The Outer Worlds 2

Setting

The Outer Worlds 2 takes place in an alternate timeline where the 1901 assassination of U.S. President William McKinley never occurred. As a result, he was never succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt, a vocal anti-monopolist who pushed to break up the growing business trusts of the time. Without his intervention, society eventually became dominated by autonomous megacorporations that maintained a rigid class system based on capitalism, wealth disparity, and brand loyalty. After a devastating global war in the mid-21st century, faster-than-light travel was invented, allowing humanity to colonize the universe with different intentions and fates for the various expeditions. The art, architecture, and technology of the various colonies scattered throughout the universe display a unique blend of Art Nouveau, steampunk, and dieselpunk aesthetics.

Set in the year 2361, the game takes place in Arcadia, a planetary system comprising the planets Hemera, Elysium, and Nyx. Most of the game's action takes place around Elysium's five moons: Eden, Dorado, Cloister, Praetor, and Recluse. The colony was initially controlled by the Protectorate, an authoritarian regime that traces its founding to the supposed inventor of faster-than-light travel, Alexandra Varick. Seeking to escape the powerful megacorporations of Earth, she led the initiative to colonize outer space, establishing humanity's first interstellar colony in Arcadia. Over a century later, the Protectorate has become increasingly oppressive and now maintains a cult of personality around Varick (posthumously known as the "Matriarch") and her descendants, enforcing their rule under threat of a form of chemical lobotomy known as “Mental Refreshment”. The Protectorate is currently ruled by the Matriarch's grandson Henry Varick, referred to as the "Sovereign". The regime also continues to be the colonies’ sole manufacturer of "skip drives", the technology that makes interstellar travel possible.

The player takes control of a commander of the Earth Directorate, an administrative body tasked with maintaining order throughout the colonies. The Commander and their team, on their ship the Incognito, are sent to Arcadia to investigate the appearance of interdimensional rifts that have cut off trade and communication between the colonies; if left unchecked, they threaten to destroy the entire universe. There, they come to find the Protectorate engaged in conflict against two factions: Auntie's Choice, a megacorporation that seeks to monopolize both the colony and skip-drive technology for profit; and the Order of the Ascendant, the Protectorate's former religious branch dedicated to academic research and enlightenment. The player has the choice of helping either, both, or even neither of these factions in the war for control of Arcadia.

Plot

In the year 2352, three years before the events of the first game, a team of Earth Directorate agents (led by the player character, referred to as the "Commander") are sent to Arcadia to investigate the sudden appearance of interdimensional rifts throughout the colonies. Following intelligence gathered by fellow agent Augustine de Vries, who had infiltrated the Protectorate before the team's arrival, they trace the origins of the rifts to Horizon Point Station, a skip drive manufacturing facility run by the Protectorate. During the infiltration, De Vries deviates from the team's directive and activates an experimental skip drive, creating a new rift that destroys the station. The Commander uses an escape pod to launch themselves into space, while nearly everyone left behind is killed.

Cryogenically frozen inside the pod, the Commander floats in space for nine years before being rescued by Niles Abara, a rookie Earth Directorate agent who also narrowly survived Horizon Point's destruction. He reveals that De Vries escaped as well, and that he has spent the last decade trying to find her and seek vengeance for the rest of the team's deaths. He also explains that in the time that has passed, the megacorporation Auntie's Choice (a merger of pharmaceuticals company Auntie Cleo's and consumer goods manufacturer Spacer's Choice) is three years into an invasion of Arcadia, seeking to claim both the Protectorate's skip-drive technology and the system's wealth of natural resources. Additionally, the Protectorate's official religious institution, the Order of the Ascendant, split from the regime shortly after the invasion and is now engaged in conflict with the other two factions.

