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Larger isn't always superior. It's a cliché, yet it's also the truest way to encapsulate my impressions after devoting 50 hours with The Outer Worlds 2. Developer Obsidian included additional everything to the next installment to its 2019 science fiction role-playing game — more humor, enemies, arms, traits, and settings, everything that matters in titles of this genre. And it functions superbly — at first. But the burden of all those grand concepts makes the game wobble as the hours wear on.

A Powerful Initial Impact

The Outer Worlds 2 makes a strong initial impact. You are a member of the Planetary Directorate, a well-intentioned agency dedicated to curbing corrupt governments and businesses. After some capital-D Drama, you wind up in the Arcadia system, a colony fractured by conflict between Auntie's Choice (the product of a union between the previous title's two major companies), the Protectorate (communalism taken to its most dire end), and the Ascendant Brotherhood (reminiscent of the Church, but with math instead of Jesus). There are also a bunch of fissures tearing holes in space and time, but right now, you urgently require get to a relay station for pressing contact needs. The challenge is that it's in the heart of a battlefield, and you need to determine how to reach it.

Similar to the first game, Outer Worlds 2 is a first-person role-playing game with an central plot and many side quests spread out across various worlds or regions (big areas with a much to discover, but not fully open).

The initial area and the task of accessing that relay hub are impressive. You've got some funny interactions, of course, like one that includes a agriculturalist who has overindulged sweet grains to their favorite crab. Most direct you toward something beneficial, though — an unexpected new path or some new bit of intel that might provide an alternate route forward.

Memorable Events and Lost Opportunities

In one notable incident, you can come across a Protectorate deserter near the viaduct who's about to be eliminated. No mission is tied to it, and the exclusive means to find it is by investigating and paying attention to the environmental chatter. If you're quick and sufficiently cautious not to let him get slain, you can preserve him (and then rescue his runaway sweetheart from getting killed by monsters in their refuge later), but more connected with the task at hand is a power line concealed in the undergrowth in the vicinity. If you follow it, you'll locate a secret entry to the communication hub. There's a different access point to the station's sewers tucked away in a cave that you might or might not detect contingent on when you pursue a specific companion quest. You can locate an readily overlooked individual who's essential to saving someone's life much later. (And there's a stuffed animal who implicitly sways a group of troops to support you, if you're nice enough to rescue it from a minefield.) This opening chapter is rich and engaging, and it feels like it's overflowing with deep narrative possibilities that rewards you for your curiosity.

Waning Hopes

Outer Worlds 2 fails to meet those early hopes again. The following key zone is organized comparable to a level in the original game or Avowed — a big area scattered with notable locations and optional missions. They're all story-appropriate to the clash between Auntie's Choice and the Ascendant Order, but they're also short stories isolated from the primary plot in terms of story and geographically. Don't expect any environmental clues leading you to alternative options like in the opening region.

In spite of pushing you toward some tough decisions, what you do in this region's secondary tasks is inconsequential. Like, it really doesn't matter, to the extent that whether you permit atrocities or direct a collection of displaced people to their end culminates in nothing but a casual remark or two of speech. A game doesn't have to let all tasks affect the story in some significant, theatrical manner, but if you're making me choose a group and pretending like my choice is important, I don't believe it's unfair to anticipate something additional when it's finished. When the game's earlier revealed that it can be better, anything less feels like a trade-off. You get expanded elements like the developers pledged, but at the price of depth.

Daring Concepts and Missing Tension

The game's intermediate phase tries something similar to the main setup from the first planet, but with distinctly reduced flair. The notion is a daring one: an interconnected mission that covers several locations and urges you to solicit support from different factions if you want a smoother path toward your goal. Aside from the repeat setup being a somewhat tedious, it's also absent the suspense that this kind of scenario should have. It's a "bargain with evil" moment. There should be hard concessions. Your association with each alliance should be important beyond earning their approval by completing additional missions for them. All this is missing, because you can merely power through on your own and complete the mission anyway. The game even goes out of its way to give you methods of doing this, indicating alternative paths as secondary goals and having allies tell you where to go.

It's a consequence of a broader issue in Outer Worlds 2: the anxiety of permitting you to feel dissatisfied with your decisions. It frequently goes too far in its efforts to ensure not only that there's an alternate route in most cases, but that you are aware of it. Locked rooms nearly always have multiple entry methods signposted, or no significant items inside if they don't. If you {can't