🔗 Share this article

Larger isn't necessarily better. It's an old adage, yet it's also the best way to describe my thoughts after investing many hours with The Outer Worlds 2. Developer Obsidian added more of each element to the next installment to its 2019's sci-fi RPG — increased comedy, foes, weapons, attributes, and locations, every important component in titles of this genre. And it operates excellently — for a little while. But the weight of all those ambitious ideas causes the experience to falter as the time passes.

A Powerful First Impression

The Outer Worlds 2 makes a strong first impression. You are a member of the Earth Directorate, a do-gooder institution committed to controlling unscrupulous regimes and corporations. After some serious turmoil, you wind up in the Arcadia system, a outpost divided by war between Auntie's Selection (the outcome of a merger between the previous title's two major companies), the Protectorate (groupthink taken to its worst logical conclusion), and the Ascendant Brotherhood (like the Catholic church, but with math instead of Jesus). There are also a number of tears tearing holes in the fabric of reality, but right now, you really need access a transmission center for urgent communications purposes. The problem is that it's in the middle of a warzone, and you need to determine how to arrive.

Following the original, Outer Worlds 2 is a FPS adventure with an central plot and dozens of optional missions scattered across multiple locations or regions (expansive maps with a lot to uncover, but not fully open).

The first zone and the journey of getting to that comms station are impressive. You've got some funny interactions, of course, like one that involves a rancher who has given excessive sugary cereal to their favorite crab. Most guide you to something beneficial, though — an unexpected new path or some fresh information that might provide an alternate route ahead.

Memorable Moments and Lost Opportunities

In one notable incident, you can find a Guardian defector near the bridge who's about to be executed. No task is linked to it, and the sole method to locate it is by searching and hearing the background conversation. If you're swift and alert enough not to let him get defeated, you can save him (and then save his runaway sweetheart from getting eliminated by creatures in their lair later), but more relevant to the current objective is a energy cable concealed in the foliage close by. If you follow it, you'll locate a concealed access point to the communication hub. There's an alternate entry to the station's underground tunnels hidden away in a cavern that you could or could not notice based on when you follow a specific companion quest. You can encounter an easily missable character who's essential to rescuing a person much later. (And there's a plush toy who implicitly sways a group of troops to fight with you, if you're kind enough to save it from a minefield.) This beginning section is dense and exciting, and it feels like it's full of deep narrative possibilities that benefits you for your exploration.

Waning Anticipations

Outer Worlds 2 never lives up to those early hopes again. The next primary region is arranged similar to a level in the original game or Avowed — a large region scattered with notable locations and side quests. They're all story-appropriate to the conflict between Auntie's Selection and the Order of the Ascendant, but they're also vignettes isolated from the central narrative in terms of story and location-wise. Don't look for any environmental clues guiding you toward fresh decisions like in the opening region.

Despite pushing you toward some tough decisions, what you do in this zone's side quests has no impact. Like, it genuinely is irrelevant, to the extent that whether you permit atrocities or lead a group of refugees to their end leads to merely a passing comment or two of speech. A game doesn't have to let all tasks affect the plot in some major, impactful way, but if you're making me choose a group and giving the impression that my selection is important, I don't feel it's unfair to hope for something additional when it's concluded. When the game's already shown that it can be better, any diminishment feels like a concession. You get more of everything like Obsidian promised, but at the expense of depth.

Ambitious Ideas and Lacking Drama

The game's intermediate phase attempts a comparable approach to the main setup from the first planet, but with distinctly reduced style. The idea is a daring one: an related objective that covers multiple worlds and urges you to request help from various groups if you want a smoother path toward your goal. Beyond the repeat setup being a slightly monotonous, it's also just missing the tension that this kind of scenario should have. It's a "pact with the devil" moment. There should be hard concessions. Your connection with each alliance should matter beyond earning their approval by completing additional missions for them. All this is lacking, because you can merely power through on your own and clear the objective anyway. The game even goes out of its way to give you ways of doing this, highlighting alternate routes as secondary goals and having partners advise you where to go.

It's a side effect of a broader issue in Outer Worlds 2: the anxiety of permitting you to feel dissatisfied with your selections. It frequently exaggerates in its attempts to guarantee not only that there's an different way in many situations, but that you are aware of it. Secured areas nearly always have multiple entry methods indicated, or nothing valuable internally if they fail to. If you {can't