Tracking down De Vries, the duo learns that while undercover within the Protectorate, she became enamored by the Order's doctrine of arithmetically-based predestination known as the Universal Equation and joined a splinter group of renegades with an extremist interpretation of the creed. The Commander, Niles, and their growing team of allies confront each of De Vries’ conspirators and eventually learn of her plans to disrupt the ongoing peace talks between the Order and Auntie's Choice by assassinating their delegates. At the space station where the negotiations are taking place, the team intervenes, at which point De Vries reveals that her actions on Horizon Point were intended to prevent both the Protectorate and Auntie's Choice from ultimately using skip-drive technology to inadvertently open more rifts and destroy the universe, as had been predicted by the Universal Equation. The player is able to either kill or spare De Vries, with the latter option potentially leading to the deaths of the peace delegates. Regardless of either outcome, another rift suddenly opens and destroys the station, with all surviving parties narrowly escaping.

In order to close the rifts permanently, the team use data collected by De Vries to determine their strategy, which includes stealing a “Rift Anomaly Modulator” from a Protectorate research facility that has the power to both close rifts and recover what was lost inside them. They also learn that the Earth Directorate, unable to directly contact the team sent to Arcadia, had launched a satellite containing all research relating to rifts. The density of the data requires using an AI-operated supercomputer in the Order's Archives, which are currently controlled by the Protectorate. To aid in retaking the Archives, the team can choose to ally themselves with the Order or Auntie's Choice, or (if the peace delegates were kept alive) even encourage the two factions to collaborate. Meanwhile, the Protectorate formally announces via system-wide broadcast that the Sovereign has "voluntarily" submitted himself for Mental Refreshment, allowing his Consul, Emory Thoreau, to rule in his place. The team immediately recognizes this sudden transfer of power to be a bloodless coup.

After tasking the Archive's computer with decrypting and analyzing the data, Horizon Point Station suddenly reappears, albeit in a decayed state. They determine that Thoreau has used the Protectorate's resources to manipulate the rift, but that it is quickly growing unstable. The team fight their way through the remains of the station (including the warped victims of Horizon Point's destruction) and infiltrate Thoreau's flagship, where they find a larger and more powerful Rift Modulator. Upon confronting Thoreau, he reveals that the Protectorate's research has concluded that rifts retain the essence of everything they consume, but never in its entirety. For humans, this means that while a person's body and consciousness can be recovered, most of their personality and identity is lost. With this knowledge, Thoreau plans to maximize the rift to consume all of Arcadia, then reconstruct it according to his ideals (despite his researchers' findings that the rifts cannot be controlled in such a way). The Consul may be talked into surrendering or killed in combat, but in either case, the rift begins to grow increasingly unstable. As Rift Modulators are required to be in close proximity to a rift in order to close it, the team concludes that someone must pilot the ship into the rift, which would kill the pilot and anyone left onboard.

At this point, the game's ending is largely determined by the player's past choices. The "best" ending occurs if Thoreau is kept alive, in which case he chooses to redeem himself by piloting the ship and closing the rifts. Additionally, if De Vries was spared during the peace talks, she will volunteer as well. Most of the other endings involve either the Commander or one of their allies piloting the ship (whether voluntarily or under threat by the Commander). The "worst" ending, only possible if the player character carries the "Dumb" trait, sees the Commander simply choose to do nothing, allowing the rifts to expand and kill everyone in Arcadia.

The epilogue summarises the fates of the surviving characters and factions depending on the choices made by the player during their personal quests. Ultimately, peace is restored to Arcadia according to the ideals of the faction that the Commander supported, while Earth remains silent and cut off from the colonies, its fate unknown.

Critical reception

The Outer Worlds 2 received "generally favorable" reviews from critics, according to review aggregator website Metacritic.^[27][28][29] OpenCritic determined that 88% of critics recommended the game.^[30] In Japan, four critics from Famitsu gave the game a total score of 33 out of 40.^[33]

The game was nominated for Best Role Playing Game at The Game Awards 2025, and for Role-Playing Game of the Year at the 29th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards.^[45][46]

Sales

In February 2026, it was revealed that The Outer Worlds 2 had failed to meet the sales expectations of Xbox Game Studios, and that a sequel to the game is not currently planned.^[47]