Outer Worlds 2 Doesn't Quite Achieve the Heights
More expansive isn't always better. It's an old adage, however it's the best way to describe my feelings after investing 50 hours with The Outer Worlds 2. The development team added more of all aspects to the follow-up to its 2019's science fiction role-playing game — more humor, adversaries, weapons, attributes, and places, everything that matters in games like this. And it functions superbly — for a little while. But the load of all those grand concepts makes the game wobble as the game progresses.
A Powerful Initial Impact
The Outer Worlds 2 makes a strong opening statement. You are a member of the Planetary Directorate, a altruistic organization committed to curbing corrupt governments and corporations. After some capital-D Drama, you wind up in the Arcadia system, a settlement divided by war between Auntie's Selection (the outcome of a combination between the original game's two big corporations), the Protectorate (collectivism extended to its most dire end), and the Ascendant Brotherhood (similar to the Catholic faith, but with math in place of Jesus). There are also a bunch of fissures tearing holes in the universe, but at this moment, you absolutely must reach a transmission center for pressing contact purposes. The problem is that it's in the middle of a combat area, and you need to determine how to get there.
Like its predecessor, Outer Worlds 2 is a first-person role-playing game with an central plot and many optional missions spread out across multiple locations or regions (expansive maps with a much to discover, but not fully open).
The first zone and the process of accessing that comms station are spectacular. You've got some humorous meetings, of course, like one that features a rancher who has overindulged sugary treats to their favorite crab. Most guide you to something beneficial, though — an unforeseen passage or some additional intelligence that might unlock another way ahead.
Notable Sequences and Lost Chances
In one memorable sequence, you can find a Guardian defector near the viaduct who's about to be killed. No task is linked to it, and the sole method to locate it is by investigating and paying attention to the ambient dialogue. If you're swift and careful enough not to let him get defeated, you can preserve him (and then protect his defector partner from getting eliminated by creatures in their refuge later), but more relevant to the task at hand is a power line hidden in the grass in the vicinity. If you track it, you'll find a concealed access point to the transmission center. There's an alternate entry to the station's underground tunnels tucked away in a grotto that you may or may not notice contingent on when you undertake a specific companion quest. You can locate an readily overlooked individual who's key to preserving a life 20 hours later. (And there's a stuffed animal who indirectly convinces a team of fighters to join your cause, if you're considerate enough to protect it from a explosive area.) This initial segment is rich and exciting, and it feels like it's overflowing with substantial plot opportunities that rewards you for your inquisitiveness.
Fading Anticipations
Outer Worlds 2 doesn't fulfill those opening anticipations again. The following key zone is structured similar to a location in the original game or Avowed — a expansive territory sprinkled with points of interest and optional missions. They're all narratively connected to the clash between Auntie's Option and the Ascendant Brotherhood, but they're also vignettes isolated from the central narrative plot-wise and geographically. Don't anticipate any world-based indicators guiding you toward new choices like in the opening region.
Despite compelling you to choose some hard calls, what you do in this area's optional missions has no impact. Like, it genuinely is irrelevant, to the point where whether you enable war crimes or lead a group of refugees to their death results in only a throwaway line or two of conversation. A game doesn't have to let each mission affect the plot in some big, dramatic fashion, but if you're compelling me to select a faction and acting as if my decision matters, I don't feel it's irrational to hope for something more when it's over. When the game's previously demonstrated that it can be better, any reduction appears to be a trade-off. You get additional content like the team vowed, but at the cost of complexity.
Daring Ideas and Absent Stakes
The game's second act tries something similar to the main setup from the first planet, but with noticeably less style. The notion is a daring one: an interconnected mission that covers several locations and motivates you to solicit support from various groups if you want a easier route toward your aim. In addition to the repeated framework being a little tiresome, it's also just missing the drama that this kind of scenario should have. It's a "bargain with evil" moment. There should be tough compromise. Your relationship with each alliance should be important beyond gaining their favor by performing extra duties for them. All of this is absent, because you can merely power through on your own and achieve the goal anyway. The game even takes pains to give you ways of accomplishing this, highlighting alternate routes as additional aims and having companions advise you where to go.
It's a consequence of a wider concern in Outer Worlds 2: the apprehension of permitting you to feel dissatisfied with your choices. It frequently overcompensates in its attempts to make sure not only that there's an alternate route in many situations, but that you know it exists. Locked rooms nearly always have multiple entry methods signposted, or no significant items inside if they fail to. If you {can't
