The recent massive Xbox layoffs have not spared even established studios such as Bethesda and Obsidian Entertainment. While the developer working on The Elder Scrolls 6 lost a relatively small number of employees — but still enough to warrant fear and mistrust among the remaining staff — Obsidian was hit hard, losing 25% of its staff and getting saddled with a mandate to make more Fallout games.

While it may seem impossible to justify the loss of so many people's livelihoods, the internet obviously disagrees. I’ve seen quite a few loudly incorrect people eager to insist that the only games Obsidian has put out in the past eight years are the Outer Worlds series, so Microsoft was right to scale down the studio and give it a new direction. (Never mind that Obsidian released three games — Avowed, Grounded 2, and The Outer Worlds 2 — in 2025 alone.)

That sentiment is wrong for too many reasons to list here, so I’ll focus on one: The Outer Worlds is a pretty amazing game.

Released in 2019, The Outer Worlds closed out a great decade of RPGs that began with The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim and continued with Fallout 4 and The Witcher 3. However, The Outer Worlds chose a peculiar approach to compete with these titans. Instead of pushing further toward open worlds, sandbox design, and endless gameplay hours, The Outer Worlds chose tightness. A standard playthrough takes 20-30 hours, which can be reduced further by sticking to the main quest. That’s the length of The Witcher 3’s act 1…if you skip all the side quests.

The Outer Worlds trades the illusion of getting lost in an endless world for one of the most vibrant and original settings I’ve seen in an RPG, a poignant story about society, capitalism, and the things we do to........

© Polygon