The Outer Worlds 2 fans are lamenting the news that developer Obsidian is not working on a sequel, and have blamed Microsoft’s initial decision to price the game at $80 for helping kill the series’ hype, despite the later U-turn.
Yesterday, Bloomberg reported on the state of veteran RPG studio Obsidian following an exhausting 2025. Over the course of eight months, the company launched Grounded 2 in early access, followed by both The Outer Worlds 2 and Avowed after protracted developments.
Of the three games, only Grounded 2 was qualified as a success — and while further titles in the Avowed universe are planned, a third Outer Worlds title is not in production. Unsurprisingly, this news has disappointed fans of the space-based role-playing game series, who have offered their own opinions on what went wrong.
“I feel like TOW2 paid for the sins of TOW 1 and Avowed,” Godlike013 wrote in a lengthy thread on The Outer World’s main subreddit, suggesting that The Outer Worlds 2 had deserved a better reception. “After two mid games in a row negative sentiment unfairly fell on TOW2 when it is a genuinely good game.”
“I’ll be honest, it’s not surprising in the least,” countered Lafitte1812. “TOW2 is, in every possible way a better game. It’s a night and day difference, and most of my problems have been fixed, but at the end of the day I still don’t really give a damn about the universe, and positive word of mouth alone is only so impactful.”
“I’m not surprised,” agreed CardTrickOTK. “I think it was better than the first in a lot of ways, but when BG3 drops and lets you do some frankly insane things with the companions, I think a lot of people had their standards raised for RPGs, and this game is just okay.”
Several other fans noted the recent launch of other RPGs — and particularly 2025’s beloved Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 — as having provided tough competition and even tougher comparisons in some areas such as story and fully-fleshed out characters. Others suggested that the lengthy wait for The Outer Worlds 2 had also raised expectations, which were not met by the sequel.
“The first game was incredible but lacked content,” wrote RUKnight31. “We excused that due to limited budget and dev time for a new franchise. Given the increased resources and development time that went into OW2 we expected to have a lot more content than OW. It didn’t and the obvious ‘business decisions’ that led to chopped content sucked to see.”
A larger number of fans expressed frustration at Microsoft for the game’s pricing fiasco, which initially saw The Outer Worlds 2 set to become the company’s first $80 game — before the company put the initiative on pause and backtracked. While the game ultimately launched at $70, fans say that the snafu dominated headlines and killed hype that the game struggled to win back. Some even pointed out the irony of the situation happening to The Outer Worlds 2, a game which tells the story of people caught up in the actions of megacorporation.
“So capitalism was the true villain all along,” QQBearsHijacker quipped.
“They overshot asking $80 and that turned a lot of gamers off,” RUKnight31 continued. “The backtrack to $70 was too little too late. In this economy $60-$70 is already a lot. Trying to push $80 as the new norm was outlandish for leisure.”
“Did not help at all that the biggest splash this game made on the overall gaming lake was the stupid 80 bucks fiasco that Microsoft tried to push,” agreed ElGodPug. “Like, even after they reduced to 70 (still too much IMO), first impressions are pretty important, and to many it was ‘oh hey, it’s the sequel to that 7/10 game asking us to pay 20 bucks more’.”
“There were a lot of great RPGs this year and unfortunately this one was forgettable,” Philosophers-Bone bluntly summed up. “Not horrible or anything, just didn’t stand out. I’m glad I played it on Game Pass and didn’t shell out $80 or whatever insane price they listed it for.”
IGN’s The Outer Worlds 2 review returned an 8/10, and stated that “once you get past a weak first act, The Outer Worlds 2 sharpens Obsidian’s RPG formula with smarter writing and better combat.” We continued: “[It] doesn’t try to rewrite Obsidian’s RPG playbook, but it’s yet another strong refinement.”
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
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