🔗 Share this article

Larger isn't necessarily improved. That's a tired saying, however it's the best way to describe my feelings after investing five dozen hours with The Outer Worlds 2. The creators added more of each element to the next installment to its prior futuristic adventure — more humor, adversaries, weapons, attributes, and places, every important component in titles of this genre. And it works remarkably well — for a little while. But the weight of all those grand concepts causes the experience to falter as the hours wear on.

A Powerful First Impression

The Outer Worlds 2 creates a powerful first impression. You are a member of the Planetary Directorate, a altruistic agency focused on controlling unscrupulous regimes and corporations. After some serious turmoil, you end up in the Arcadia sector, a settlement splintered by conflict between Auntie's Choice (the product of a union between the first game's two large firms), the Defenders (collectivism extended to its worst logical conclusion), and the Ascendant Order (reminiscent of the Church, but with calculations rather than Jesus). There are also a number of tears causing breaches in space and time, but right now, you really need access a transmission center for pressing contact reasons. The challenge is that it's in the center of a battlefield, and you need to figure out how to reach it.

Like its predecessor, Outer Worlds 2 is a first-person role-playing game with an main narrative and numerous side quests spread out across various worlds or zones (large spaces with a much to discover, but not sandbox).

The first zone and the task of accessing that comms station are spectacular. You've got some humorous meetings, of course, like one that features a agriculturalist who has given excessive sugary cereal to their beloved crustacean. Most lead you to something helpful, though — an surprising alternative route or some fresh information that might open a different path onward.

Unforgettable Moments and Overlooked Possibilities

In one notable incident, you can find a Guardian defector near the overpass who's about to be executed. No mission is linked to it, and the sole method to discover it is by searching and listening to the environmental chatter. If you're fast and sufficiently cautious not to let him get defeated, you can rescue him (and then rescue his deserter lover from getting eliminated by monsters in their refuge later), but more relevant to the current objective is a energy cable concealed in the foliage close by. If you track it, you'll discover a hidden entrance to the relay station. There's a different access point to the station's underground tunnels tucked away in a cavern that you might or might not observe based on when you pursue a specific companion quest. You can find an readily overlooked character who's essential to preserving a life 20 hours later. (And there's a stuffed animal who indirectly convinces a squad of soldiers to fight with you, if you're kind enough to rescue it from a explosive area.) This opening chapter is packed and engaging, and it seems like it's full of deep narrative possibilities that rewards you for your exploration.

Fading Hopes

Outer Worlds 2 doesn't fulfill those initial expectations again. The second main area is structured like a level in the first Outer Worlds or Avowed — a expansive territory scattered with points of interest and optional missions. They're all thematically relevant to the conflict between Auntie's Choice and the Order of the Ascendant, but they're also vignettes detached from the central narrative narratively and location-wise. Don't anticipate any contextual hints guiding you toward alternative options like in the initial area.

Regardless of forcing you to make some difficult choices, what you do in this zone's side quests is inconsequential. Like, it really doesn't matter, to the point where whether you permit atrocities or lead a group of refugees to their death leads to nothing but a throwaway line or two of conversation. A game doesn't have to let every quest impact the narrative in some major, impactful way, but if you're forcing me to decide a group and giving the impression that my decision counts, I don't believe it's unreasonable to expect something further when it's finished. When the game's already shown that it can be better, any diminishment appears to be a concession. You get more of everything like the team vowed, but at the expense of substance.

Bold Concepts and Lacking Stakes

The game's middle section attempts a comparable approach to the main setup from the opening location, but with distinctly reduced panache. The idea is a bold one: an related objective that extends across several locations and urges you to solicit support from different factions if you want a easier route toward your objective. Beyond the recurring structure being a slightly monotonous, it's also absent the drama that this type of situation should have. It's a "pact with the devil" moment. There should be difficult trade-offs. Your association with each alliance should count beyond gaining their favor by doing new tasks for them. Everything is lacking, because you can merely power through on your own and complete the mission anyway. The game even takes pains to hand you means of accomplishing this, pointing out alternative paths as additional aims and having companions tell you where to go.

It's a side effect of a larger problem in Outer Worlds 2: the apprehension of permitting you to feel dissatisfied with your choices. It frequently overcompensates in its attempts to guarantee not only that there's an alternate route in most cases, but that you know it exists. Locked rooms almost always have multiple entry methods indicated, or nothing valuable inside if they fail to. If you {can't