam, a major platform. If you're still curious about this humorous, quirky sci-fi RPG, go play the original (it's available through Xbox and PC Game Pass).

"You've tried the best, now try the rest. Spacer's Choice!" In The Outer Worlds, the far-flung colonies of Halcyon are owned and managed by the Board, a grouping of insidious megacorporations invested in every walk of life. Of all the companies working together to maximize profits and exploit the colonists of Halcyon, Spacer's Choice is well known as the cheapest and most willing to cut corners.

There's irony in Private Division choosing to use the "Spacer's Choice" brand for its definitive edition of Obsidian Entertainment's The Outer Worlds. Despite the legitimate graphical improvements made in this version, The Outer Worlds Spacer's Choice Edition comes off as a blatant cash grab, skewing the tendencies of other first-party Xbox games to lock its upgrades behind a paywall — a wall that your save file can't cross, no matter how big a fan you are.

All the right upgrades

When The Outer Worlds was released in 2019, it was astoundingly easy to praise for its humorous writing, fleshed-out story and characters, and first-class worldbuilding. However, the game was never the most visually impressive, and Windows Central's The Outer Worlds review criticized it for its quality-of-life issues and poor AI NPCs. Nearly three-and-a-half years later, the game is finally enjoying a major upgrade in the form of the Spacer's Choice Edition.

Think of this as a "definitive edition" of the game, similar to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Game of the Year Edition. It includes the base game and both DLC expansions (Peril on Gorgon and Murder on Eridanos) for a newly reduced retail price (USD $60). However, it also includes many improvements to the game's graphics, performance, and overall quality that are not coming to the original game. More on that later. For now, let's discuss what is better with this new version.

This is the current-gen upgrade for The Outer Worlds on Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and modern gaming PCs for all intents and purposes. No, I'm not talking about the game running at 60FPS on current-gen consoles after a random patch — this is a dramatic departure from the original from a visual perspective. Here's a quick summary of everything that's changed:

• Improved performance at up to 4K and 60FPS
• Comprehensive volumetric lighting
• Superior special effects and particle physics
• Enhanced environmental detail and increased asset density
• Improved open-world vistas
• Dynamic weather with additional variations
• More intelligent AI for companions and NPCs in combat
• More detailed character models and improved animations
• Increased level cap (up to Lv. 99)

The Outer Worlds arrived on the scene just over a year before the current generation of consoles began pushing the boundaries for performance and graphics in console games. Despite that, The Outer Worlds has languished with visuals that weren't particularly amazing even at launch. Finally, the game feels and looks awesome, with cartoonishly oversaturated visuals making every vista pop. The Outer Worlds still isn't going to win awards for its graphics, but the game genuinely looks fantastic in the Spacer's Choice Edition.

The massively improved visuals don't translate to worse performance, either. While the game still leans toward "clunky," and I did experience a handful of dropped frames, The Outer Worlds overall performs much better in the new version. This is especially true when considering load times, as The Outer Worlds isn't truly open world and features frequent load screens when traveling into towns and settlements. The Xbox Series X makes short work of these pauses, ensuring you're never too far detached from the action.

I also observed a general improvement in characters, which look and move more realistically. This also applies to facial animations; you're still likely to experience bouts of the uncanny valley, but it's a marked step up and adds to the sense that this is The Outer Worlds "all grown up." It hints at what we can expect from The Outer Worlds 2, a true next-gen sequel expected to be far more ambitious than its predecessor.

I will say that I did not notice a major improvement to AI, especially in combat, and the Spacer's Choice Edition does absolutely nothing for the lifeless NPCs outside of conversations or the oft-awkward menus and UI. Still, The Outer Worlds has never looked this good, with every environment bursting with detail and luster. It's unfortunate, then, that these current-gen upgrades will never be experienced by the majority of The Outer Worlds players.

Here are some other screenshots of The Outer Worlds Spacer's Choice Edition in action:

All the wrong reasons

Viewed in a vacuum, Obsidian Entertainment and Private Division are delivering all the right upgrades to The Outer Worlds with the Spacer's Choice Edition, modernizing the game for newcomers and returning players alike. Of course, nothing in this industry exists in a vacuum, and "all the right upgrades" don't matter if they're here for all the wrong reasons.

The Outer Worlds Spacer's Choice Edition is considered an all-new, completely separate version of the game. That means all of the graphical, performance, and quality-of-life improvements contained within are not coming to the game's original version. You must buy the game (retailing for $60) if you want these enhancements. In this aspect, it almost feels like The Outer Worlds Remastered instead of a current-gen upgrade.

Additionally, there is absolutely no way to transfer any of your save information or progress from the original The Outer Worlds to the Spacer's Choice Edition. If you already played the game and wanted to return, either to finish it or to play the DLC expansions (the reason I was excited for the Spacer's Choice Edition), your only option is to begin anew with a fresh save.

If you love The Outer Worlds enough to upgrade to the newest version regardless, you'll need to own the original game and both DLC expansions to pay the discounted $10 for the Spacer's Choice Edition. I could justify charging for these extensive upgrades under different circumstances, but you'd still be giving up all your progress. Finally, this version of The Outer Worlds is not coming to Xbox or PC Game Pass — The original is sticking around, presumably as a more affordable alternative.

The Outer Worlds is not old enough to warrant a remaster — it's a modern game available on all the same platforms as the Spacer's Choice Edition. Instead of following the precedent set by other first-party Xbox games, Private Division opted to alienate returning players with no way to transfer to the superior version. It's also charging full price for what essentially amounts to a facelift (no matter how impressive) with minor quality-of-life enhancements.

On the other hand, the original version of The Outer Worlds has effectively been abandoned. The title has been notorious for rarely enjoying decent discounts and was still listed at its original retail price of $60 (or $80 for the Board-Approved Bundle with both DLC expansions included) even the day before the Spacer's Choice Edition was released.

The Spacer's Choice Edition is arriving as a superior product with better value (being $20 less than the previously cheapest way to obtain the game and its DLC). Still, there's no reasonable upgrade path for existing players — the best-case scenario means paying $10 to lose your progress. Everyone simply has to accept this, even those who may have recently bought The Outer Worlds without being aware that the Spacer's Choice Edition was on the way. It's unfortunate and frankly astounding how appropriate "Spacer's Choice Edition" is for this game.

It's not the best choice, it's Spacer's Choice

Spacer's Choice as a company only seeks to make more profits, even if it means making a worse product. In the case of The Outer Worlds Spacer's Choice Edition, making more profit appears to be its exact goal. Of course, this approach will backfire, as the game's most loyal players have the least reason to upgrade.

The sensible approach for publisher Private Division would have been releasing the current-gen improvements to all versions of The Outer Worlds while releasing the Spacer's Choice Edition as a more affordable, bundled entryway for players who have yet to explore Halcyon. At the very least, don't charge for visual upgrades if it also means asking players to start over.

Instead of eagerly returning to The Outer Worlds to play its DLC for the first time, I'm putting the game down, perhaps permanently. I have no desire to replay large swathes of the game to reach the DLC, nor do I feel any urge to purchase and play the expansions for the original and now vastly inferior version. Keeping The Outer Worlds full-price for so long to suddenly release a new full-price option in an effort to squeeze more money out of players isn't a good look — especially when your game literally centers around anti-capitalism narratives.

If you have never played The Outer Worlds before, the Spacer's Choice Edition is absolutely the best version of the game; it's not available through Xbox or PC Game Pass, though, which is a shame. If you have played The Outer Worlds and were waiting for a reason to revisit it... This isn't that. It's disappointing because The Outer Worlds really is one of the best Xbox games for RPG fans. Here's hoping that The Outer Worlds 2, which Xbox Game Studios itself will publish, actually stays true to its message and avoids the blunders made by The Outer Worlds Spacer's Choice Edition.

What you need to know

• The Outer Worlds 2 dropped in a surprise announcement at the Xbox and Bethesda showcase at E3 2021.
• The game will take place in a new solar system with a new crew.
• No release date is known yet.

At Microsoft's E3 2021 showcase, Obsidian debuted the next installment in the Outer Worlds, the cult-hit shooter RPG, which is set in an alternative future.

In the original Outer Worlds, you dismantled (or supported) a corporate infrastructure that has taken complete control of an off-world system, known as Halcyon. Taking place across multiple planets, The Outer Worlds revived some RPG traditions that have fallen out of favor to some degree in recent years, with Fallout-like skill checks, and Mass Effect-like companions, complete with a branching narrative. The Outer Worlds was by no means perfect, but the writing, atmosphere, and satisfying RPG loop clearly showcased a franchise with massive potential, and clearly Microsoft agrees.

Now owned by Microsoft's Xbox division, The Outer Worlds 2 dropped in a surprise reveal, offering us a glimpse at how Obsidian plans to evolve the formula. The game will be an Xbox console exclusive while also coming to Windows 10 PCs. And of course, like all Xbox titles moving forward, it will be a day one inclusion into Xbox Game Pass.

Not much is known yet about the new entry in the series, but we know it takes place in a new solar system and with a new crew. The trailer even makes note of this, with the narrator saying it hasn't finished the design, the story, or any gameplay that it's ready to show.

Microsoft's plan to introduce one game every quarter for Xbox is gathering pace, and when all of its studios start firing on all cylinders, the amount of fresh content hitting Xbox Game Pass every month will be truly unprecedented.

Be sure to check out more of our Xbox E3 2021 coverage, and stay tuned for more details on The Outer Worlds 2 as we get them.

