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More expansive doesn't necessarily mean superior. It's a cliché, but it's also the truest way to sum up my thoughts after investing five dozen hours with The Outer Worlds 2. Developer Obsidian expanded on each element to the next installment to its 2019's science fiction role-playing game — increased comedy, foes, arms, characteristics, and locations, every important component in such adventures. And it operates excellently — at first. But the weight of all those grand concepts makes the game wobble as the game progresses.

A Powerful Initial Impact

The Outer Worlds 2 makes a strong first impression. You belong to the Earth Directorate, a do-gooder agency focused on controlling unscrupulous regimes and corporations. After some capital-D Drama, you wind up in the Arcadia region, a colony fractured by conflict between Auntie's Choice (the result of a union between the original game's two major companies), the Guardians (communalism pushed to its most extreme outcome), and the Order of the Ascendant (similar to the Catholic faith, but with calculations in place of Jesus). There are also a number of tears creating openings in space and time, but currently, you absolutely must access a communication hub for pressing contact reasons. The issue is that it's in the heart of a warzone, and you need to figure out how to get there.

Like its predecessor, Outer Worlds 2 is a first-person RPG with an overarching story and numerous optional missions spread out across multiple locations or zones (expansive maps with a much to discover, but not open-world).

The opening region and the journey of getting to that relay hub are spectacular. You've got some goofy encounters, of course, like one that involves a rancher who has given excessive sweet grains to their favorite crab. Most direct you toward something useful, though — an unexpected new path or some new bit of intel that might provide an alternate route onward.

Unforgettable Events and Missed Opportunities

In one notable incident, you can find a Protectorate deserter near the viaduct who's about to be executed. No task is linked to it, and the sole method to find it is by investigating and listening to the background conversation. If you're fast and alert enough not to let him get killed, you can save him (and then save his runaway sweetheart from getting slain by monsters in their refuge later), but more connected with the current objective is a electrical conduit obscured in the foliage nearby. If you trace it, you'll find a secret entry to the transmission center. There's an alternate entry to the station's sewers stashed in a grotto that you might or might not observe depending on when you pursue a certain partner task. You can find an simple to miss character who's crucial to rescuing a person 20 hours later. (And there's a stuffed animal who indirectly convinces a team of fighters to support you, if you're considerate enough to protect it from a explosive area.) This initial segment is rich and thrilling, and it appears as if it's brimming with rich storytelling potential that benefits you for your exploration.

Waning Anticipations

Outer Worlds 2 doesn't fulfill those initial expectations again. The following key zone is organized like a map in the initial title or Avowed — a expansive territory scattered with key sites and secondary tasks. They're all story-appropriate to the clash between Auntie's Choice and the Ascendant Order, but they're also vignettes detached from the central narrative in terms of story and spatially. Don't expect any contextual hints directing you to fresh decisions like in the first zone.

In spite of pushing you toward some difficult choices, 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 lead a group of refugees to their end results in only a throwaway line or two of conversation. A game doesn't have to let each mission influence the narrative in some significant, theatrical manner, but if you're compelling me to select a side and acting as if my selection is important, I don't feel it's irrational to hope for something more when it's over. When the game's earlier revealed that it has greater potential, any reduction feels like a trade-off. You get expanded elements like Obsidian promised, but at the cost of substance.

Ambitious Concepts and Absent Drama

The game's intermediate phase attempts a comparable approach to the central framework from the opening location, but with distinctly reduced flair. The idea is a daring one: an related objective that extends across multiple worlds and encourages you to seek aid from various groups if you want a more straightforward journey toward your goal. Beyond the repeat setup being a slightly monotonous, it's also absent the suspense that this kind of scenario should have. It's a "deal with the demon" moment. There should be hard concessions. Your association with any group should matter beyond gaining their favor by completing additional missions for them. All of this is missing, because you can simply rush through on your own and clear the objective anyway. The game even makes an effort to provide you methods of achieving this, pointing out 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 letting you be unhappy with your selections. It often goes too far out of its way to make sure not only that there's an different way in many situations, but that you are aware of it. Locked rooms practically always have various access ways indicated, or no significant items within if they don't. If you {can't