The Outer Worlds 2 received about 19 minutes of new gameplay courtesy of Game Informer, highlighting the first biome, Paradise Island. However, that’s barely a taste of everything contained within, as design director Matt Singh confirmed to the publication that players can easily spend a “dozen-plus hours” exploring it.
Director Brandon Adler added that it’s one of the bigger zones in the sci-fi RPG, though the others are “not much smaller. It’s just when we were doing [Paradise Island], we wanted to see how far we could push things…we spent a lot of time kind of referencing other games, looking at pacing between all of the different [points of interest], things like that. So Paradise Island ended up being pretty big and meaty.”
If you’re looking to mainline the story, it’s cleared “fairly quickly.” However, even intrepid explorers may need to return later in the game. Some missions, like the Vox Relay, have much tougher enemies. Certain quests, especially those involving the mysterious Rifts, require returning to Paradise Island. The result is that everyone’s experience is different.
“One of the things I really like about it is just a sense of discovery. There’s a lot of stuff to miss in Paradise Island, right? And what that means is you get a lot of different people that are going to play through that and [have] a very different experience,” says Singh.
“By the end of it, you may have different gadgets than somebody else. Maybe you discovered a pet and now you’ve got it on your ship. Maybe you didn’t. Maybe you bartered and have certain companions, or you don’t because you took a different path. All of these things kind of modify the player’s story, which we think are signs of [a] good RPG.”
We won’t have to wait long to find out just how extensive The Outer Worlds 2 is. It’s launching on October 29th for $69.99 on Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. Head here for more details on the Perks, or learn more about how Skills have been overhauled.