What you need to know

• The Outer Worlds is a 2019 science-fiction role-playing game developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Private Division.
• Obsidian previously stated that The Outer Worlds would be optimized for Xbox Series X.
• The latest patch for the game appears to have enabled The Outer Worlds to run at 60 FPS on Xbox Series X and PS5.

We've started seeing users on Twitter and Reddit report that the latest update for Obsidian Entertainment's The Outer Worlds allows the game to run at 60 FPS. After seeing these reports, we've tested the game and can confirm that with this latest update, The Outer Worlds runs at 60 FPS (or close to it) on Xbox Series X and PS5. At the moment of this being written, we're not sure if this also applies for Xbox Series S. The update is about 26 GB in size.

Back in 2020 when discussing the Peril on Gorgon DLC, Obsidian Entertainment revealed that The Outer Worlds would be optimized for Xbox Series X at some point in the future. It's currently unclear if Obsidian has foregone doing a dedicated next-generation patch or if this is simply the first step.

The next expansion for The Outer Worlds is called Murder on Eridanos and is set to arrive on March 17. Players will have to solve mysterious crimes, while the list of science weapons in The Outer Worlds continues to grow.

What you need to know

• Obsidian Entertainment's The Outer Worlds got a DLC expansion in 2020 called Peril on Gorgon.
• The second and final DLC is called Murder on Eridanos.
• Murder on Eridanos is set to be available on March 17, 2021.

Obsidian Entertainment and Private Division's The Outer Worlds released in 2019, with the first expansion, Peril on Gorgon, releasing back in September 2020. Now, the second and final DLC pack is on the way. The Outer Worlds: Murder on Eridanos is coming to Xbox, PC and PlayStation on March 17.

Murder on Eridanos is exactly what it sounds like, a murder mystery where players use deduction and some special tools to figure out whodunnit. Dark secrets abound and the list of science weapons in The Outer Worlds is growing, so there's plenty to look forward to. You can take a look at the opening cinematic for the DLC below.

Obsidian Entertainment previously confirmed that The Outer Worlds would be enhanced for Xbox Series X but there's been no update on the status of this upgrade since the initial comment.

It's worth noting that like Peril on Gorgon, Xbox players can get a discount buying the DLC if they are subscribed to Xbox Game Pass.

What you need to know

• The Outer Worlds first released in October 2019.
• It was initially released on Xbox One, PS4 and PC through the Epic Games Store and Game Pass for PC.
• A Nintendo Switch port was released later on.
• The Outer Worlds is now available on Steam and GOG at 50% off until November 6.

While Obsidian Entertainment and Private Division's space RPG The Outer Worlds has been available on the Epic Games Store and Xbox Game Pass for PC, it hasn't been on any other PC platforms until now. The Outer Worlds is now available on Steam and GOG and if you grab it before November 6, you'll be able to get it for 50% off, or $30.

The Outer Worlds has one DLC expansion, Peril on Gorgon, while the second DLC, Murder on Eridanos, is scheduled to arrive at some point in 2021. There's a long list of science weapons and other unique gear for players to acquire as they talk, shoot or slash their way across Halcyon colony.

In our review, Xbox editor Jez Corden wrote that "The Outer Worlds is a tremendous RPG that feels like the culmination of Obsidian's efforts with similar franchises over the years. As a fan of classic Bioware and Bethesda RPGs, The Outer Worlds not only scratches the itch, but exceeds the legacy of the titles it draws inspiration from in some ways."

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Microsoft has officially acquired publisher ZeniMax Media, and with it, developers like Bethesda Game Studios, id Software, and Arkane Studios. Considering Microsoft already has developers such as Obsidian Entertainment and InXile Entertainment under its wing, this move shows how serious Microsoft is to committing to the RPG market. And one RPG specifically is now on the table that most gamers previously thought of as a pipe dream: a sequel (either direct or spiritual) to Fallout: New Vegas, which is often considered the best Fallout by many.

Now that Obsidian and Bethesda are now under one umbrella, the possibility seems more likely than ever.

It's what the fans want

Fallout fans have had a rough few years. Though Fallout 3 was mostly liked by players, many criticized how linear and restrictive the main questline was, with very little choice being offered to the player outside of side quests. While Bethesda did add more main questline options in Fallout 4, the game's dialogue system was universally panned by fans and critics alike for its low impact on the game as well as its lack of depth. And with the multiplayer-focused Fallout 76, Bethesda largely ditched the story-rich RPG roots of Fallout entirely (the Wastelanders update addressed this issue somewhat) and created an overall uneven game.

To say that Fallout fans have largely been disappointed in Bethesda's direction with the franchise would be an understatement. However, Obsidian Entertainment's Fallout: New Vegas was widely praised for the depth and nuance of its writing, as well as both the staggering level of player choice and the impact those choices made. As a result of Obsidian's more RPG-oriented approach, New Vegas is commonly thought of as the most popular of all the Fallout games — and fans have been hoping for a sequel to it for years.

However, ZeniMax Media never approached Obsidian again following the commercial and critical success of New Vegas. Bethesda Game Studios director Todd Howard said in a 2018 Guardian interview that the company wanted to keep development in house.

"I wouldn't say never, [But] now that our company is so big, it's always better to keep stuff internal . . . it becomes less likely, but I could never say never. I thought the Obsidian guys did a fabulous job," he said.

However, now that Microsoft has acquired ZeniMax, the door is open for Obsidian to work on Fallout again. And given that Obsidian has proven itself more than capable of continuing on with what it built in New Vegas with The Outer Worlds, there's no reason why Microsoft shouldn't capitalize on what the playerbase wants.

Obsidian is open to the idea

Even though we never saw a collaboration between Obsidian and ZeniMax again, Obsidian itself has expressed its openness to the idea. Obsidian's CEO, Feargus Uruqhart, stated in a 2017 interview that he would "love to do another Fallout." While it's true that Obsidian does have Avowed to work on — a game that many have likened to Elder Scrolls — we shouldn't rule out the possibility of collaborations after that.

Notably, when asked whether or not Fallout: New Vegas 2 was possible following Microsoft's acquisition of ZeniMax, Obsidian's Twitter account responded with a tongue-in-cheek unicode shrug emoticon. This has set off plenty of wild speculation, but, at the very least, it shows the idea isn't completely dead.

We won't see Fallout for a long time otherwise

This is just our idea, but allowing Obsidian to take on Fallout again would allow a new entry to happen sooner. On top of maintaining Fallout 76, Bethesda Game Studios is also currently working on both Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI, the latter of which seems especially far off. It's entirely possible that a new Fallout could take upwards of 10 years for Bethesda to get around to making.

If Obsidian makes a new Fallout game while Bethesda makes the next The Elder Scrolls, we could end up in a golden age where both games release at similar times. This would be a huge win for fans — and if both games end up on Xbox Game Pass when they launch, the Xbox Series X-selling potential for Microsoft would be enormous.

Your thoughts

What do you think? Do you believe Microsoft should have Obsidian make a successor to Fallout: New Vegas? Let us know.

If you're interested in experiencing Obsidian's masterful RPG design yourself, we highly recommend The Outer Worlds. It's currently on sale for 50 percent off on the Epic Games Store if you're a PC player, but the deal only lasts until Sept. 24, 2020. Also, make sure you catch our roundup of the best Xbox One RPGs.

The Outer Worlds stands firmly as one of the most exciting new RPGs in recent memory and fans have been eager to find any excuse to dive back in to this colorful universe. With the recent launch of Peril on Gorgon, there's never been a better time.

I sat down with Carrie Patel, the game director for Peril on Gorgon, to chat about what players can expect from this DLC, the inspirations for the new adventure, and how it ties in with the base game.

Miles Dompier, Windows Central: So I know a lot of people have been hungry for more The Outer Worlds content, which is an awesome place to be with with a new IP... If I'm someone who's gone through The Outer Worlds and I've done everything there is to do... what can somebody look forward to with Peril on Gorgon?"

Carrie Patel, Obsidian Entertainment: So Gorgon has a new story, several new locations, some new characters, and basically just a lot more of the content that players who enjoyed the base game are going to love. Again, this takes the player to a new location called the Gorgon asteroid for an entirely new story campaign with its own side quests and side missions.

You'll get three new science weapons as you're exploring. And then there are several new locations that we've added, in many cases to existing base game maps to just expand the world for the player and give them more places to dig into new content and characters."

So for players who are new to the game, if they're just jumping in for the first time (they've picked up The Outer Worlds and picked up Peril on Gorgon) what do they need to do exactly to get to this DLC? Do they need to be far into the game?

So you do need to make a bit of progress. The content with Gorgon is a bit higher level so we wanted to make sure that players have the skill points as well as the equipment to deal with it. The entry point can happen anytime between the completion of the Monarch Crypt path and the quest Radio Free Monarch, or the point of no return save that is generated when the player reaches the endgame — at any moment between those two points. Once you travel on your ship, there will be a unique event that gets fired off. And that will start your entry into Gorgon.

I know The Outer Worlds pulls a lot of inspiration from pulp sci-fi, and that seems to be very prominent and kind of amplified with Peril on Gorgon — your crew on The Unrealiable even talks about it being kind of parallel to a serial drama. So were there any specific shows or movies that inspired this this new adventure?

Not specifically. We wanted to take a little more of a pulp noir approach with Peril on Gorgon. We felt that was something that synced well with the the basic aesthetics and flavors of The Outer Worlds while also giving players a slightly new twist and spin on these things that feels, I think, very appropriate for the subject matter of Peril on Gorgon. But we weren't so much saying "let's look at the Maltese Falcon" or, you know, any specific property as much as like — these are flavors and themes and tones and elements that even people who are not really connoisseurs of pulp noir are going to recognize as kind of living in this in this general flavor.

