Obsidian's Sequel Doesn't Quite Reach the Summit
Bigger isn't always better. It's an old adage, yet it's also the most accurate way to describe my thoughts after spending many hours with The Outer Worlds 2. The development team added more of everything to the follow-up to its 2019 science fiction role-playing game — more humor, foes, weapons, attributes, and locations, everything that matters in such adventures. And it operates excellently — at first. But the weight of all those grand concepts causes the experience to falter as the hours wear on.
An Impressive Opening Act
The Outer Worlds 2 creates a powerful opening statement. You belong to the Terran Directorate, a altruistic institution dedicated to controlling corrupt governments and corporations. After some major drama, you end up in the Arcadia sector, a colony fractured by hostilities between Auntie's Option (the outcome of a combination between the first game's two major companies), the Guardians (collectivism taken to its worst logical conclusion), and the Ascendant Brotherhood (reminiscent of the Church, but with mathematics instead of Jesus). There are also a series of fissures creating openings in the fabric of reality, but at this moment, you absolutely must reach a transmission center for pressing contact reasons. The challenge is that it's in the heart of a warzone, and you need to find a way to reach it.
Similar to the first game, Outer Worlds 2 is a first-person RPG with an main narrative and many optional missions scattered across various worlds or regions (large spaces with a plenty to explore, but not sandbox).
The initial area and the journey of reaching that relay hub are spectacular. You've got some funny interactions, of course, like one that involves a agriculturalist who has overindulged sugary cereal to their preferred crab. Most guide you to something beneficial, though — an unexpected new path or some additional intelligence that might provide an alternate route onward.
Memorable Events and Overlooked Opportunities
In one notable incident, you can encounter a Protectorate deserter near the bridge who's about to be killed. No mission is tied to it, and the only way to find it is by searching and listening to the ambient dialogue. If you're quick and alert enough not to let him get slain, you can preserve him (and then rescue his defector partner from getting killed by monsters in their lair later), but more pertinent to the immediate mission is a energy cable hidden in the grass in the vicinity. If you track it, you'll discover a secret entry to the transmission center. There's a different access point to the station's underground tunnels hidden away in a cavern that you might or might not detect based on when you undertake a certain partner task. You can encounter an readily overlooked individual who's crucial to preserving a life 20 hours later. (And there's a soft toy who implicitly sways a group of troops to join your cause, if you're considerate enough to rescue it from a minefield.) This initial segment is rich and exciting, and it appears as if it's brimming with deep narrative possibilities that compensates you for your curiosity.
Waning Expectations
Outer Worlds 2 fails to meet those early hopes again. The next primary region is arranged like a map in the initial title or Avowed — a large region scattered with points of interest and optional missions. They're all narratively connected to the conflict between Auntie's Option and the Order of the Ascendant, but they're also vignettes isolated from the central narrative narratively and spatially. Don't anticipate any environmental clues leading you to new choices like in the first zone.
Despite pushing you toward some hard calls, what you do in this region's secondary tasks has no impact. Like, it really doesn't matter, to the extent that whether you permit atrocities or lead a group of refugees to their demise results in nothing but a throwaway line or two of dialogue. A game doesn't need to let every quest influence the story in some significant, theatrical manner, but if you're making me choose a group and acting as if my decision counts, I don't feel it's unfair to anticipate something additional when it's finished. When the game's previously demonstrated that it can be better, anything less appears to be a compromise. You get additional content like Obsidian promised, but at the price of depth.
Bold Plans and Absent Stakes
The game's intermediate phase attempts a comparable approach to the primary structure from the first planet, but with distinctly reduced flair. The notion is a courageous one: an linked task that spans multiple worlds and motivates you to request help from different factions if you want a more straightforward journey toward your goal. In addition to the repeat setup being a slightly monotonous, it's also just missing the suspense that this kind of scenario should have. It's a "pact with the devil" moment. There should be tough compromise. Your connection with either faction should matter beyond gaining their favor by doing new tasks for them. All of this is missing, because you can simply rush through on your own and complete the mission anyway. The game even makes an effort to give you means of achieving this, pointing out alternate routes as secondary goals and having partners tell you where to go.
It's a consequence of a wider concern in Outer Worlds 2: the fear of permitting you to feel dissatisfied with your choices. It frequently exaggerates out of its way to ensure not only that there's an different way in many situations, but that you realize its presence. Secured areas almost always have various access ways marked, or nothing valuable internally if they do not. If you {can't
