I genuinely didn’t think I’d be returning to Outward 2 quite so soon. Usually with these previews, there’s a reasonable gap of time between when we get to see it, and when we potentially get to look at it in a more critical capacity. Honestly, it’s a nice change of pace sometimes to feel like you’re a small part of something getting built—or at the very least, getting to be a witness of it.
This second Hands-On with Outward 2 was a bit more in-depth than my first outing with the game. Not only is it in a completely new area with a completely different beginning, but because we got to sit down with Nine Dots CEO and co-founder Guillaume Boucher-Vidal as he gave us a small glimpse of the demo and a deep look into the game’s design philosophy.
“But our belief was that, just like us, there would be gamers out there who would rather focus on immersion than being spoon-fed, like, cool powers to kind of abuse the world we are thrown in, said Boucher-Vidal. He continued, “We want to live a fantasy world, but through the eyes and the reality of just a normal human being. And we knew that doing that would be a very polarizing direction.”
And he’s certainly not wrong about these games being polarizing. When I first tried Outward on the PlayStation 4, I was almost immediately put off by its brutal world, unforgiving combat, and reimagining of death scenarios. While I still think my criticisms are valid, I genuinely didn’t understand the game (and world) I was stepping into. But with time and a renewed perspective, seeing the world the team at Nine Dots is creating is truly inspiring.
This portion of the preview set us in the city of Simeon’s Bastion—a magnificent city nestled within a harsh land of plains and cliffs of the La Rescapée. The player awakens after being robbed by two mysterious men and must work to reclaim an ancient tablet and potential family heirlooms—depedning on how players choose dialogue. It’s a big change from the first preview where you’re thrown into a harsh wilderness and told to survive.
And the land outside the walls of Simeon’s Bastion is certainly harsh—one of the first things you encounter is a misdirect where someone being attacked by a monster turns around and attacks you after you save them. However, the city provides a necessary respite where players can regroup, trade for supplies, and find the edge a normal person needs to survive.
“We’ve had a lot of questions from our players wondering, will Outward 2 be more mainstream? And it’s definitely not the case. We have this very specific vision for a very specific audience, those who too want to feel the pain, the difficulties of being a normal human being in a very hostile world,” explained Boucher-Vidal. “So we did not just scale for the sake of scaling, we scaled to have the means to make a version of Outward 2 that would have less compromises on its execution, but still no compromise on its vision.”
“Something Boucher-Vidal touched upon that I genuinely admired was their unwavering commitment to Outward 2’s design.”
In this regard, the starting path of Simeon’s Bastion is more frying pan and less fire. Players still need to contend with a lot of danger, but they’re given a lot of avenues to learn how to survive. It challenges you, to a certain degree, to think like a regular person and find the little advantages like brewing potions and crafting traps that’ll keep you alive against both man and beast.
Another thing you learn, to quote Boucher-Vidal, is that, “your backpack is your best friend.” Something I didn’t realize the first time around was just how vital the backpack was, and the systems that built around it. I remember thinking it was kind of weird that there was a dedicated button for dropping your backpack, but it turns out the best way to keep your stuff is to lose it in the wild.
“While it’s your best friend in the game, it’s your worst enemy in a fight, because of course you can’t properly dodge and roll with a big backpack on your back,” said Boucher-Vidal. Not only that, but several loss states can have bandits loot your backpack, or items dropped while fleeing hostile creatures. It ends up being one of the most important ways the player is asked to think like a regular person—how valuable their loot would be to others and how meaningful losing it would be.
Something Boucher-Vidal touched upon that I genuinely admired was their unwavering commitment to Outward 2’s design. “There [was] criticism about the game, the game’s idea, the vision of it,” he said, adding, “Like, people don’t agree that it’s fun to go through the tedium of the logistics of your inventory, or navigation…they wanted difficulty settings. Those are not the criticisms that we want to address.”
But what Boucher-Vidal specified was that the criticism around the execution of their vision that they did want to consider. A lot of that was centered around fixing the jank of the first game, and giving players more choices not only on how they create their character’s appearance, but in the degree that they are able to make meaningful choices.
This certainly felt present in this second preview. Players are given multiple avenues to pursue their stolen goods—from small quests that will help secure the monetary means to acquire better gear, to small advantages waiting within the alleys of Simeon’s Bastion. If players explore and think more like a human than a hero, then its very possible to find weapons and recipes that will really increase survivability.
“We were talking with each other about what we felt was lacking in the RPG space, just as gamers. And I realized we all shared this vision of something that was missing, which is a focus that is more about immersion than about power,” Bouncer-Vidal said. Playing this second demo for Outward 2 certainly cemented that ideology. From the way they’ve reexamined RPG systems, to the way they’re pushing players to think differently, the game is really shaping up to be something special.
Outward 2 launches for PC on July 7th, 2026