Are you going to be involved with what what comes next for The Outer Worlds? I know this is the first bit of DLC, but without spoilers, does this tie into the main story at all? Or is it a cliffhanger?

It does have a defined beginning and ending, but we really did want this to feel synced up and meshed in with the base game. So someone playing the content from the start begins a new game and just has this content with the rest of their game. You will notice we do have UI elements that identify when you're on a Gorgon quest, and obviously, our new areas are related to the DLC content, but you can jump back and forth between the base game content and the Gorgon content.

We wanted this to feel like another seamless part of Halcyon and so it does have its own story arc. It does have its own internal path like Groundbreaker does, like Monarch does. But we wanted to find that sweet spot between having events and having content that reflects on the larger world and the reflects on the quest that you're doing as part of the main game but that is also self-contained enough that it's going to feel appropriate and adaptable for players no matter where they're entering content from.

Are there any other key features or details that you want to stress for fans of the series fans of the game? What are you most excited about for players to kind of experience with this?

Coming from a narrative background, I'm super excited about the new story and characters that many of our writers have introduced. I think we've got some fantastic new conversations and moments that players who enjoyed that in the base game are really going to love.

I also think that our environment art team has taken our area design, just the look, aesthetic, and the environmental storytelling of many of our areas, just up to a new level. And there are also a few ways that I don't want to spoil anything, but we really did try to embrace player freedom with this DLC. So we really did go out of our way to try to accommodate "if players color outside the lines here, how can we accommodate them?" How can we make sure that we're not just providing a fall through but that the short story really is shaping itself around the decision they just made? So I think I think players who really dig in, explore heavily and try different things are going to be rewarded.

Bottom line

The team at Obsidian Entertainment has something truly special on their hands wiith The Outer Worlds and the first piece of DLC is a great sign of things to come. Peril on Gorgon is available now on all platforms and offers a special discount for Xbox Game Pass members.

What you need to know

• The Outer Worlds is an open-world RPG from Obsidian Entertainment, the creator of Fallout: New Vegas.
• It was received very positively, but did get some criticism for being a little shorter or shallower than expected.
• The game's first DLC, Peril on Gorgon, adds a ton of new content, including loads of new areas, and works to solve these complaints.
• It's available now, and is a very promising first DLC expansion for the Outer Worlds.

The Outer Worlds is a fantastic game in its own right, but Obsidian Entertainment isn't done yet. The first DLC expansion, Peril on Gorgon is now available for purchase, either standalone or as part of a greater Expansion Pass that will also include the Murder on Eridanos expansion coming later on. In our preview, we concluded that Peril on Gorgon is very promising, adding lots more to do with huge varied areas and new weapons.

If you're interested, you can grab Peril on Gorgon right now for $15 as an add-on for the Outer Worlds, or you can spend $25 to grab the Expansion Pass that will include Peril on Gorgon and Murder on Eridanos. If you're an Xbox Game Pass subscriber, you can grab a 10% discount on either one, saving you a little bit of cash. Also, the Outer Worlds is currently half off, giving players a reason to purchase the game to own if they want.

The Outer Worlds definitely benefits from the addition of Peril on Gorgon, with further content planned down the line. Obsidian has also promised optimizations for the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S.

What you need to know

• The Xbox Series S was recently announced following a couple of major leaks.
• Today, Microsoft detailed the technical specifications for the console, with the same CPU as the Xbox Series X.
• We also got to see Gears 5 and The Outer Worlds running on Xbox Series S at higher framerates and loading faster, respectively.

After months and months of speculation, the Xbox Series S was finally announced following a couple of leaks. The console is a digital-only system with a retail price of $299. In order to hit that price, it doesn't quite have the beefy graphical specs of the Xbox Series X. It does feature the same SSD tech and the same 8-core CPU just clocked at 3.4Ghz with SMT, or 3.6Ghz without it, which you should keep in mind when trying to figure out which console is right for you.

You can take a look at the video below for a deep dive into how the system works via Jason Ronald, Director of Program Management at Microsoft. The video shows Gears 5 multiplayer running on Xbox Series S at 120 FPS, as well as The Outer Worlds loading in 12 seconds on Xbox Series S compared to 53 seconds on Xbox One S.

The Xbox Series S is set to release on November 10 alongside the Xbox Series X.

Xbox Series X/S

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The Outer Worlds is one of the highlights of this generation. This outstanding game continues RPG shooter traditions fostered by Obsidian with Fallout New Vegas, set in a vibrant sci-fi spacefaring world full of pirates, rampant capitalism, and high-tech weaponry.

The Outer Worlds is quite a hefty game in its own right, taking anywhere between 20 to 30 hours for a single playthrough. However, the game is being expanded considerably with the Peril of Gorgon, its first of two planned DLC packages, set on an asteroid colony, and one of Spacer's Choice' pharmaceutical R&D blacksites.

In Peril of Gorgon, you'll uncover the truth about what happened on this mysterious rock, hired by an eccentric prodigy to repair her family's disgraced legacy, and unearth the origins of one of the game's most enigmatic factions.

Peril on Gorgon

Peril on Gorgon will be accessible after hitting level 25 and completing some parts of the main game. It all begins on your ship, following a mysterious delivery lands right on your doorstep. Or well, right in your airlock. The package contains an audio log, attached to a severed arm. How intriguing. We went hands-on with the first hour, and quite honestly left with more questions than answers. But hey, that's probably a good thing, since I'm pretty much instantly hooked.

Addressed to the previous owner of your ship, the audio log is from a freelancer known as Lucky Montoya, of some renown. Pointing you towards the asteroid colony known as Gorgon, along with a high-stakes job with high-stakes pay. Being the cash-loving freelancer that you are, you set about meeting up with Lucky's contact, an eccentric recluse, Minnie Ambrose.

The daughter of pharma prodigy Dr. Olivia Ambrose, Minnie lives in a run-down mansion on the edge of the Gorgon asteroid as part of a larger abandoned space colony formerly owned by Spacer's Choice, effectively left to its own devices. Despite how dilapidated Minnie's manor has become, she at least appears to have full command of her sanity — she does also warn you not to trust anyone, though. Which is at least slightly ominous.

Minnie offers you an enormous chunk of her considerable fortune if we're able to complete Lucky's mission, which was to ultimately uncover the truth of what happened on Gorgon.

Gorgon is full of abandoned factories and facilities and is notably where the Spacer's Choice pharmaceutical company developed the Adrena-Time enhancement drug, alongside various other in-game meds that can enhance your performance (just don't read the side effects in the small print).

Minnie's mother spent her career on Gorgon, developing products for Spacer's Choice, only to be caught up in a massive cover-up that led to the entire colony being abandoned.

Where did the marauders come from anyway?

One of The Outer Worlds' weaker plot points, at least in my opinion, was that of the Marauders, who are essentially a band of loosely-organized raiders and psychopaths that seem to span various worlds. I figured Obsidian just needed an excuse to have a human enemy faction of some type, and they are given some loose plot details in the base game. However, the early parts of Peril on Gorgon hint that there might be a pharmacological reason for their addled behavior and that Spacer's Choice may have gone to some lengths towards covering it up.

Indeed, Gorgon is swarming with marauders and raiders, picking through the ruins and murdering anyone that strays too far away from the Sprat Shack bar and spaceport.

Speaking of which, the Sprat Shack is your first port of call for investigating Lucky's disappearance. He had long-term rented a room there and had filled it with investigative leads and information about Spacer's Choice, the corporation behind this apparent cover-up. It's in there that you find your first lead, pointing you towards the Office of Creative Incubation.

The Office of Creative Incubation is a large building filled with droids, marauders, and juicy details of Spacer's Choice' pharmaceutical endeavors, celebrating the best of their products right inside the reception area with prideful display cabinets.

A shell of its former self, sliding into ruin, it's interesting to wonder what Gorgon might have been like in its heyday, bustling with scientists. The corruption of Spacer's Choice was always there, though, ticking like a bomb ready to explode. The Gorgonites and the colonists paid the price, and you're there to find out why.

A promising addition

Gorgon's map is one of the larger in the game, with various interior areas to explore and new weapons to play with as you weave your way through the detective-style narrative. It seems like an excellent first addition to The Outer Worlds, which will be joined in a few months by another DLC called Murder on Eridanos. The Outer Worlds will also nab an Xbox Series X enhanced version for good measure as well.

The Outer Worlds "Peril of Gorgon" launches on September 9, for Xbox One, PC, and PlayStation 4.

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What you need to know

• The Outer Worlds is a role-playing game (RPG) developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Private Division.
• Two DLC packs are being released for The Outer Worlds: Peril on Gorgon and Murder on Eridanos.
• The Outer Worlds is also being optimized for Xbox Series X.

During the recent Xbox Games Showcase, Obsidian Entertainment revealed that it is releasing two DLC packs for its 2019 RPG The Outer Worlds. The first of these DLCs was announced with the title Peril on Gorgon, with a release date of September 9, 2020.

Thanks to Xbox Wire, we now know that the second DLC pack coming in 2021 is called Murder on Eridanos. Peril on Gorgon and Murder on Eridanos are both $15 separately, or $25 together via an Expansion Pass. Xbox Wire also confirmed that The Outer Worlds will be optimized for Xbox Series X.

Both DLCs are also introducing new armor sets and new perks, as well as mysterious and zany new science weapons. We have a full list of the unique guns, armor and science weapons in The Outer Worlds which we'll be updating as the DLC arrives.

