The Outer Worlds 2 is the pessimistic nightmare of what humanity is likely to become, if Star Trek is the hopeful vision of what it could become. Fortunately, both are very interesting to read, and this second iteration of Obsidian’s corporate dystopia is a big improvement over the first. Even though a weak first act and some really awful enemy variety made the going less exciting, I had a great time pushing my fist through the Kafkaesque final frontier with a cast of unforgettable companions thanks to a more grounded and engaging story, much more skilled combat, and an irresistible RPG grind.
I argued with myself over moral quandaries, laughed at ridiculous worldbuilding, and brought down several would-be rulers during the more than 65 hours that my completionist playthrough took—exactly what the for-profit space doctor ordered. Similar to Dragon Age, Fallout, and Avowed, The Outer Worlds 2 is a classic single-player, open-world role-playing game.
You know, the ones where you’re a very awesome guy who gets unjustified power to intervene in the world’s conflicts and determine the fate of all living things while amassing a cast of sardonic friends in the process? As a sort of sequel to Fallout: New Vegas (2010) and a sequel to The Outer Worlds (2019), Obsidian is back with a very similar blueprint. As you level up, collect every scrap of loot you can find, and quickly resolve all of the galaxy’s long-standing issues, it presents a brand-new dystopia for you to navigate.
Although it’s not the most innovative idea, I think it’s one that we just don’t see enough of, and it works better than most recent attempts. This follow-up takes place in a delightfully hilarious alternate universe in which unbridled commerce has subdued the stars and transformed magnificent heavenly bodies into ugly outdoor shopping centers.
Despite having the same bleak outlook on the future, it forgoes the Halcyon system from the original game in favor of Arcadia, a new region of the galaxy with a new set of worlds for you to chose on your own. However, there is a noticeable change in tone that is more noticeable than the new planets to visit. This sequel is much more interested in telling a realistic story, one that focuses directly on the politics of Arcadia’s various factions and repeatedly asks you to make decisions about which of these seriously flawed organizations is the lesser of two evils, even though there are still plenty of silly jokes and ways to make your journey through corporate-owned space completely absurd.
Even if there are still a lot of idiots, the plot of this sequel is more realistic.
Fortunately, that wager on more somber subjects and the precarious equilibrium of conflicting political entities pays off, and I was truly conflicted about which side to support and even annoyed by my failure to win over the better angels of these power-hungry, self-centered monsters—exactly what I seek in these make-your-mark-on-the-world games. The way you are positioned as the main character who will choose which of these power-hungry groups will win is quite similar to Fallout: New Vegas, one of my favorite Obsidian role-playing games, and there aren’t any really solid solutions here either.
While The Protectorate is an overtly fascist society that aims to stifle any ideas that deviate from their orthodoxy, Auntie’s Choice is a purportedly free-market capitalist organization that actually operates as an oppressive, monopolistic pseudo-government that would make Helldivers 2 proud. It is rarely easy to decide which of these two vipers’ nests gets to decide the fate of an entire planet. I wondered if their way of life was really any better because even the more logical groups, like the Order of the Ascendant, which uses math and science to predict the future in an effort to lead humanity towards enlightenment, are caught sloppily committing atrocities to stop some fictitious future they’ve seen through their abacus.
Though it takes its sweet time getting there, primarily concentrating on this conflict in its second half, The Outer Worlds 2 is sick as hell when it comes to putting the political jockeying front and center. It also undoubtedly features some of the coolest worldbuilding and satisfyingly perilous moral dilemmas I’ve seen in a while. You’ll instead focus on a mundane revenge mission for the first half of the game, which I didn’t care about at all. By the time I got to the credits, I had actually forgotten it was the primary emphasis of the first act.
The primary plot seemed uninteresting for the first twenty or so hours, but they do utilize this early time to introduce you to the important players in Arcadia while you seek revenge, which lays the stage for a much stronger second act. If you can persevere for a while, it does rally, but I wish it had been steadier all along. The incredibly captivating RPG climb is one area that is far more reliable. It captivated me right away with a seemingly endless stream of intriguing choices on my character’s identity and how in the hell he was going to save the galaxy.
You have to make some significant choices about what you want to be strong at because you can only spend two skill points every level across 12 talents that make you proficient in everything from Leadership to Lockpicking. When you consider the vast array of benefits, which are only available if you have properly invested in the necessary skills, the decision becomes even more difficult. This includes features like the ability to pickpocket someone, which is only accessible to Sneak-level players, or another perk that lets you sell more and more ludicrous lies as your Speech skill advances.
Planning out your ideal spacefaring badass and making sure you have the skills necessary to finish the job becomes very compelling because you can only purchase 15 of these bad boys before you reach the level cap of 30. I found myself desperately searching for enemies to kill and side quests to finish to satisfy my XP habit.
The incredibly captivating role-playing game immediately captivated me.
The best thing about this power rise, though, is how it shows itself as defects in unexpected ways. The Outer Worlds 2 monitors your character’s actions to identify patterns, then gives you the chance to capitalize on those peculiarities by providing advantages that have a price. For instance, you may be given the Kleptomaniac flaw if you tend to steal a lot. This fault enables you to sell all of your stolen stuff for more money, but it also occasionally causes your character to steal things on their own, which can get you into a lot of problems with the locals.
