The Outer Wilds 2 has revealed its two most important factions: Angry authoritarian jocks and holier than thou science-bros who just want to solve a maths problem

The Xbox Games Showcase 2025 just gave us an in-depth look at The Outer Worlds 2 and everything players can expect from it. There's a complex perk system, a Fallout: New Vegas-style radio broadcast, and a couple of evil and enlightened factions.

"From the very beginning of our discussions about The Outer Worlds we really knew we wanted every game to take place in a different colony," creative director at Obsidian, Leonard Boyarsky says during the showcase. "This lets us expand on all aspects of the universe, every colony can be its own thing, with its own flavour, and we can centre them around anything we want, any ideas or settings we're interested in."

During the direct, we got to see a couple of these new colonies and factions. First off we have Arcadia which is run by the Protectorate, a nasty authoritarian government. Their dictatorship is thematically based on the question: How much freedom will people give up for security and luxury? "For Protectorate subjects unfortunately that answer is everything," Boyarsky says.

The Protectorate aren't just dodgy thanks to their politics though, as they are also known as the inventors of the skip drive. On the surface that may not be too bad, as these are basically just faster than light engines that people use to get around, but it all took a turn for the worse when these skip drives started imploding.

Now the skip drives are causing rifts in space-time, stopping other colonies from trading with one another. Your job will be to uncover why these devices are messing up and then fix it or destroy them all for good, for everyone's sake.

"Each faction has their own solution to the rift problem and their own goals," Boyarsky says. The protectorate wants to close them to protect their legacy and wealth but another faction wants to close them for the sake of their math equation.

This would be The Order of the Ascendant. They are an offshoot of The Order of Scientific Inquiry from the original game. A science-based religion with the same goal of solving the universal equation which will allow them to "predict and alter the future to the benefit of all mankind."

These guys may seem like chalk and cheese when compared to the authoritarian faction above but they have more in common than you may think. Initially, The Order of the Ascendant was aligned with The Protectorate but then split off from them to focus on the equation for the good of everyone, and not just as a way to control the masses.

It seems like there'll be tons of interesting colonies to explore and factions to get your head around in The Outer Worlds 2, just as it should be. "Each faction will have its own flavour of absurdity," Boyarsky says, which is what everyone wants to hear.