Obsidian Entertainment has been extremely busy since being acquired by Microsoft and added to Xbox Game Studios. In addition to continuing to add to The Outer Worlds, there's teams working on survival game Grounded and upcoming fantasy RPG Avowed.

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What you need to know

• Obsidian and Private Division announced the first story DLC for The Outer Worlds during the Xbox showcase.
• Peril on Gorgon is set to release Sept. 9, 2020.
• The DLC will cost $15 across consoles, but Xbox Game Pass users will receive a 10% discount.

The first of two story DLCs for the hit 2019 game The Outer Worlds was announced today at the Xbox showcase and promises a lot of new content for players looking to explore more of the Halcyon solar system.

Peril on Gorgon, which Obsidian Entertainment and Private Division describe as "a noir-tinged adventure" in a press release, will take place on the Gorgon Asteroid, a new location in the game, and will task the player to uncover the origins of Adrena-Time. For the unitiated, Adrena-Time is a consumable in the game that increases the player character's speed. Unfortunately, while you get 20% movement speed for 15 seconds, you'll also get an Adrena-Time Crash after it wears off. It's described in-game as "liquid caffeine with boosters."

Along with some story to pad out the narratively-rich and quirky world, the DLC will also introduce new weapons, armor, perks, and flaws. According to some new screenshots released, there will also be new enemies to fight and locales to explore. The screenshots also show that the good ol' Spacer's Choice will also be involved and that there's something called Project Gorgon that the player will learn about... and that some people might want to hide.

You can check out some more screenshots below.

The DLC was teased earlier this week with a tweet and a video message on the game's official website. That video, when played, reveals a new Spacer's Choice slogan: "On Gorgon, it's always… Adrena-Time." Another line below that reads, "Made with real Xenocyte waste!"

The DLC will be available on Sept. 9 for $15 on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. Players who bought the expansion pass will get it, along with the second DLC, which has yet to be announced, for $25. Xbox Game Pass users will also receive a 10% discount on the DLC.

What you need to know

• The Outer Worlds is a first-person adventure game from Obsidian Entertainment.
• The title is also available on PlayStation 4 due to past publishing agreements.
• The developer said the game was getting a story expansion in 2020.
• The Outer Worlds is available through Xbox Game Pass.

The Outer Worlds is a first-person role-playing game (RPG) from Obsidian Entertainment. Despite the fact that the team is now a part of Xbox Game Studios, this game is available on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch due to past publishing agreements.

Recently, on Obsidian Entertainment's forums, the team thanked everyone for their support during The Game Awards 2019. However, the story of The Outer Worlds isn't over yet. Shyla, the Social Media Manager, confirmed that story downloadable content (DLC) was on the way in 2020. You can read a condensed version of the post below.

It's great to see that the game is getting new DLC in 2020. We can't wait to see where the developer takes the adventure next. Maybe some romance DLC will be available too? One can hope. It seems like the DLC announcement may be dropping during the July 23 Xbox Series X gameplay showcase.

In Windows Central's review, Jez Corden wrote, "The Outer Worlds is a tremendous RPG that feels like the culmination of Obsidian's efforts with similar franchises over the years. As a fan of classic Bioware and Bethesda RPGs, The Outer Worlds not only scratches the itch, but exceeds the legacy of the titles it draws inspiration from in some ways."

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What you need to know

• Take-Two Interactive has provided its Q3 financial report.
• Grand Theft Auto V has crossed 120 million units sold in.
• Red Dead Redemption 2 has reached 29 million units sold in, with Borderlands 3 nearing 8 million units.
• The Outer Worlds has sold in over 2 million copies.

Take-Two Interactive has shared its Q3 2020 financial report, showing the performance of multiple different games and the company as a whole. Of immediate note is Grand Theft Auto V, which has crossed 120 million units sold-in. Grand Theft Auto V was previously established as the best-selling game of the decade in the U.S. Grand Theft Auto Online exceeded Take-Two's expectations due to the launch of the Diamond Casino update.

While the GTA juggernaut continues, western adventure Red Dead Redemption 2 has sold in 29 million copies. The PC version launched late in 2019, which helped propel this number up. Borderlands 3 has sold in almost 8 million units, up from 7 million back in November 2019. The Outer Worlds has crossed 2 million copies sold in since launch, which "significantly succeeded expectations."

Take-Two also noted that the new studio Cloud Chamber, established to work on the next BioShock game, "will be in development for the next several years."

When asked about the departure of Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said that "Rockstar Games individually, and Take-Two as a whole, are a team sport. The team leader at Rockstar Games is Sam Houser, who founded the label, and we believe in the entire team, led by Sam. We feel really great about it, even as we wish Dan well on the next chapter in his career."

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What you need to know

• The Outer Worlds is a first-person adventure game from Obsidian Entertainment.
• The title is also available on PlayStation 4 due to past publishing agreements.
• The developer is going to issue a patch next week which brings a Field of View option to consoles.
• The Outer Worlds is available through Xbox Game Pass.

Updated March 13, 2020: It seems like the text size update only applied to a small number of menus, so now the team has released another patch that allows you to make small text larger throughout the game. You can catch the patch notes on The Outer World's website.

The Outer Worlds is an upcoming first-person role-playing game (RPG) from Obsidian Entertainment. Despite the fact that the team is now a part of Xbox Game Studios, this game is available on PlayStation 4 — and will be coming to Nintendo Switch down the line.

Just like any game, it has a number of odd bugs on consoles and PC. Luckily, a patch is in the works which should be available next week, maybe Monday or Tuesday. The team said the following on the Obsidian forums.

You can take a look at the important changes below. The biggest addition has to be the Field of View setting on Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

• Updated the Large Text Mode setting to apply to Examinables.
• Added Chromatic Aberration setting to all platforms.
• Added Controller Aiming Sensitivity setting to all platforms.
• Added Head Bobbing setting to all platforms.
• Added Field of View setting to Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
• Fixed weapons unholstering when interacting with the environment.
• Fixed additional cases of companion quests being marked as Botched incorrectly.
• Fixed audio cutting out when scrolling on the map.
• Added a notification for when companions gain Perks from quests.
• Fixed companions calling the player's attacks ineffective even if they were dealing damage.
• Fixed the Prismatic Hammer not benefiting from several melee Skills and Perks.
• Fixed the Prismatic Hammer not benefiting from Critical Hits.
• Increased damage of Handguns.
• Fixed Dr. Chartrand attacking the player after she agrees to help them.
• Fixed the Look Up and Look Down keybindings being swapped.
• Added Foliage graphics setting to PC.
• Added Enable Cinematic Kill Camera setting.
• Updated Vendor interface to show carry weight and encumbrance limit.
• Updated item tooltips to better indicate Pristine items.
• Added item sorting options to the Companion and Workbench screens.
• Added SuperNova survival meters to the Consumables screen.

What did you think of The Outer Worlds? Let us know. We can't wait to get our hands on the update to check out how far the field of view can be changed.

In Windows Central's review, Jez Corden wrote, "The Outer Worlds is a tremendous RPG that feels like the culmination of Obsidian's efforts with similar franchises over the years. As a fan of classic Bioware and Bethesda RPGs, The Outer Worlds not only scratches the itch, but exceeds the legacy of the titles it draws inspiration from in some ways."

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What you need to know

• The Outer Worlds is a first-person role-playing game from Obsidian Entertainment.
• Since launch, players have been complaining about its small text size.
• There's a patch to fix that.
• You can access The Outer Worlds through Xbox Game Pass.

Updated November 19, 2019: Today, Obsidian Entertainment released a patch for The Outer Worlds that not only increases font size of conversations, but also fixes a lot of other bugs. You can take a look at all of the changes below.

• Fixed the game crashing at a specific point when the player has reached Tartarus.
• Toggle to increase the font size in Settings.
• The Prismatic Hammer has been rebalanced and no longer incorrectly uses the level multiplier as an exponent instead of a multiplier.
• Existing Botched companion quests will have their status reset to Active allowing the player to add them to a party when leaving the ship.
• Fix for Radio Free Monarch where issues would happen when talking to Nayoka while having SAM in your party.
• Foliage on the Xbox One now has parity with the foliage on PlayStation 4.
• The achievement for It's Not the Best Choice will pop correctly.

The Outer Worlds is a first-person role-playing game that takes you to various planets. While the title has received a lot of critical acclaim, there are some issues like small text size and more. Luckily, the game is about to get a patch to fix all that.

According to a report by TrueAchievements, the next update will fix a lot. The main tweaks can be seen below.

• Fixed the crashing issue in Tartarus.
• Increased font size in conversations and subtitles.
• Fixed companions dying and failing companion quests on modes other than "Supernova."
• Fixed unable to finish Radio Free Monarch bug.

It's great to see that The Outer Worlds is addressing customer complaints in a timely fashion. Hopefully, other changes based on player feedback will be rolled out in a similar fashion. One of the biggest complaints Xbox One owners have is that there is less foliage in the world when compared to the PlayStation 4 version. While the Xbox One X port runs at native 4K resolution, compared to 1440p on PlayStation 4 Pro, it would still be nice to have the same level of detail. We'll keep you posted as soon as we know more.

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This year, video games realized that the biggest villain of all was capitalism.

That isn't to say that a version of the rich hasn't been the antagonist before. Class revolt is a tale as old as modern history. However, the system of capitalism, the structure of class inequality, has never been at the forefront of the media we consume so consistently. Us, the horror movie that came out in early 2019, posits a world where the subjugated lower class rise up from the underground, where they were tucked away from the privileged up above, and take out those with the lives they deserve. Ready or Not tells the story of a lower-class woman who becomes the target of a group of upper-class weirdos who want her dead only so they can keep living their cushy lives.

