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Bigger isn't always better. It's a cliché, but it's also the most accurate way to sum up my thoughts after spending five dozen hours with The Outer Worlds 2. The creators included additional everything to the follow-up to its prior futuristic adventure — increased comedy, foes, arms, characteristics, and places, everything that matters in titles of this genre. And it operates excellently — for a little while. But the load of all those grand concepts leads to instability as the time passes.

An Impressive Initial Impact

The Outer Worlds 2 makes a strong opening statement. You belong to the Planetary Directorate, a do-gooder institution focused on restraining unscrupulous regimes and companies. After some capital-D Drama, you end up in the Arcadia sector, a settlement splintered by hostilities between Auntie's Option (the result of a union between the first game's two major companies), the Defenders (groupthink pushed to its worst logical conclusion), and the Ascendant Brotherhood (similar to the Catholic faith, but with mathematics in place of Jesus). There are also a series of fissures creating openings in the universe, but at this moment, you really need get to a relay station for critical messaging reasons. The problem is that it's in the center of a warzone, and you need to determine how to arrive.

Following the original, Outer Worlds 2 is a first-person role-playing game with an overarching story and dozens of optional missions scattered across various worlds or regions (expansive maps with a lot to uncover, but not sandbox).

The opening region and the task of getting to that communication station are remarkable. You've got some goofy encounters, of course, like one that features a rancher who has fed too much sugary treats to their favorite crab. Most direct you toward something helpful, though — an unexpected new path or some additional intelligence that might provide an alternate route forward.

Notable Moments and Missed Possibilities

In one memorable sequence, you can encounter a Protectorate deserter near the overpass who's about to be executed. No mission is linked to it, and the sole method to discover it is by investigating and paying attention to the ambient dialogue. If you're fast and alert enough not to let him get killed, you can preserve him (and then save his defector partner from getting slain by monsters in their lair later), but more connected with the current objective is a energy cable hidden in the grass close by. If you trace it, you'll discover a concealed access point to the transmission center. There's another entrance to the station's drainage system tucked away in a cave that you may or may not detect based on when you pursue a particular ally mission. You can encounter an readily overlooked individual who's crucial to saving someone's life down the line. (And there's a soft toy who implicitly sways a group of troops to join your cause, if you're nice enough to protect it from a danger zone.) This initial segment is packed and engaging, and it feels like it's full of substantial plot opportunities that compensates you for your inquisitiveness.

Fading Anticipations

Outer Worlds 2 fails to meet those early hopes again. The second main area is organized like a location in the first Outer Worlds or Avowed — a large region dotted with notable locations and secondary tasks. They're all thematically relevant to the conflict between Auntie's Choice and the Order of the Ascendant, but they're also short stories isolated from the main story in terms of story and location-wise. Don't look for any contextual hints directing you to fresh decisions like in the first zone.

Despite compelling you to choose some hard calls, what you do in this zone's side quests doesn't matter. Like, it really doesn't matter, to the extent that whether you enable war crimes or guide a band of survivors to their death leads to merely a throwaway line or two of speech. A game doesn't have to let each mission impact the story in some significant, theatrical manner, but if you're forcing me to decide a group and acting as if my choice counts, I don't feel it's unreasonable to anticipate something more when it's over. When the game's earlier revealed that it can be better, any reduction seems like a trade-off. You get more of everything like Obsidian promised, but at the expense of depth.

Daring Concepts and Lacking Stakes

The game's second act attempts a comparable approach to the primary structure from the initial world, but with distinctly reduced style. The concept is a courageous one: an linked task that covers multiple worlds and motivates you to request help from various groups if you want a easier route toward your goal. Beyond the recurring structure being a little tiresome, it's also just missing the drama that this type of situation should have. It's a "bargain with evil" moment. There should be difficult trade-offs. Your connection with any group should be important beyond making them like you by performing extra duties for them. All this is absent, because you can simply rush through on your own and complete the mission anyway. The game even takes pains to hand you means of achieving this, indicating alternative paths as secondary goals and having partners advise you where to go.

It's a byproduct of a broader issue in Outer Worlds 2: the apprehension of permitting you to feel dissatisfied with your selections. It frequently exaggerates in its attempts to guarantee not only that there's an alternate route in frequent instances, but that you know it exists. Closed chambers almost always have multiple entry methods signposted, or nothing worthwhile inside if they fail to. If you {can't