Obsidian's Sequel Doesn't Quite Achieve the Summit

More expansive isn't always superior. It's a cliché, however it's the most accurate way to encapsulate my thoughts after investing five dozen hours with The Outer Worlds 2. The development team included additional each element to the follow-up to its 2019 sci-fi RPG — more humor, enemies, firearms, traits, and locations, everything that matters in titles of this genre. And it works remarkably well — initially. But the weight of all those daring plans makes the game wobble as the hours wear on.

An Impressive First Impression

The Outer Worlds 2 establishes a solid first impression. You are part of the Earth Directorate, a do-gooder institution committed to curbing unscrupulous regimes and businesses. After some serious turmoil, you wind up in the Arcadia region, a colony splintered by war between Auntie's Option (the product of a combination between the previous title's two large firms), the Defenders (communalism pushed to its most extreme outcome), and the Ascendant Order (similar to the Catholic faith, but with mathematics in place of Jesus). There are also a series of rifts creating openings in the universe, but right now, you urgently require access a communication hub for pressing contact needs. The problem is that it's in the heart of a combat area, and you need to find a way to reach it.

Following the original, Outer Worlds 2 is a first-person role-playing game with an central plot and dozens of secondary tasks distributed across various worlds or regions (big areas with a much to discover, but not open-world).

The opening region and the process of accessing that comms station are remarkable. You've got some humorous meetings, of course, like one that includes a farmer who has overindulged sugary treats to their favorite crab. Most lead you to something beneficial, though — an unexpected new path or some additional intelligence that might open a different path forward.

Memorable Sequences and Lost Possibilities

In one memorable sequence, you can encounter a Guardian defector near the bridge who's about to be eliminated. No mission is tied to it, and the exclusive means to locate it is by searching and hearing the background conversation. If you're quick and careful enough not to let him get killed, you can preserve him (and then save his runaway sweetheart from getting killed by creatures in their lair later), but more relevant to the immediate mission is a electrical conduit obscured in the undergrowth in the vicinity. If you follow it, you'll locate a concealed access point to the transmission center. There's another entrance to the station's sewers hidden away in a cavern that you may or may not notice contingent on when you follow a certain partner task. You can locate an readily overlooked person who's crucial to rescuing a person much later. (And there's a stuffed animal who indirectly convinces a squad of soldiers to fight with you, if you're considerate enough to protect it from a explosive area.) This beginning section is rich and thrilling, and it feels like it's overflowing with substantial plot opportunities that benefits you for your exploration.

Fading Expectations

Outer Worlds 2 fails to meet those opening anticipations again. The next primary region is organized comparable to a map in the original game or Avowed — a large region sprinkled with key sites and side quests. They're all narratively connected to the struggle between Auntie's Choice and the Order of the Ascendant, but they're also vignettes detached from the central narrative in terms of story and location-wise. Don't expect any world-based indicators guiding you toward fresh decisions like in the opening region.

Regardless of compelling you to choose some difficult choices, what you do in this zone's side quests is inconsequential. Like, it really doesn't matter, to the extent that whether you permit atrocities or lead a group of refugees to their death culminates in only a passing comment or two of dialogue. A game doesn't have to let each mission influence the plot in some big, dramatic fashion, but if you're compelling me to select a side and giving the impression that my decision is important, I don't think it's unreasonable to hope for something additional when it's over. When the game's previously demonstrated that it can be better, anything less seems like a compromise. You get more of everything like Obsidian promised, but at the expense of substance.

Ambitious Ideas and Absent Drama

The game's second act endeavors an alike method to the central framework from the initial world, but with distinctly reduced style. The concept is a bold one: an interconnected mission that spans two planets and urges you to seek aid from various groups if you want a smoother path toward your goal. Beyond the recurring structure being a little tiresome, it's also lacking the tension that this sort of circumstance should have. It's a "bargain with evil" moment. There should be difficult trade-offs. Your connection with either faction should be important beyond gaining their favor by completing additional missions for them. All of this is absent, because you can simply rush through on your own and complete the mission anyway. The game even goes out of its way to provide you means of doing this, indicating different ways as optional objectives and having partners advise you where to go.

It's a side effect of a broader issue in Outer Worlds 2: the fear of allowing you to regret with your choices. It regularly overcompensates in its efforts to ensure not only that there's an alternative path in most cases, but that you know it exists. Locked rooms practically always have various access ways marked, or nothing worthwhile within if they do not. If you {can't