That extends, of course, into video games. The last couple of months brought us three games that utilized capitalism as the villain in one way or another: Borderlands 3, The Outer Worlds, and Disco Elysium. These games tackle the idea in different ways — some more successful than others — but they suggest that the issue is at the forefront of a lot of people's minds.

Borderlands 3: Literal hostile takeovers

The Borderlands franchise has always been about this tangentially. Pandora is a world that was destroyed by greed, with corporations leeching off the land, bringing prosperity to the everyday citizen, and then backing out. They created a foundation and then pulled it out like a rug from underneath everyone, allowing everything to fall into disrepair and anarchy.

The series is packed with both light and dark humor that simultaneously draws attention to the socio-economic past of this planet while forcing you to ignore it, which can be to its detriment. Borderlands 3 especially suffers, and with its renewed focus on the corporations compared to other entries, it's disappointing that the story doesn't lean more on it. The corporations and their avatars (Aurelia Hammerlock, in particular) are definitely the villains. Still, the depth of their characterization is about their exorbitant wealth and their apathy towards violence, which is common throughout the Borderlands universe, no matter the character's status.

The one exception to the one-note "corporations are evil" foundation in Borderlands 3 is the story of Atlas and how Rhys is trying to turn the company around. His mission statement is about how not all corporations are bad because Atlas is nice now. That's nice in theory but doesn't sway the story in one direction or another. You help Rhys out, and you move on to another corporation. There isn't anything more profound than that concerning how Rhys grapples with his past as a lackey at a similar corporation or the morality of its existence in the first place. Atlas has a horrible history, and no amount of goodwill can change that.

The problem with Borderlands is that it never grapples with its socio-economic foundations enough. The emphasis is on crass jokes that are sometimes funny but almost always elicit reactions from the player. The series is about the gameplay, the looting, and, occasionally, the characters. It's never been a series about the foundation it built but rather the indifference it causes.

The Outer Worlds: We live in a society

The Outer Worlds goes a lot further, at least attempting to grapple with the same idea. The corporations came in, colonized planets, and either backed out or set up systems that favor the rich. As the player, who is thrust into this situation after decades in cryostasis, you not only have to learn about how everything works but have the freedom to decide if you can do anything about it. You're tasked multiple times with deciding the future of corporation-run settlements and whether they should be left alone or destroyed (of course, you can ignore all of that and just kill everybody you meet, which is the fun of The Outer Worlds).

I started my first playthrough with an anti-capitalist stance, which goes along with what the game wants you to think initially about these entities. The first person you meet outside of the mad scientist that woke you up is a man who regurgitates a company's slogan multiple times. The first town is ripe with bureaucracy, including a system that punishes the sick and the suicidal in favor of running efficiently. It's easy to say "down with capitalism" within this structure.

However, things are more complicated. The alternatives aren't much better — often run by idiosyncratic psychopaths or the angry and desperate — so a lot of choices come down to which one you think is the lesser of two evils. Do you want to stick with your morals, or do you want to maintain the system because it'll hurt the least amount of people?

What The Outer Worlds wants you to think about is how ingrained capitalism is in societal structures. You can topple Spacer Choice's hold on Edgewater, for example, by redirecting power to the settlement of exiles. Still, you'll mostly be harming the residents, since Spacer's Choice doesn't care about the quality of life. Later you can choose to help out either a corporate stooge or his anarchist counterpart. The former is mostly a pathetic bootlicker, but mostly harmless, while the other was complicit in mass murder. Is your anti-capitalist stance worth it?

This is a simplistic, centrist interpretation of "capitalism as evil." It's pessimistic and values, as Patrick Klepek at Vice put it, pragmatism over revolution. It's an outwardly political stance in a world where other AAA games want to stress how apolitical they are but remains safe because it doesn't take an extremely partisan view. It does make the player question the value of a system run by corporations (which is one we're increasingly moving toward in multiple countries) by making the corporations distant idiots but only goes far enough to question how we think about toppling that system. The game revels in moral ambiguity and creating quandaries for the player, but doesn't have much to say beyond that things are complicated.

Disco Elysium: Everything is screwed

The final game here, Disco Elysium, has no qualms about taking an ideological stance on the issue. In fact, it delights in creating situations where your understanding of how structures like capitalism and race theory affect our thinking, our relationships with other people, and how ultimately they don't matter.

In case you missed it, Disco Elysium is a CRPG developed by indie studio ZA/UM. It's inspired by old-school CRPGs and tabletop games, specifically in how they present situations and dialog, but it goes above and beyond. It parodies the task of using skill checks to make choices by forcing you to do it each time you want to do anything. Want to admire a piece of art? The dice will roll. Want to try and get your tie from a ceiling fan without dying? Check again. Want to wake up from an alcoholic stupor and discover your basic amphibian brain? Go for it.

It all sounds obtuse, but the critical thing to note about Disco Elysium is that through its absurd, over-the-top structure, it crafts a world filled with failure. The lower classes rose up in revolt and failed. The communist workers are on strike but are failing. The government body and its mercenaries are trying to stop the strike, but are failing. You are a cop hired to solve a murder that is connected to this economic conflict, but are failing so spectacularly just trying to walk that it's hilarious and sad. You can't even find a place to sleep at night.

That failure also translates its central thesis: that the world is screwed. The game's world, which is an alternate version of our own, lops multiple ideologies onto the player, forcing you to engage with the minutiae of them if you want. But mostly, it's asking you to either buy into it for the sake of completing a quest or getting on an NPC's good side. Disco Elysium also has a thought system that lets you contemplate concepts like self-destruction and communism to gain skills or knowledge. It's a world filled with people overthinking and believing too hard in horrible ideologies like racism (yes, really), and you're forced into it.

This all pertains to its views on capitalism and socialism. It perfectly captures the imperfection of every system, forces you to engage with it, understand their moral problems, and show you how you can do nothing about it. It's The Outer Worlds ramped up to 11. It traps you and cynically forces you to engage regardless of your power. Whether you solve a murder or not is inconsequential because everything around you will hold you back. It's not a fresh take, but it's one of the most complex. How can you complete quests in a game that adheres to a quest system and makes it impossible for you to do so? How does that relate to your actual situation outside of the game?

Bottom line

It might not matter to you at all what games thinking of capitalism, corporations, and other economic issues, but all of this stuff matters to games. The industry is more profitable than it's ever been, but studios are closing, and hundreds of workers are losing their jobs. Think of all the companies at the center of these discussions: Telltale, Activision Blizzard, Amazon Game Studios, ArenaNet, EA Australia's Firemonkeys, and many, many more. Studios have been shut down, and hundreds have been laid off, and that's just been in the past year and a half.

As more video game staffers lose their jobs, unionizing is a more pronounced topic than ever before. Issues of burnout and crunch are at the forefront of the news as well, crafting an image of an industry that needs to change for the sake of its workers.

Three big releases just over the past couple of months have been about the very thing that's affecting the games industry the most right now. The people creating these games are often supported by big corporations, but is it tough to assume that there's a connection?

What you need to know

• The Outer Worlds is a massive RPG available on Xbox and PC.
• It has color-blind features baked into the game without the need for a toggle.
• Outer Worlds is available on Game Pass Ultimate.

When the Outer Worlds was released it was received with much critical acclaim. As our very own Jez Cordon says "There is no question in my mind that The Outer Worlds represents an instant classic." What you may not know though is the game was also designed with certain accessibility options in mind from the start.

Josh Sawyer, the Studio Design Director at Obsidian, explained in a recent tweet that the team built the Outer Worlds to be "playable without color information." If you suffer from the different types of color blindness then certain colors, when put next to each other, merge.

By making sure the Outer Worlds works without the need for color information Obsidian has opened the game up for many players to experience the game without fear of missing key parts, or having their enjoyment dampened.

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I'm the kind of player that almost always puts all my points into intelligence, perception, and dialog-based skills when I play RPGs. Because of that, I didn't notice that you can go in the absolute opposite direction with amazing results.

A friend of mine alerted me to the "dumb" dialog options, which show up after you build your character. You don't just not put points in Intelligence. You have to take them away, So instead of getting dialog options that pertain to your Intelligence or Perception, you get stuff like this.

Interestingly, I found that you get more "dumb" options when you talk to more intelligent characters. For instance, Vicar Max is arguably the smartest of your companions (or at least, he has the most verbose vocabulary), so I got more opportunities to be an idiot with him. He also responds in a way that makes you feel terrible, which is completely in character for him. I haven't been able to test this out with other characters yet, but that seems to be the pattern.

Not to drive this comparison into the ground, but players might remember something similar from a previous Obsidian joint, Fallout: New Vegas. In that game, you could be offered dialog options that play on your lack of skill in a certain area. This created some comedic moments as you not only failed a skill check, but blew it in front of an important NPC. You can check out some great ones over on this Reddit thread. While this applied to a lot of skills in New Vegas, the "dumb" option seems to at least work with related skills like Persuade.

One of the best parts of playing The Outer Worlds has been talking with other players to see how they're playing it. As I previously stated, I went all-in on intelligence and dialog skills with little in combat, but others have done the opposite. I also know people who are doing all-violence playthroughs or going strictly anti-capitalist. There's a lot of variety here that'll be interesting to explore.

Are you doing anything interesting with your playthrough? Sound off in the comments below.

