[Note: All footage is from a work-in-progress alpha build.]
Welcome to our latest IGN First – a month of exclusive coverage in April, and it’s all about The Outer Worlds 2. This is the very first look at its gameplay in real time, and it takes us through a quest where you infiltrate the N-Ray Facility to show off several of the game’s new features and mechanics, as well as how it’s rethinking level design. And one of the biggest things that stood out to me is how much deeper it’s going to be as an RPG with developer Obsidian looking back at its past and even drawing inspiration from immersive sims like Deus Ex and Dishonored.
While that DNA has always been a part of first-person RPGs, The Outer Worlds 2 has more sophisticated systems compared to the first game like a true stealth system and better tools to make the playstyle viable, including effective melee weapons and skills to make silent takedowns possible. Take, for example, the health bar above enemy heads – there’s a purple-colored readout that displays how damage a stealth attack will do, helping you judge whether or not you can get a one-hit kill or if it’s even worth pouncing on your target. Enemies will also detect dead bodies and alert guards, but you can quickly clean up if you have a skill to disintegrate bodies on the spot.
Later in the quest, you pick up the N-Ray Scanner, which lets you see certain objects and NPCs/enemies through walls. While this is crucial for finding important parts of more involved environmental puzzles, it’s also an important tool for a stealth and combat. There are enemies throughout the N-Ray Facility who cloak themselves; invisible to the naked eye, but not able to escape the lens of the N-Ray Scanner. If you’re not dilligent about using it, cloaked enemies can easily run up on you. That’s just one example of how the addition of gadgets add a new wrinkle to gameplay.
There are several interlocking systems that factor into how you’re able to play, leaning more into the RPG elements that make up specific character builds. So, stealth and those immersive sim sensibilities aren’t the only way gameplay is expanding in The Outer Worlds 2. Improving gunplay was a major focus for Obsidian, citing Destiny as a touchstone for what good gunplay should feel like. Not that this game is going to turn into an all-out shooter, but it plays closer to how a first-person game with firearms should play.
You see an example of this in the approach to the N-Ray Facility movement when we go in guns blazing. Movement has been tweaked to complement gunplay as well, letting you be more nimble and do things like sprint-slide while aiming down sights like an action hero – and with the return of Tactical Time Dilation (TTD), the bullet-time fantasy is again an effective part of your combat rotation. We were able to see throwables, which is by no means revolutionary for a game like this, but with their inclusion this time around, you have another tool that you can weave into your arsenal – and even do something sick like tossing a grenade, activating TTD, and shooting the grenade midair to have it blow up on unsuspecting enemies.
There isn’t much to share on the story front as of yet, let alone the context around the quest in the N-Ray Facility, but we do see how conversations have been tweaked slightly in the sequel. In the gameplay video above, there’s a moment we confront an NPC named Exemplar Foxworth who’s survived the cultist takeover of the place. She’s bleeding out and you can help patch her up based on your Medical stat, or respond depending on your Guns or Melee stats. Although we couldn’t dig into companions in more detail, this part also highlights the new companion named Aza, a former cultist who’s a bit frantic but joins you to seemingly help undo what they’ve done.
Many of these elements were part of the original Outer Worlds in some form, but where that game was more about laying a new foundation for Obsidian, The Outer Worlds 2 looks to be a fully realized version of what it was trying to build with the first one. In addition to checking it out early, I had conversations with the folks at Obsidian to get insight on a ton of its new features and the vision that drove this sequel. It seems keen on wielding the RPG roots of the studio’s past while considering what a modern first-person RPG can be in the vein of a Fallout – and to be clear, they often referred to Fallout: New Vegas as a touchstone when making The Outer Worlds 2, so my hopes are certainly high.
That’s just a taste of what’s to come in The Outer Worlds 2 and what we’re covering in this month’s IGN First. I’ll be breaking down character builds, the new flaws system, all the wild and wacky weapons, and how much bigger this sequel is through interviews with key people like original Fallout developer and creative director Leonard Boyarsky, game director Brandon Adler, and design director Matt Singh. Keep checking back at IGN all April long for more!
Michael Higham is the tech reviews editor at IGN, but is one of the RPG sickos on staff who still talks about Fallout: New Vegas on a regular basis. You can find him at @brazyazn.bsky.social.
