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Bigger doesn't necessarily mean superior. It's an old adage, but it's also the most accurate way to describe my thoughts after investing 50 hours with The Outer Worlds 2. Developer Obsidian expanded on all aspects to the next installment to its 2019 science fiction role-playing game — additional wit, adversaries, weapons, traits, and settings, every important component in games like this. And it works remarkably well — for a little while. But the burden of all those grand concepts causes the experience to falter as the hours wear on.

A Powerful Initial Impact

The Outer Worlds 2 makes a strong initial impact. You are a member of the Terran Directorate, a well-intentioned organization dedicated to controlling unscrupulous regimes and companies. After some capital-D Drama, you end up in the Arcadia system, a colony fractured by war between Auntie's Option (the product of a merger between the first game's two major companies), the Defenders (collectivism pushed to its most extreme outcome), and the Ascendant Order (like the Catholic church, but with math in place of Jesus). There are also a number of tears creating openings in the universe, but at this moment, you absolutely must reach a communication hub for pressing contact reasons. The issue is that it's in the heart of a warzone, and you need to determine how to reach it.

Like its predecessor, Outer Worlds 2 is a first-person RPG with an main narrative and many side quests spread out across multiple locations or zones (expansive maps with a much to discover, but not sandbox).

The first zone and the journey of getting to that relay hub are spectacular. You've got some goofy encounters, of course, like one that involves a farmer who has fed too much sugary cereal to their beloved crustacean. Most direct you toward something beneficial, though — an surprising alternative route or some additional intelligence that might unlock another way onward.

Memorable Moments and Missed Chances

In one memorable sequence, you can find a Defender runaway near the viaduct who's about to be executed. No quest is associated with it, and the sole method to find it is by searching and hearing the background conversation. If you're fast and alert enough not to let him get defeated, you can save him (and then save his runaway sweetheart from getting eliminated by creatures in their refuge later), but more relevant to the task at hand is a energy cable hidden in the foliage in the vicinity. If you track it, you'll locate a hidden entrance to the transmission center. There's an alternate entry to the station's underground tunnels hidden away in a cavern that you may or may not notice based on when you follow a specific companion quest. You can find an easily missable individual who's key to saving someone's life down the line. (And there's a stuffed animal who implicitly sways a team of fighters to fight with you, if you're considerate enough to rescue it from a danger zone.) This initial segment is rich and engaging, and it feels like it's brimming with rich storytelling potential that rewards you for your curiosity.

Fading Anticipations

Outer Worlds 2 never lives up to those opening anticipations again. The following key zone is arranged comparable to a map in the initial title or Avowed — a big area scattered with notable locations and side quests. They're all thematically relevant to the struggle between Auntie's Choice and the Ascendant Order, but they're also vignettes detached from the central narrative in terms of story and geographically. Don't anticipate any world-based indicators guiding you toward fresh decisions like in the opening region.

Despite pushing you toward some hard calls, what you do in this region's secondary tasks doesn't matter. Like, it genuinely is irrelevant, to the point where whether you enable war crimes or lead a group of refugees to their death leads to merely a casual remark or two of conversation. A game doesn't have to let every quest impact the plot in some big, dramatic fashion, but if you're compelling me to select a side and giving the impression that my selection counts, I don't think it's unreasonable to hope for something further when it's finished. When the game's earlier revealed that it is capable of more, any diminishment appears to be a trade-off. You get expanded elements like the developers pledged, but at the price of depth.

Daring Concepts and Lacking Tension

The game's intermediate phase attempts a comparable approach to the central framework from the first planet, but with distinctly reduced panache. The concept is a courageous one: an linked task that extends across several locations and encourages you to solicit support from various groups if you want a smoother path toward your aim. Beyond the recurring structure being a slightly monotonous, it's also absent the drama that this kind of scenario should have. It's a "bargain with evil" moment. There should be hard concessions. Your association with either faction should be important beyond earning their approval by doing new tasks for them. All this is lacking, because you can just blitz through on your own and achieve the goal anyway. The game even takes pains to provide you ways of achieving this, pointing out different ways as additional aims and having partners tell you where to go.

It's a side effect of a wider concern in Outer Worlds 2: the anxiety of letting you be unhappy with your choices. It regularly exaggerates out of its way to guarantee not only that there's an different way in many situations, but that you realize its presence. Locked rooms almost always have multiple entry methods indicated, or nothing worthwhile within if they do not. If you {can't