The Outer Worlds, Obsidian's new RPG that's been receiving rave reviews is finally available for all. But, as PC players have begun to jump into the Halcyon colonies many are experiencing some pretty irritating performance issues.

I've experienced these first-hand, as have friends and an increasing number of people hitting places like the Outer Worlds subreddit. In the case of frame rate and all-round jittering, there is at least something you can do that should help improve the problem.

Unfortunately, it means running at a lower frame rate. But, I've tested this out and over the course of an hour or so playing across the early missions in and around Edgewater and it does seem to have helped stabilize the frame rate.

Head into the games settings and change each of these:

• Ensure the game is running in fullscreen. By default Outer Worlds seems set to run in windowed fullscreen.
• Limit the frame rate to 60 FPS.

Prior to applying both of these settings I'd been seeing what it appears many others are, frequent stuttering and much dipping of the frame rate. Since there's no option in between 60 FPS and 120 FPS, 60 FPS seems to have done the trick. You could also enable VSync, but I've left it off and everything is fine.

But with the above applied the game now seems pretty stable, even running at Ultra settings. In no situation has the GPU been maxed out, and while I can't speak for everyone's issues, in my own case it's certainly not the hardware that's running out of headroom.

So, give this a shot and hopefully it helps stabilize things a little. Hopefully Obsidian has some patches on the way to fix the issue properly.

The Outer Worlds is available now on Xbox One, PS4 and PC and is available in Xbox Game Pass for console and PC.

What you need to know

• The Outer Worlds is a first-person adventure game from Obsidian Entertainment.
• The title is finally available on Xbox One and PC.
• The game is also on PlayStation 4 due to past publishing agreements.
• The Outer Worlds can be accessed through Xbox Game Pass.

The Outer Worlds is a first-person adventure game from Obsidian Entertainment. Despite the fact that the team is now a part of Xbox Game Studios, this game is available on PlayStation 4 — and will be coming to Nintendo Switch down the line.

If you've been waiting for the title for a while, you'll be happy to know that it's finally available on Xbox One and PC through Xbox Game Pass. You can either purchase it for $60, or play it through Xbox Game Pass for Xbox One or PC. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate offers both subscriptions and Xbox Live Gold for $15 a month.

The Outer Worlds is Xbox One X Enhanced and features 4K resolution and 4K textures just like the PC version. The frame rate appears to be locked to 30 frames per second though, unlike the PC port. The PlayStation 4 Pro version doesn't appear to feature 4K textures and only renders at 1440p.

Related: 5 tips you need to know for The Outer Worlds

In Windows Central's review, Jez Corden wrote, "The Outer Worlds is a tremendous role-playing game that feels like the culmination of Obsidian Entertainment's efforts with similar franchises over the years. As a fan of classic BioWare and Bethesda games, The Outer Worlds not only scratches the itch, but exceeds the legacy of the titles it draws inspiration from in some ways."

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What you need to know

• The Outer Worlds is a first-person adventure game from Obsidian Entertainment.
• The title is also available on PlayStation 4 due to past publishing agreements.
• The developer just revealed launch times in each region.
• The Outer Worlds is available through Xbox Game Pass.

The Outer Worlds is an upcoming first-person adventure game from Obsidian Entertainment. Despite the fact that the team is now a part of Xbox Game Studios, this game is available on PlayStation 4 — and will be coming to Nintendo Switch down the line.

The Outer Worlds is scheduled to launch on October 25, but that exact timings are different in various regions. For example, on the American West Coast, you can play it on October 24 at 9 PM local time. Luckily, the developer posted the following image to help gamers with the time conversions.

Related: 5 tips you need to know for The Outer Worlds

The Outer Worlds is Xbox One X Enhanced and features 4K resolution and 4K textures just like the PC version. The frame rate appears to be locked to 30 frames per second though, unlike the PC port. The PlayStation 4 Pro version doesn't appear to feature 4K textures and only renders at 1440p.

In Windows Central's review, Jez Corden wrote, "The Outer Worlds is a tremendous role-playing game that feels like the culmination of Obsidian Entertainment's efforts with similar franchises over the years. As a fan of classic BioWare and Bethesda games, The Outer Worlds not only scratches the itch, but exceeds the legacy of the titles it draws inspiration from in some ways."

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There's a lot to do in The Outer Worlds, but one of the most important elements has to be the companion system. As with RPGs that have come before, like Fallout and Mass Effect, companions provide you extra quests and bonuses, but they also fill out the game with story and flavor. There are six potential companions in the game, and because the game is so big, it's easy to miss a couple. Here's how to get them all and how to use them.

What you need to know first

The Outer Worlds follows a lot of the same patterns set up by RPGs past in regards to its companions. You can have up to two in your party simultaneously and can send a companion back to the ship at any point. If you feel like the fit isn't right you can dismiss a companion from your crew.

There are two trickier elements to the companion system. One is the perks. Just like with your character, as you level up your companions can unlock another perk. Most of them are the same across the board — such as increasing base health or upping their armor rating — but each one has unique perks that grant the party bonuses. The ones listed for each companion below are only active if you unlock the perk and then have the person in your party, but they're incredibly helpful. It also makes you think harder about which companions you want to take with you.

The second thing to note is their abilities, which only unlock if your Determination skill is over 20. It's easy to miss this category when you're modifying your skill tree since it's at the bottom and isn't as outwardly useful as Lockpick or Persuade, for instance, but it's worth putting points into. The more you level up your Leadership skills, the more abilities you unlock and the stronger your companions get.

More: The Outer Worlds beginner's guide: 5 must-know tips before take-off

Pavarti

Pavarti can be described with one word: sweetheart. She's naive and willing to see the best in people, which includes some of the worst that the game has to offer, but she can potentially be the player's moral compass if you let her. Since she's new to the world outside her home in Edgewater, she might need some help in more mature areas, like love. Don't let her sweet demeanor fool you: she's also a smart and capable engineer that can be mean with a two-handed hammer.

Where you find her

In Edgewater. Pavarti is the easiest companion to recruit since she doesn't require an extra quest to get her on your team. You just need to go to the Cannery to complete the main quest and she'll be there with the boss.

Companion quest

Drinking Sapphire Wine. You can introduce her to Junlei Tennyson, who's the captain of the Groundbreaker. Pavarti originally wants to just pick Junlei's brain about fixing ships, but she develops a huge crush. Is love requited or is Pavarti reading too into a vague situation?

Perk bonuses

• Bonus Support Engineering: +10 to Engineering.
• Mod Finder: +10% chance to extract mods in the field.
• Synchronicity: +25% tactical time dilation meter (when she performs her ability it recharges some of your meter).

Vicar Max

The priest that sent you on a quest for a book in Edgewater was the last person I expected to recruit to my crew, but he's become one of my favorite members. Max is a priest with a spiritual quest, but he's also an experienced hacker and fighter thanks to some shady parts of his past that get revealed over time. He also has some of the best quips in the game. Activate his ability during combat any chance you get to hear great one-liners.

Where you find him

If you complete the sidequest The Illustrated Manual in Edgewater and return the book to the Vicar, he asks to join your crew so that he can track down how to translate the book.

Companion quest

The Empty Man. Max tells you he knows of a man who can help him translate the text, which takes you on a journey to multiple parts of Halcyon, from the Groundbreaker to Scylla. Take this quest on and you'll learn a thing or two about the mysterious priest.

Perk bonuses

• Bonus Support Hack: +10 hack.
• Sermon: +20% dialog combat effect duration.
• Mad Max: +20% Science Weapon damage.

Ellie

Ellie is an enigma. She's a tough pirate that joins your crew after you help her on the Groundbreaker. It wasn't a huge favor, but she doesn't like to leave debts hanging, apparently. Every time you try and speak with her about your past she brushes you off. What's she hiding? Is she a criminal on the run from the Board? Did she anger the wrong people during her pirate days? Her companion quest is the toughest to find, but until then you can use her to increase the medical skills of your party. She's, surprisingly, a great medic.

Where you find her

You'll recruit her after you complete the quest Worst Contact on Groundbreaker. Here you have to find a way to talk to Jessie, an acquaintance of Ellie's who's been oddly locked up in the sick bay for a while.

Companion quest

The Low Crusade. Make sure you have Ellie on your crew when you finally visit Byzantium. She'll ask you to visit her parents, you know, if you're in the area.

Perk bonuses

• Bonus Support Medical: +10 to Medical.
• First Responder: +20% Heal Amount granted by the Medical Inhaler.
• CPR: When she's in the party, any damage that would kill you instead heals 25% of health. This ability has a five-minute cooldown.

Felix

Sweet, young, innocent Felix. He doesn't seem to know anything, on account of him being trapped on the Groundbreaker as an orphan his entire life. He joins your crew because he's desperate to experience more, which can become a boon if you know how to utilize him. He's a rebel with a mean streak if you bring him into battle, but he also provides some laughs as other team members like Nyoka tease him for being so naive and uninformed.

Where you find him

On Groundbreaker. He shows up at your ship as you're about to leave the first time and tells you that he's been creepily stalking you for a while, hoping you'll take him with you. He desperately wants to get off the ship and live a new life.

Companion quest

Friendship's Due. Felix tells you that he received a mysterious message from an old friend of his wondering if he wants to be a part of a "revolutionary project." Felix wonders if he's in trouble. It's almost definitely a trap, right?

Perk bonuses

• Bonus Support Persuade: +10 Persuade.
• Bootlickers!: +20 damage to cowering enemies.
• Rebellion: +20% damage to corporate military.

