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More expansive isn't always better. That's a tired saying, yet it's also the truest way to sum up my thoughts after investing five dozen hours with The Outer Worlds 2. Developer Obsidian included additional all aspects to the next installment to its prior futuristic adventure — increased comedy, adversaries, firearms, characteristics, and locations, every important component in titles of this genre. And it operates excellently — initially. But the burden of all those ambitious ideas makes the game wobble as the time passes.

A Powerful Opening Act

The Outer Worlds 2 makes a strong initial impact. You are part of the Terran Directorate, a do-gooder agency dedicated to restraining corrupt governments and corporations. After some major drama, you end up in the Arcadia region, a outpost splintered by conflict between Auntie's Selection (the result of a combination between the previous title's two large firms), the Protectorate (communalism extended to its most extreme outcome), and the Order of the Ascendant (similar to the Catholic faith, but with math rather than Jesus). There are also a bunch of tears creating openings in space and time, but right now, you really need get to a relay station for urgent communications needs. The challenge is that it's in the heart of a combat area, and you need to figure out how to arrive.

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

The initial area and the process of reaching that relay hub are impressive. You've got some goofy encounters, of course, like one that involves a agriculturalist who has given excessive sugary cereal to their preferred crab. Most guide you to something beneficial, though — an unexpected new path or some additional intelligence that might provide an alternate route forward.

Notable Sequences and Missed Chances

In one memorable sequence, you can find a Protectorate deserter near the overpass who's about to be eliminated. No mission is associated with it, and the sole method to find it is by searching and hearing the environmental chatter. If you're swift and sufficiently cautious not to let him get killed, you can rescue him (and then protect his runaway sweetheart from getting eliminated by monsters in their hideout later), but more relevant to the immediate mission is a electrical conduit hidden in the grass in the vicinity. If you follow it, you'll locate a hidden entrance to the relay station. There's an alternate entry to the station's underground tunnels tucked away in a grotto that you could or could not notice depending on when you follow a specific companion quest. You can find an easily missable person who's essential to saving someone's life 20 hours later. (And there's a stuffed animal who implicitly sways a group of troops to join your cause, if you're nice enough to protect it from a danger zone.) This beginning section is packed and engaging, and it seems like it's full of deep narrative possibilities that benefits you for your inquisitiveness.

Diminishing Hopes

Outer Worlds 2 doesn't fulfill those initial expectations again. The second main area is organized like a level in the original game or Avowed — a expansive territory scattered with notable locations and optional missions. They're all narratively connected to the struggle between Auntie's Selection and the Order of the Ascendant, but they're also vignettes detached from the primary plot narratively and location-wise. Don't expect any world-based indicators directing you to new choices like in the opening region.

Regardless of compelling you to choose some difficult choices, what you do in this area's optional missions is inconsequential. Like, it really doesn't matter, to the degree that whether you permit atrocities or direct a collection of displaced people to their end results in merely a passing comment or two of speech. A game doesn't need to let all tasks influence the plot in some significant, theatrical manner, but if you're forcing me to decide a faction and acting as if my decision matters, I don't feel it's irrational to expect something additional when it's over. When the game's already shown that it has greater potential, any reduction feels like a trade-off. You get additional content like Obsidian promised, but at the price of depth.

Ambitious Plans and Absent Stakes

The game's intermediate phase tries something similar to the primary structure from the initial world, but with noticeably less panache. The notion is a courageous one: an related objective that extends across multiple worlds and urges you to solicit support from different factions if you want a smoother path toward your objective. Aside from the recurring structure being a slightly monotonous, it's also lacking the drama that this kind of scenario should have. It's a "pact with the devil" moment. There should be hard concessions. Your relationship with any group should be important beyond making them like you by completing additional missions for them. All of this is absent, because you can just blitz through on your own and achieve the goal anyway. The game even goes out of its way to hand you ways of doing this, highlighting alternate routes as secondary goals and having partners advise you where to go.

It's a consequence of a broader issue in Outer Worlds 2: the fear of permitting you to feel dissatisfied with your selections. It regularly goes too far 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 nearly always have multiple entry methods indicated, or nothing worthwhile within if they fail to. If you {can't