The Outer Worlds 2 is set some time after the original game. Players return to the hellscape corporate dystopia that is the future of Earth, this time as a member of the Earth Protectorate. The Protectorate's job is to be a bunch of space heroes — at least that's what the propaganda film shows as the game starts up. In reality, they appear to be morally gray. Your first mission is to sneak into the colony of Arcadia and steal a precious item through by any means necessary.

The preview build demo took us through the character creation and the opening bits of the game. As in the original game, there's a very tongue-in-cheek sense of humor, and there's a retro-futuristic vision of capitalism that feels akin to Fallout in space. It's difficult to get a feel from the preview build, but I felt like the overt wackiness had been toned down from the first game. It's still silly and irreverent, but it felt like it wasn't quite diving full-force into the comedy. Of course, there is plenty of room for that to show up later. Your dialogue options allow you to play as an unironic space hero, a by-the-book spy, or someone who's simply very confused by what is going on.

One interesting element of character creation is that you don't select stats the way you normally would. Instead, you pick a background and a trait. For the background, you can be a gambler, a professor, a law bringer or a roustabout. These backgrounds seem to be more for flavor and dialogue than any specific mechanical benefits, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is more to them than meets the eye.

Traits seem to determine the way your character begins. This can be something like Lucky, which gives you a bonus to critical chance and special "lucky" opportunities in conversation, or Brilliant, which gives you extra skill points, or Brawny, which lets you knock down enemies by charging into them. By default, you can select a single trait, but by choosing to take a negative trait in addition to a positive one, you can select two. Negative traits are the inverse of positive ones: dumb means you get fewer skill points (and special dumb dialogue options), while sickly means you have less health and get sick easier. There are also more traits and perks that aren't available when starting the game, but unfortunately, we didn't get to play around with those.

As for skills, many are fairly standard for this sort of RPG. There's sneaking, melee, guns, speech, explosives and more. Investing in skills grants you access to various perks and benefits that will be useful during your adventure. There are also some more interesting skills. For example, observation gives you a bonus when targeting enemy weak points, and it also grants a special passive ability to recognize things that are out of place, either in the environment or in conversation. This can help you find hidden passages or discover alternate ways to talk down characters.

In the preview build, we saw a lot of these skills in action. Your character is tasked with sneaking into a guarded base to steal an "unlocked" prototype of a faster-than-light travel device that could be used to break The Protectorate's stranglehold on interstellar travel. You and your team land at the base and quickly split up to find a way in.

One thing that became clear early on is that there are going to be a lot of options for handling situations. As an example, there was a large group of guards coming toward my location, and I had only a short period of time to figure out how to stop them. I could sneak into a nearby vent and try to get past them, go in with guns blazing and shoot them down, hack a nearby robot so it would fight on my side, or use my engineering knowledge to make a nearby gas main explode. Each one depended on the skills I had available, but it was clear there wasn't one "correct" solution. I was able to get through the entire base without having to enter a fight.

The same goes for speech and dialogue checks. While I only saw a few of these in action, it quickly became clear that there were going to be a ton of different choices based on the background, traits and skills you chose. My professor background meant I had frequent chances to bring up bits of scientific knowledge, and I had the ability to read notes left on chalkboards throughout the base. My observation skill let me recognize when a character was acting nervous and parlay that into them agreeing to open a door for me as long as I completed a side-quest in exchange.

The preview build only took us through the opening area of the game, so unfortunately, we didn't get to see more than a small amount of the core gameplay. However, the opening area leaves a strong first impression, with a variety of play styles and options made available to the player from the get-go. A quick look at the perk list also shows there are dozens of different options available to further customize as the game progresses, and I'm looking forward to playing The Outer Worlds 2 when it hits Oct. 29 for PC, PS5 and Xbox.