Nyoka

This hunter has a drinking problem, but that won't stop her from pulling out a giant gun in battle and mowing down enemies. Always have her in your party when you go down to Monarch because she seems to know everybody and has insight into certain areas and groups of people. Don't let her snarky and tough exterior fool you though; she has a tragic past that unravels over the course of the game. She's lost a lot of people and has been screwed over by the corporations more than most.

Where you find her

In Stellar Bay. You need her to track down Hiram Blythe for the main story, but first you have to help her get sober.

Companion quest

Star-Crossed Troopers. She's trying to both track down the lost members of her crew and to collect mementos from those already dead. It's a surprisingly gigantic quest that can take you across Halcyon.

Perk bonuses

• Bonus Support Lie: +10 to lie when she's in the party.
• Hunter: -20% radius of footstep sounds.
• Exterminator: +20% damage to creatures.

SAM

SAM is the closest the game gets to a joke companion, sort of like equipping Clap-Trap into your party. However, because you wake him up by equipping him with an Acid Sleeper, he can be a deadly part of your crew. He also strikes up a relationship with ADA, your ship's AI, that borders on uncomfortable, but that just shows how vital he is to the crew. Equip him into your party for unforgettable insights into cleaning and ship maintenance.

Where you find him

He's in a closet near the crew quarters on the Unreliable. However, he won't turn on.

Companion quest

The Cleaning Machine. After you find SAM, you have to get him running again. Old records from Hawthorne say you can replace the S.U.D.S. Sleeper with an Acid Sleeper, but he never picked it up from Roseway. You can find it in the storage facility and install it.

This is more of a recruitment quest rather than a companion quest like with the other members of your crew, but it's still absolutely worth doing.

Perk bonuses

• Bonus Support Intimidate: +10 Intimidate.
• Cleaner: -20% negative reputation per kill.
• Bad Samaritan: +20% damage to Automechanicals.

The Outer Worlds is fantastic. In our review, we called it an instant classic, praising its world-building and modernized RPG shooter combat. The Outer Worlds has a depth that few publishers are willing to approach these days, with deep RPG mechanics and nuances that aren't always obvious in the game's UI.

Here are five areas worth paying attention to before taking off for The Outer Worlds. And before we get started, perhaps the most important tip of all is: read the tutorial messages!

The Outer World launches on Xbox One, PS4, and PC on October 25, 2019. It's also day one in Xbox Game Pass for both consoles and Windows PCs.

Related: The Outer Worlds Review

You are what you eat (and carry)

The Outer Worlds' capitalistic hell is beset with dozens upon dozens of types of food, drinks, and drugs. Keeping track of which-brand-does-what can be tough, especially since some of them can have powerful adverse effects.

Early on in the game, I found that I was moving slowly, and my health was no longer regenerating. It turns out that the negative effects from the drug Adrena-Time stacked up to three, giving me a nasty, permanent debuff that wouldn't go away until I'd slept in a bed. Before you imbibe, be sure to check the effects of each item in your inventory screen.

It's also worth noting that, unless you take extra carrying capacity perks, stacks of food can weigh down your inventory space. I wondered how I'd managed to accumulate maximum encumbrance so easily, turns out 60 piles of alien meat weighs quite a bit. Who knew?

Inhaler system loading

If, like me, you missed this during the opening, the Inhaler system is how you'll be healing yourself in The Outer Worlds. With a high enough medical skill, you can load up to four items into the Inhaler for an instantaneous drug boost.

It always uses Adreno by default, which is the game's basic health kit. If you load it up with food, drugs like cigarettes for improved aiming, and other buffs, it becomes a potent power up for use in combat. This has to be done via the inventory menu, which is a bit tedious, but it's a cornerstone of combat, especially on the higher difficulties.

Upgrades, repairing, and tinkering

If you put 20 points into engineering or have a companion with engineering capabilities, you'll unlock the ability to "tinker" with weapons and armor. Tinkering allows you to increase the level of an item, effectively, increasing its damage or defensive properties.

While out in the field, you'll get weapons and armor that are appropriate to your level, but some of the game's more unique named weapons, armor, and "Science" weapons will remain at the level you found them at unless you tinker them up.

If you find your weapons doing ridiculously inadequate amounts of damage, it may be one of the following problems:

• The enemies are strong against that particular weapon (for example, robots take more damage from electrical weapons than regular bullets).
• The weapon is damaged and must be repaired at a workbench (or in the field, if you have the skill).
• The weapon is far lower level than the enemies you're trying to fight.
• You can also augment some weapons and armor with mods to increase their potency.
• Check the effective range. Shotguns in The Outer Worlds, for example, basically want you to be inside the monster to deal damage.

Using Time Dilation while aiming and standing still will allow you to scope out enemy weaknesses and proficiencies, which leads us to our next section.

Combat tips

Time Dilation: The most important piece of your combat arsenal (besides having properly upgraded weapons and armor), is the Time Dilation ability, represented by a purple bar beneath your health pool.

While using Time Dilation, time will slow down to a crawl when you're standing still, giving you the chance to scan an enemy target's level, weaknesses, and some humorous flavor text about them. Once you begin moving or take a shot, it'll drain rapidly, so pick your attacks carefully. Hitting enemies in the head will "blind" them, lowering accuracy. An arm shot can make them drop weapons, and leg shots will cripple them, and make them limp. The effect of a body shot will depend on your weapon. Shotguns knock enemies down, while pistols can produce bleeds, and so on.

You can regenerate Time Dilation using drugs and other consumables, as well as using skills.

Companion Skills: If you put 20 points into leadership (and you most definitely should), you'll unlock companion abilities. These differ based on who you have in the party with you and can be very powerful if used properly.

They are represented on screen in the bottom left corner, on the d-pad if you're on a console. You can examine their effects on the companion screen on the main menu. SAM's ability produces an area of effect stun, while Vicar Max's is a close-range shotgun blast that generates a guaranteed knockdown. These can be great for interrupting enemies, pushing enemies away from you, or finishing off an enemy that has slipped out of your line of sight.

Dashing, melee, and dodging: Enemies will leash if you run far enough away from them on the larger, open-world areas. This can be useful if you've bitten off more than you can chew, aggroing a pack of wild canids, for example.

Many enemies telegraph their melee attacks before hitting you, which gives you a chance to utilize the game's dodge ability. If you jump, then strafe left, right, or backward and jump again while in mid-air, you'll perform a dodge that will remove you from harm's way most of the time. This can be useful for getting back into cover more quickly as well.

If you're playing a melee-oriented character, you'll also unlock a forward dash ability, which helps you close gaps on ranged enemies. If you're playing a ranged-oriented character, note that a well-timed weapon bash can stagger a charging enemy.

Recommended difficulty settings

You can change the difficulty settings at any time during play, ramping them up and down to your preferences. Arguably, The Outer Worlds is quite easy even on "hard" difficulty for anyone familiar with first-person shooters. I would recommend that anyone confident in FPS combat should start on hard mode. Normal mode offers a compelling but relatively pedestrian experience. And easy mode should be taken by those who simply want to experience the story in the most speedy way or those who aren't into shooters to any significant degree.

You can save the game at any time through the pause menu, which can be useful for backtracking on a decision or before initiating combat in a difficult fight. Where things get more complicated is Supernova difficulty.

Supernova difficulty is the hardest mode offered by The Outer Worlds, and combat-wise, the most fun. In combat in Supernova, you really have to pick and choose your battles, ensure you're fully upgraded, and use stims and other powerups frequently to overcome difficult fights. It should be noted, too, that your companions are subject to perma-death in this mode, so managing their positioning, upgrades, and A.I. presets through the companion menu is an absolute must.

Where Supernova becomes more tedious is in its arguably needless restrictions. In Supernova, you can only save and fast travel to your ship. Considering you can save whenever you want at the ship, wanting to save your progress to turn off the game just adds additional punishing tedium to what would otherwise be a very immersive gameplay mode.

Update October 25, 2019: There is a work-around for Supernova's saving restriction. The simple act of fast travelling to your ship creates an autosave from your current location, which can be used for quick saves in a pinch. Just goes to show that Obsidian didn't think out this mode very well, and should probably be amended.

Supernova can be fun and rewarding, just be aware of the limitations before going for it.

The Outer Worlds is awesome

The Outer Worlds is an instant-classic, and arguably the most promising franchise under the Xbox Game Studios flag with Obsidian now joining the Microsoft family. You can grab the game relatively cheap as part of the Xbox Game Pass, too, on both Xbox One and PC.

Are there any other gameplay tips you'd be interested in hearing about? Hit the comments, let us know.

The Outer Worlds is an upcoming first-person adventure game from Obsidian Entertainment. Despite the fact that the team is now a part of Xbox Game Studios, this game is available on PlayStation 4 — and will be coming to Nintendo Switch.

This morning, the reviews embargo lifted for The Outer Worlds, and we finally heard what critics thought about the game. Windows Central gave it 4.5 out of 5 stars, and it seems like many other reviewers were impressed with the experience. You can take a look at a roundup below.

• TheXboxHub: 5 out of 5
• We Got This Covered: 5 out of 5
• DualShockers: 9.5 out of 10
• Stevivor: 9.5 out of 10
• Xbox Achievements: 92 out of 100
• COGconnected: 91 out of 100
• Windows Central: 4.5 out of 5
• GameSpot: 9 out of 10
• Gamer.no: 9 out of 10
• Press Start Australia: 8.5 out of 10
• IGN: 8.5 out of 10
• GameSpew: 8 out of 10
• GamingTrend: 65 out of 100

You can take a look at even more scores on Metacritic and OpenCritic. It's great to see that this game is getting stellar scores because Microsoft really needed strong first-party titles to bolster its lineup. Hopefully, when the inevitable sequel hits, it'll be an even better and more expansive experience.

