Outward 2 Hits Steam Early Access in July 2026 as Nine Dots Doubles Down on Punishing, Anti-Power-Fantasy RPG Design

Québec-based independent developer Nine Dots Studio announced that its action RPG Outward 2 launches into Early Access on July 7th, 2026, on Windows PC via Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG, thus confirming the previously announced Summer 2026 release window. Players can get in earlier via a Closed Beta starting May 26th, 2026. The game is PC-exclusive at the Early Access launch; console versions will be released after version 1.0.

Wccftech attended a remote presentation during which Creative Director and Nine Dots Studio CEO Guillaume Boucher-Vidal provided a detailed overview of this action RPG sequel. He began by recounting how Nine Dots designed the original Outward out of desperation: the studio had two consecutive failures (Brand and GoD Factory: Wingmen) and zero dollars in the bank.

The core vision that emerged was intentionally polarizing: a fantasy RPG centered on immersion rather than power, where the player is a normal human rather than a chosen hero. Outward 1 sold 3 million copies to date and validated that vision. The studio has since grown from 10 to 30 people; they explicitly did not want to scale up to 100–150 employees, which would have forced them to chase a broader audience and compromise the game's unique identity.

For Outward 2, the team identified four main avenues of improvement:

1. Character Creation and Progression - Outward 1's character creation system was famously minimal and ugly. Outward 2 expands this not just cosmetically, but structurally. Players now choose from three starting scenarios (a miner in Tramontane, a homeless person in Seamane's Bastion, or a bureaucrat in Habu), each with different starting enemies, obstacles, and a quest that justifies the character entering danger. Players also pick from eleven backgrounds that alter stats, starting gear, and dialogue options throughout the game, offering meaningful replay value across multiple playthroughs.
2. A More Alive World - The world of Outward 2 is set around 50 years after the first game, across four distinct regions of Aurai. It is accessible to newcomers while rewarding returning players with narrative continuity. The game now features a full seasonal cycle tied to a fixed in-game calendar: time passes, seasons change, and events like blizzards and thunderstorms carry real gameplay consequences. There is no fast travel or GPS markers. Players must read the map and observe their surroundings to navigate. Each region features its own biomes, seasons, and region-specific gameplay.
3. Inventory Management, Pack Animals & Co-Op - Nine Dots Studio outlined its "Intentional Inventory Management" for the sequel. The backpack is the central survival tool; players must deliberately pack provisions, potions, weapons, and camping gear, and in combat, they should drop the backpack to move and evade freely, then retrieve it afterward. To address the common complaint that Outward 1 forced too much back-and-forth between regions, Outward 2 introduces mules that carry inventory across regions, though their vulnerability in combat means they must be managed carefully and left at mule posts before entering dangerous areas. Co-op remains limited to two players, supporting both local split-screen and online. The two-player cap is intentional: more players would shift the emotional center toward group dynamics rather than immersion. Co-op progression is improved so that all quest rewards are shareable gear rather than quest-locked passives, making the experience more pick-up-and-play.
4. Combat Improvements - The Canadian studio is aiming for a more tactical combat experience. Every weapon has its own distinct moveset, and the sequel introduces a larger variety of tools and weapon combinations. Animations have been improved for more fluidity and control, based on extensive player feedback from the original. Under the hood, the studio implemented animation blending, allowing players to cancel and seamlessly transition between attacks, dodges, and blocks, with stamina cost as the attrition mechanic. The example given in the presentation for spellcasting, sending a fire stone into the air to create a ring that empowers skills with flames, is officially described in the press release as "ritual spellcasting", where you cast spells through rituals rather than instant button presses.

Outward 2 also aims to differentiate itself from most action RPGs in several key ways. To begin with, there are no experience points or levels. Instead, the game uses the so-called Exercise system, which, as described in the presentation, is a web of finite micro-achievements tied to how the player naturally plays (combat, crafting, survival). Completing exercises increases core stats and unlocks small passive bonuses, and also unlocks breakthrough points required to advance in a trainer's skill tree. Getting a breakthrough requires three things: paying the trainer, reading the right books, and completing relevant exercises. There are eight trainers scattered across Aurai; players can only take three breakthroughs. Enemies are not level-scaled, either, so at the beginning of the game you will want to be very careful in approaching certain foes.