On the other hand, if you skip a lot of dialogue, you will be presented with the Foot-in-Mouth Syndrome defect, which awards you extra experience points but makes you select every dialogue choice in a very short amount of time before selecting one at random. Each of these has a significant impact on your play and cannot be undone, which can result in a variety of amusing errors. A Jack of All Trades fault that granted me a whole extra skill point each time I raised up attracted me early in my playthrough, but it also meant that I would never be able to boost a skill more than one point over my lowest-rated talent.
Although it actually made for a pretty great way to play for this review, since I got a taste of being semi-good at every skill on the roster, I soon realized that my character was now just bad at pretty much everything and kept running into obstacles in my journey, which made me deeply regret my decision. At the time, this seemed like a fairly fair trade. I couldn’t help but adore these decisions, even if they would plague me for the remainder of my playthrough. In fact, they made me eager for future playthroughs when I could learn from my mistakes and possibly discover some new problems to deal with.
A shotgun that fires shots completely silently and instantly melts its target so bodies cannot be found is one of the many strange and unexpected weapons I found with unique effects. Another weapon that started out weak but leveled up as I scored kills until it was an absolute beast (and which made me want to rewatch Solo Leveling) is another weapon that I discovered.
Combat still has its peculiarities, as you might expect. For example, occasionally foes would hit me in melee even if I had double-jumped a meter over their head, and the reticle on weapons might feel a little slicker than I would want. You’ll probably be let down if you’re (unrealistically) thinking that this has caught up to the best practices of a legitimate first-person shooter like Battlefield 6, but at least it’s a significant improvement over the typical open-world RPG, and that’s something.
The adversary variety is unquestionably the biggest disappointment in combat
The adversary variety is the biggest disappointment in battle. In addition to your typical humanoid enemies and a few robotic adversaries here and there, each globe typically has two or three different kinds of wild animals that you see far too much of for hours at a time. For instance, you’ll come across a ton of Raptidon animals from the original, and I was so tired of seeing them before I had even left the first planet, let alone when I reached the last stretch and was still running into them. That there are essentially no surprises in terms of the enemies you encounter after just a few hours in a galaxy full of potential is really disheartening.
Even worse, The Outer Worlds 2 replicates Avowed in that every enemy you face is limited, located in particular locations throughout the planet, and vanishes forever after you defeat them. As a result, you will soon be traversing vast portions of the globe that are completely barren of life, which makes places seem incredibly deserted and eliminates the chance of chance and unexpected encounters.
Although I felt that Obsidian’s strategy was detrimental in Avowed as well, I’m not totally clear why they’ve continued to do it now, and I still don’t like it. Nevertheless, there is at least a respectable fast travel mechanism that allowed me to move quickly to key locations instead of going back over a lot of space, which I believe I did quite a bit in Avowed. I therefore encountered the consequences of this technique far less frequently, even though it was disappointing to see it resurface.
Speaking of running, there are four primary locations in The Outer Worlds 2, each with a distinct atmosphere that is typically determined by the group with the most interest. These locations range from the bustling backwaters in the Eden forests to the monk-like monasteries tucked away in the snow on Cloister. As you fight things, discover more about the environment, assemble additional players for your team, and frantically complete every quest on the map, exploring each is a lot of fun. I had the impression that I was constantly coming across intriguing people to converse with or elusive treasures to sort through.
Except the previously mentioned enemy repetition and the empty terrain that ensues from killing them, which does create a very feast and famine situation, all of that typically made for a fun time.
A story-focused role-playing game is only as excellent as the people who accompany you and evaluate every choice you make, just like in real life. This is one area where The Outer Worlds 2 outperforms its predecessor. Each of the six largely remembered personalities you travel with and become friends with represents the organization they are affiliated with. For instance, Inez, an enterprising combat medic, is always reminding you of the benefits of the so-called free market businesses she grew up with, while Tristan, a heavily armored brute, is the group’s cop, ready to impose his authoritarian government’s perverted brand of justice on almost everyone you meet.
This strategy of having your party members function as spokespersons for each of the world’s factions is very successful, much like Mass Effect and Fallout before it. It instantly clarifies each companion’s point of view and aids in your comprehension of the forces at work as well as the philosophical disputes that become crucial to understand when you begin making choices that significantly shift the balance of power. It’s nearly impossible to avoid getting to know Arcadia’s key players by simply listening to your friends, even if you’re not reading every journal entry you come across or listening to every conversation. This makes it much simpler to care about the plot and the galaxy’s eventual destiny.
Even so, some of your companions are still a little less interesting than others. For example, Valerie, a robot assistant, has some pretty funny one-liners, but she feels more detached from the plot than the other companions. Niles, an engineer, is primarily defined by a quest for vengeance that can be resolved fairly early in your journey, leaving little reason to bring him along. Regretfully, these characters are the ones who initially emerge in the narrative, which gives a somewhat negative impression given how much better they end up being. But now that I think about it, isn’t that kind of a long-standing custom in RPGs like this?
Verdict
With more fluid combat, devilishly captivating buildcraft and loot, and a plot that instantly compelled me to restart to witness a different conclusion, The Outer Worlds 2 is yet another powerful improvement without attempting to rewrite Obsidian’s RPG playbook. It can be a bit of a bore at times due to its slow initial act and lack of variety in the enemies, but once its plot of political intrigue begins and the new flaws and benefits system starts to appeal to you, it can be very difficult to put down. The Outer Worlds 2 is getting closer to being the Fallout: New Vegas sequel we anticipated this series would be, thanks to all these enhancements, and that’s something to be happy about.
