Obsidian's Sequel Doesn't Quite Achieve the Stars
More expansive isn't necessarily superior. It's an old adage, yet it's also the most accurate way to describe my impressions after devoting five dozen hours with The Outer Worlds 2. The development team expanded on all aspects to the sequel to its 2019 futuristic adventure — more humor, adversaries, weapons, attributes, and places, everything that matters in such adventures. And it operates excellently — for a little while. But the burden of all those ambitious ideas leads to instability as the hours wear on.
A Strong Initial Impact
The Outer Worlds 2 establishes a solid initial impact. You are a member of the Earth Directorate, a do-gooder institution committed to restraining unscrupulous regimes and businesses. After some serious turmoil, you wind up in the Arcadia region, a colony fractured by conflict between Auntie's Choice (the outcome of a union between the original game's two major companies), the Defenders (communalism extended to its most dire end), and the Ascendant Order (like the Catholic church, but with calculations in place of Jesus). There are also a series of fissures tearing holes in the universe, but currently, you absolutely must get to a transmission center for pressing contact reasons. The problem is that it's in the middle of a combat area, and you need to figure out how to arrive.
Following the original, Outer Worlds 2 is a first-person RPG with an overarching story and many optional missions scattered across various worlds or regions (big areas with a plenty to explore, but not fully open).
The first zone and the process of getting to that communication station are remarkable. You've got some humorous meetings, of course, like one that features a agriculturalist who has fed too much sugary treats to their favorite crab. Most lead you to something beneficial, though — an unforeseen passage or some additional intelligence that might open a different path onward.
Memorable Moments and Missed Possibilities
In one memorable sequence, you can encounter a Guardian defector near the bridge who's about to be executed. No task is tied to it, and the sole method to find it is by investigating and listening to the environmental chatter. If you're quick and careful enough not to let him get slain, you can preserve him (and then save his runaway sweetheart from getting killed by monsters in their lair later), but more relevant to the current objective is a energy cable obscured in the undergrowth close by. If you track it, you'll discover a concealed access point to the communication hub. There's an alternate entry to the station's underground tunnels hidden away in a grotto that you may or may not observe contingent on when you undertake a certain partner task. You can find an readily overlooked person who's key to preserving a life 20 hours later. (And there's a soft toy who implicitly sways a group of troops to fight with you, if you're considerate enough to protect it from a minefield.) This beginning section is rich and engaging, and it seems like it's brimming with rich storytelling potential that rewards you for your curiosity.
Diminishing Expectations
Outer Worlds 2 never lives up to those opening anticipations again. The second main area is structured like a map in the initial title or Avowed — a large region sprinkled with notable locations and side quests. They're all narratively connected to the conflict between Auntie's Selection and the Order of the Ascendant, but they're also short stories isolated from the primary plot plot-wise and spatially. Don't look for any contextual hints guiding you toward alternative options like in the first zone.
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 degree that whether you allow violations or guide a band of survivors to their end culminates in merely a passing comment or two of dialogue. A game doesn't have to let each mission affect the plot in some major, impactful way, but if you're compelling me to select a faction and giving the impression that my choice matters, I don't feel it's irrational to anticipate something additional when it's over. When the game's previously demonstrated that it is capable of more, anything less seems like a trade-off. You get more of everything like the team vowed, but at the cost of complexity.
Bold Plans and Missing Drama
The game's intermediate phase endeavors an alike method to the primary structure from the first planet, but with distinctly reduced panache. The concept is a courageous one: an interconnected mission that spans several locations and urges you to seek aid from various groups if you want a easier route toward your objective. In addition to the repeat setup being a somewhat tedious, it's also just missing the tension that this sort of circumstance should have. It's a "pact with the devil" moment. There should be hard concessions. Your relationship with any group should matter beyond earning their approval by doing new tasks for them. Everything is absent, because you can merely power through on your own and complete the mission anyway. The game even goes out of its way to hand you means of accomplishing this, highlighting alternative paths as secondary goals and having allies tell you where to go.
It's a consequence of a larger problem in Outer Worlds 2: the anxiety of permitting you to feel dissatisfied with your decisions. It often exaggerates in its attempts to ensure not only that there's an different way in most cases, 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