There are no traditional deaths or save reloads, either. The player's defeat triggers a scenario, sometimes negative (losing time, status effects, gear stolen), occasionally positive (being rescued, a quest advancing unexpectedly). Outward 2 expands this with a wound system: severe injuries like sprained ankles prevent sprinting and dodge rolls, requiring splints and painkillers to manage. An optional hardcore mode adds a 20% chance per defeat that the save file is permanently deleted.

Following the presentation, Guillaume Boucher-Vidal answered several questions from the assembled press about the game's early access content, game design philosophy, the switch from Unity to Unreal Engine 5, the studio's stance on AI tools, and much more.

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Could Outward 2 be a little too time-consuming for some players?

Guillaume: Absolutely. That’s the objective of the game: there’s fast playing and slow playing, right? Initially, my idea was to deconstruct every action into multiple steps to give this feeling that you’re doing the things yourself. This is true of any skill in real life. When you start cooking for the first time, you don’t know how to prepare your counter or how to use your oven. You might do the steps in an awkward order, but as you go, eventually you become kind of automated and you have your habits, and eventually things pick up and you gain momentum. So when you start, it’s a bit overwhelming, and that’s by design. But as you keep playing, you get this sense of what you’re doing. You have your game knowledge that applies, and all those steps you just go through them kind of as a force of habit.

So, for instance, what kind of food you eat: it’s not just “I need to eat” in the beginning. You eat because you’re hungry, but eventually you eat because it strengthens the specific build that you are making. You know that you want a meal based on the meat of that animal because that will give you the health regeneration that makes it more worthwhile if you have to trade hits with the enemy. By making every layer integrated into the balance, the combat, and your decision-making, it’s more than just tedium. It becomes a playstyle. Some players don’t like it, and I’m okay with that. But those who want to really feel like they’re part of the world... We have this in our design pillars: complexity. And we feel that we’ve hit the bar of complexity when there are so many factors you have to take into account that when you shut down the game, it keeps rolling in your brain, and you keep thinking about different scenarios and theorycrafting.

WCCFTECH: I was wondering about the early access specifically: the type and amount of content that will be available when Outward 2 launches in early access, and the early access roadmap you have in mind. Also, if you already have a rough idea of how long you want to stay in early access.

Guillaume: So, in terms of what kind of content we’ll have, we are planning for 1.0 to have four regions and three different quest lines with about six quests each. By the time that we hit early access, we’re going to have three regions done out of four, minus a few dungeons here and there that will be added as we go. And we will only have about a third of the quests by quest line. So we will have an introduction quest to every faction, quest one, quest two, and we’re going to stop there and add new chapters of the story.

One of the big reasons why we’re going into early access is that we wanted to focus on developing our own skill set at narrative delivery. It’s been a challenge, and we are now at this point where going into early access allows us to confirm that we’ve hit the bar we set for ourselves before we complete the whole story. One of the most egregious aspects of our early access is that, at first, there will be almost no voice acting whatsoever. But we are planning on voicing every dialogue line. And because voice acting is so expensive and because it is a new skill for us that we’re trying to develop internally, we’d rather confirm that we have the right script with our players before we finalize the script and record all the voices. So, no voices at first, but that’s going to come. One more region, more quests. And, of course, there are going to be some mechanics left and right that will need to be fleshed out and more fine-tuned as we go.

As for how long that’s going to take, I don’t know. Essentially, it depends on how successful we are. If we have a very strong early access launch, or just a strong pickup as we go, it means that we will have this potential to really bring Outward to its maximum potential, and we don’t want to waste that opportunity. But if we are more along the lines of what we are expecting, then we’d say between 12 and 18 months of early access before we get to 1.0 and really nail all the fine-tuning of the balance in the various systems that we have.

How well is the combat going to be balanced in relation to the objectives that you’ve set for yourselves? I really respect that you have a clear vision of what you want and you don’t want to compromise that. But I do think that, in playing Outward and even when playing the first beta for Outward 2, it still feels like there is this punishing level of difficulty in relation to the combat and how it flows and works.

Guillaume: One of the things in the first playtest was that the distribution of encounters around the city was not well balanced, so you wouldn’t encounter early difficulty enemies, or you would very quickly engage in a region where the enemies are tougher than what you’re supposed to handle. We need to do a better job than in the first playtest of making the player understand whether or not they are where they’re supposed to be.