Are you planning on playing The Outer Worlds? Let us know. It's available through Xbox Game Pass on Xbox One and PC, but you'll have to pay $60 on other platforms.

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The Outer Worlds launches on October 25, 2019, and as I write this, I literally just got finished with the story.

Set a few hundred years in the future, 10 Earth corporations pooled their resources and purchased an entire solar system, shipping out several colony ships with the aim of building up an all-new home away from Earth. As you might expect, things didn't exactly go to plan.

The Outer Worlds is an utterly tremendous achievement that showcases the best of Obsidian's writing wit, world-building detail, and character focus. The game borrows heavily from other major beloved RPG franchises that have fallen out of favor with shareholders in recent years, which is perhaps ironic given the game's extreme-Capitalism plot beats. Obsidian fills that forgotten niche with confidence and rigor.

Here's everything awesome (and not so awesome) about The Outer Worlds, the most exciting new IP in years.

Stunning world, combat, and characters

What I loved about The Outer Worlds

The Outer Worlds feels like the culmination of years of Obsidian Entertainment experience with RPGs, from Knights of the Old Republic II to Fallout New Vegas. What the studio has put together here has some rough edges, but here's why I think it's the most exciting new IP in years.

Bethesda and Bioware, known for games like Skyrim and Mass Effect often feel like they've taken a step back from the very idea of a single-player RPG, urged by shareholders to chase multiplayer cash cows. There's been a slight void in the market for an RPG on this level where your choices truly matter, and Obsidian is filling it with confidence and rigor.

Set a few hundred years in the future, several corporations banded together and purchased the Halcyon solar system, shipping huge colony ships across the galaxy to reach it. As a member of one of the hitherto lost colony ships, The Hope, you're unceremoniously revived out of hibernation by what can only be described as a mad scientist, then dropped out of space on the surface of a colorful alien world. The opening is as hilarious as it is disorienting.

Obsidian's writing shines through as The Outer World's best feature. From the most minor side quests to grand finales, Obsidian had me roiling in laughter, sickened with disgust, and perplexed by deep philosophical discussions between the game's surprisingly fleshed out fictional religions. Much of The Outer World's marketing has revolved around the game's humor, and of that there is plenty. It lures you into a false sense of security, however. Make no mistake, The Outer Worlds can get extremely dark, extremely fast. It'll sucker-punch you, and leave a lasting impression.

The world-building is simply excellent here, with Obsidian really flexing its experience to build something that fans of Firefly and Cowboy Bebop will utterly adore. Halcyon's colonies are trapped in a capitalistic hell, where corporations literally rule.

Indentured servitude has been religiousized, almost, as each colony you visit is besieged by various problems. Roaming deserters and marauders, hungry alien monsters, and worker droids gone haywire. You'll travel across various colonies in various states of disrepair, unlocking the secrets of the mysterious Halcyon Board that controls everything.

Along the way, you'll meet comrades and enlist them (or reject them) into your squad, making the journey all the more rewarding. SAM the repurposed sanitation droid that now spews acid, instead of soap, hell-bent on eliminating "germs." Ellie, the runaway-turned-pirate, and Vicar Max, who reads his enemies their last rites before shotgunning them in the face. Each companion has their own quests and quirks to solve, and will bicker and banter among themselves along the way.

The Outer Worlds approach to combat has some rough edges (which I'll go over in the next section), but I'd argue that The Outer Worlds marries shooter combat with RPG mechanics more elegantly than many other similar games that have attempted it.

As a side effect of the hibernation process, the player character perceives time a little differently. Time dilation allows you to slow down the action, and target specific body parts manually for different effects. Cripple legs to make enemies move slower, blind them with a headshot, or disarm them by shooting their hands. If you choose to roll with companions, they can provide tactical support with their unique abilities which charge on a cooldown. The SAM droid can use his rocket boosters to slam down on enemies, creating an area stun effect, for example. These abillities add some depth and tactical play to proceedings, which can be crucial on higher difficulties.

Structurally, The Outer Worlds takes place across various wide open spaces. Monarch is by far the largest, complete with large city settlements, abandoned colonies and plains full of roaming monsters. Some of the side missions take place in smaller locales, which you can access via your personal ship — The Unreliable. You can skip a lot of the side missions and head straight to the end, but the game will be nowhere near as rich for those who rush. The epilogue guides you through the long-term effects of every decision you've made throughout the game, after all, so be sure to take your time.

The Outer Worlds is the first shooter in what feels like an incredibly long time where your choices really matter. You can choose to persuade, intimidate, or lie your way to better rewards or new story paths, while betraying or supporting various factions. There are plenty of gray areas, morally, when it comes to your decisions, and your choices ultimately shape what sort of colony Halcyon will become.

It's rare that I find myself longing for more after finishing a game nowadays, in an age of perpetual service-driven experiences. The Outer Worlds feels as old school as it comes in that respect. I adored every moment of my time in Halcyon, blasting bandits into bloody chunks, warping gravity with the game's unique "Science" weapons, and watching heads burst in slow motion.

There is no question in my mind that The Outer Worlds represents an instant classic, but like many of those Xbox 360-era RPGs we remember fondly in 2019, there is quite a collection of annoyances worth addressing.

UI, A.I., and physics oddities

What I disliked about The Outer Worlds

I'm happy to to forgive The Outer Worlds for most of these, as reading my list of grievances in my notes feels like a list of nitpicks rather than genuine problems, particularly since most could easily be patched. The first entry in a new IP is always going to have pain points here and there, but The Outer Worlds has quite a few oddities that I hope Obsidian can address either in patches, or in future sequels (and oh my God, please make a sequel).

Outside of conversation dialogue, The Outer Worlds' cities and townships can feel a little robotic. NPCs walk around and discuss your deeds and decisions, which is awesome. However, they only really stand around, feeling like props, rather than living entities. It undermine's the game's environmental design, which is otherwise staggeringly good.

In terms of combat, many of The Outer Worlds' kill cameras just, fail, most of the time. Vicar Max's shotgun scenes are almost certain to drop the camera behind a rock or something, obscuring your view of the fun. It also doesn't help that companion abilities have this tendency to target friendly NPCs, unintentionally, which often comes with dire consequences.

The enemy/companion A.I. isn't that great either, with NPCs generally running into the open, without any concept of taking cover or avoiding fire on the ground. You can, at least, control your own NPCs with handy commands, which elleviates some of these issues.

Some of the weapon's visual effects are far too large and bright at times, which betrays the whole point of having slow motion kills. If I can't see the effects of my slick slow motion skillz because they're hidden behind a gigantic red flash, what is the point? Also the gore mechanics feel quirky and inconsistent. Sometimes, a sniper shot to the chest has caused a target's arms and legs to fall off, which while hilarious at first, is a little bit odd considering that it can be rare, even with maxed out rifle skills, to produce a skull-popping headshot.

The other annoyances pertain to the UI. Scrolling around the map on controller is painfully slow and sticky, and the fact you can't track multiple quests at once forces you into the menus far more often than I'd like. The Outer Worlds also suffers from what I'll call Prey Syndrome, where completing late-stage side quests requires you to fast travel around the entire system, with interim space trips, producing a parade of loading screens.

The ability to stack quests would've helped with that sensation. I'm also not a huge fan of the game's medical inhaler, which serves as your primary method for health replenishment. The mechanic itself is great, but you have to constantly dive back into the menus to restock it with raw materials, which I feel could've been implemented without having to enter the main inventory screen to manage.

None of these issues really hindered my enjoyment of the game, however. I didn't encounter any performance issues, bugs, or other system-level problems. Dare I say it, for the most part, Obsidian managed to build a polished game.

Should you buy The Outer Worlds?

The Outer Worlds is a tremendous RPG that feels like the culmination of Obsidian's efforts with similar franchises over the years. As a fan of classic Bioware and Bethesda RPGs, The Outer Worlds not only scratches the itch, but exceeds the legacy of the titles it draws inspiration from in some ways.

With an intriguing world ripe for expansion, tight combat, and a meticulous focus on world-building, The Outer Worlds is an instant classic well worthy of any RPG fan's time.

What you need to know

• The Outer Worlds is an upcoming role-playing game from Obsidian Entertainment and Private Division.
• There's a new launch trailer, showing more of the action across alien worlds.
• The Outer Worlds is set to release on October 25.
• You can grab The Outer Worlds for $60 from Amazon.

The Outer Worlds is just a short ways away and ahead of the game's release, Private Division has released a new trailer, showing off more of the world and the alien environments that players will be able to explore. In these outer colonies, you can be any kind of hero. Or a villain. Or just a jerk. You can take a look at the launch trailer below:

Alien creatures, corrupt corporations, beautiful worlds and more all await. You can pre-load the game right now on Xbox One, though be aware that there's a hefty day one patch coming, which will be close to 40GB. If you'd like to learn more about the game, you can check out our preview of The Outer Worlds right here.

The Outer Worlds is currently set to be available on October 25 for most platforms, though the Nintendo Switch version is releasing later. While the game is multiplatform, it's also a part of Xbox Game Pass since Obsidian Entertainment, the studio developing the game, was acquired by Microsoft.

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• What is Xbox Game Pass?
• Best 4K TVs for Xbox Series X and S
• Must-buy Xbox One Headsets
• Our Favorite Xbox One Wireless Headsets
• Best Upcoming Xbox Games for 2021
• Xbox One X vs. Xbox Series S