The early region, the central area with the troglodytes, is a lot easier than, say, if you go on the sides of the map, where you might encounter giants, or thespians, or the manticore, and those will just wreck you. Or the recluse mages. So that’s something that we need to work on in full admission. Also, during the first playtest, not all the offense and defense stats were in yet, which created a situation where it was either too hard or too easy. That was a bug, and that is what we’re working on.

So yes, it’s still going to be hard, but hopefully in a way that feels more fair. One thing we want to preserve is that you should feel like you’re a normal human being in a hostile world. That means you have to think in terms of how you’d actually react: would I fight, would I flee, would I set a trap, would I poison one, would I separate them, would I drink a potion to boost my strength? That kind of thing. If you engage Outward like a Souls game, you’ll probably not enjoy it as much, because the structure is different. In Souls games, you reload and face the same situation repeatedly until you internalize the knowledge. In Outward, the structure is different.

Do dungeons refresh in Outward 2? Will enemies respawn if I come back?

Guillaume: Yes, they reset. If you go through one in-game week without visiting a particular scene, it resets. So you can farm dungeons you’re comfortable with, using them to make money or gather loot. But the outdoor region is usually the hub between dungeons, so for a reset to happen, you’d need to leave for a different region and come back. That encourages broader exploration rather than just looping the same dungeon.

As seasons pass and time moves forward, is there a risk of quests failing? And what’s the design philosophy behind questing in general, because the “kill 10 boars” type doesn’t fit a world where you’re covering long distances?

Guillaume: To put it very politely, I hate grocery list quests in RPGs. They make no sense. Our design philosophy is to make sure there are enough implicit goals that we don’t need to bombard players with side quests. You’re right that most quests come with a time limit, and the fail state is that you didn’t complete the quest in time. That’s what makes defeat scenarios feel high-stakes, because they usually come with a time skip that eats into your deadline. So yes, most quests have a clock ticking. In the spirit of replayability, it forces you to focus on what you actually want to do. Outward 1 had this too: if villagers told you your home was going to be attacked and you ignored it, you’d come back to find it sacked, all the NPCs gone, and even trainers lost. That philosophy carries forward.

My concern in the playtest was navigation. Everything looked the same, the textures were similar, and I spent 40 minutes looking for my room. When I got outside, the same problem hit me. I went through a door thinking I was heading somewhere new and found myself back at the town entrance from a different direction. I’d love map pins and the ability to add notes. Also, during co-op, if I join your game, can I go off and do my own thing, or do I have to follow you?

Guillaume: You can already add notes to the map. One thing that was missing from the first playtest was proper markers. From the start, you’ll have some that help identify landmarks. We also realized that the blue dotted line on the Battle Gale map, which was never explained, should have been purple, clearly labeled as the ley line visible above your head. That one change alone would have made navigation much easier.

The map itself was also imprecise in some places. Roads and areas weren’t shaped the way the map was drawn. That’s a significant problem, and we’re fixing it. We actually completely redrew two maps following the playtest reception. From launch, you’ll have clear markers for the town, exits to new regions, and key landmarks.

In co-op, you bring your own character into my world. When you’re not with me, you play your own world and progress there. When we play together, you bring that character in. That’s why it makes more sense to keep separate progression: you shouldn’t be locked into the same choices as whoever you joined.

What’s your stance on modding? Does that clash with the vision for Outward 2, or is it something you’d endorse?

Guillaume: I love mods. I see them as the modder’s expression built on top of our expression. Sometimes a mod gives players a way to enjoy a game they otherwise wouldn’t, and I lose nothing from that because we’ve already expressed what we wanted to make. Do I agree with every mod? No. But that’s what makes it beautiful. It’s a dialogue between the game and the player community.

The one thing I wouldn’t want is for the game to be perceived as unplayable without mod X or Y, or for modders to essentially become the studio’s unpaid bug fixers. That’s a tightrope. Outward 1 received far more mods than we anticipated. Something we’d like to do eventually is integrated mod support, but that’s expensive. It would mean taking one or two of our five programmers off other work for months. That decision depends entirely on the strength of the early access launch and how much the modding community engages with what we offer.

When you visit trainers in different cities and see skills you’d prefer over what you already chose, will there ever be skill resets?

Guillaume: As a designer, I am 100% against skill resets. I feel they cheapen choices. If we had New Game Plus mechanics, I might feel differently. But the whole point is: you saw something you wish you’d done? Great news, you can play again and have a radically different experience. I’m completely uncompromising on that.

So how many trainers are in each city, and what happens if a new player joins your world and their skills are already locked in?

Guillaume: You can take all the skills from every trainer up until the breakthrough. That’s freely available to everyone. Breakthroughs are where you commit: you can only do three out of eight. And those breakthrough points now need to be unlocked through exercises, so you don’t have all three from the start. You’ll have more time exploring before you need to commit. In terms of trainer placement, in Outward 1, every city except one had two trainers, and one was hidden in the wilderness. In Outward 2, every city will have one trainer, but every region will also have one hidden trainer. You’ll go through an exploratory phase, almost a pilgrimage, talking to every trainer and building a mental map of what you want to do before you commit resources and breakthroughs.

You mentioned animation blending, but I tend to prefer animation commitment because it gives your decisions more weight. If you can cancel anything, doesn’t that reduce consequence in Outward 2's combat?

Guillaume: The answer is stamina. Even if you cancel an attack midway and transition into a dodge, you still spent the stamina for both actions. The attrition is still there; it’s just that the failure state is more immersive. If I start swinging and then need to dodge, I spend stamina on both rather than just landing the hit. If I’d timed it better, I’d have spent stamina only on the hit and connected. So you’re still rewarded for making the right decision at the right time.

For heavier weapons like a two-handed hammer, the hits take longer to land, but the payoff is significant. There are also quicker offhand attack options on two-handed weapons for players who want shorter, more probing hits before committing to a big strike. Shields feel very good, as you have both a shield bash, which is shorter range and quicker, and a shield charge, which advances forward with double impact. Thanks to animation blending, you can flow seamlessly between those and your main weapon.

WCCFTECH: What’s your stance on AI tools in game development?

Guillaume: It’s complicated because “AI” is used as an umbrella term that covers very different technologies with very different ethical implications. Generative AI, as it currently exists, is mostly using copyrighted material without consent. It’s actual theft, and it makes no legal sense to allow machines to copyright output, because that would let whoever owns the machine claim ownership of nearly all creative possibilities. That’s deeply wrong.

LLMs are different. They can be useful accelerators, but most people misunderstand what they actually are: they’re designed to produce believable answers, not correct ones. The margin of error is large, and people underestimate how much that impacts the reliability of what they create. Some of our programmers use ChatGPT to challenge their assumptions about how their code works. That can be worthwhile.

The technology with the highest actual potential is still machine learning, particularly for extending or completing work in an established style. If an artist does the shading on half a character illustration and AI completes it in that style, and the artist then does touch-ups, that accelerates work without replacing the human’s creative intent. That’s a use case I can see us adopting. But not if the price is extreme environmental strain, copyright theft, and dependence on corporate AI infrastructure that turns creativity into something we’re renting rather than owning. So my view is nuanced. It’s not “anything AI-adjacent is bad,” but the current dominant forms are genuinely problematic.

How are you feeling about Unreal Engine 5, given how many UE5 releases have had serious performance problems, especially on PC?

Guillaume: Unreal has problems, but it’s an extremely powerful tool. Most performance issues in UE5 games stem from a lack of discipline on the developer side. Studios push graphical fidelity so hard that they eat up hardware in ways that don’t make sense. There are also genuine technical constraints, like upscaling technology requiring a moderately modern GPU.

When you compare Unity and Unreal, Unreal is very unforgiving. Any logical inconsistency in your build will crash the engine, which is highly disruptive to production. Unity is much more permissive; it’ll flag what’s broken and keep building the rest. Unity suits a fast, iterative development culture. Unreal rewards a “measure twice, cut once” discipline. We’ve experienced a lot of pain making this switch after 10 years on Unity.

So why did we switch? Unity has been in development hell for years. They’ve failed to deliver on features they promised for two or three years, and they still don’t have a valid dynamic lighting solution. Unreal’s dynamic lighting works, and it’s gorgeous. We simply couldn’t make Outward 2 as we envision it without Unreal. My one concern is industry dependency — if UE5 becomes a complete hegemony, that’s dangerous. I hope Unity gets its act together, and I hope we see more engine options emerge. But as of now, Epic is doing their part by pushing what they genuinely believe is the future of the medium, and for what it’s worth, we’re grateful even if it’s been challenging.

Thank you for your time.

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