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More expansive doesn't necessarily mean better. That's a tired saying, however it's the truest way to sum up my feelings after spending many hours with The Outer Worlds 2. Developer Obsidian expanded on all aspects to the next installment to its 2019 sci-fi RPG — additional wit, enemies, weapons, characteristics, and locations, everything that matters in games like this. And it functions superbly — at first. But the burden of all those ambitious ideas causes the experience to falter as the game progresses.

A Powerful Opening Act

The Outer Worlds 2 establishes a solid opening statement. You belong to the Terran Directorate, a altruistic institution committed to restraining dishonest administrations and businesses. After some serious turmoil, you end up in the Arcadia sector, a settlement fractured by war between Auntie's Option (the product of a merger between the previous title's two major companies), the Guardians (collectivism taken to its worst logical conclusion), and the Order of the Ascendant (like the Catholic church, but with calculations instead of Jesus). There are also a number of fissures creating openings in space and time, but currently, you really need access a transmission center for urgent communications reasons. The problem is that it's in the heart of a battlefield, and you need to figure out how to reach it.

Similar to the first game, Outer Worlds 2 is a first-person role-playing game with an overarching story and dozens of secondary tasks spread out across different planets or regions (large spaces with a plenty to explore, but not fully open).

The first zone and the journey of getting to that comms station are remarkable. You've got some humorous meetings, of course, like one that features a rancher who has fed too much sugary cereal to their preferred crab. Most direct you toward something beneficial, though — an surprising alternative route or some new bit of intel that might provide an alternate route ahead.

Unforgettable Sequences and Missed Possibilities

In one notable incident, you can come across a Protectorate deserter near the bridge who's about to be killed. No quest is linked to it, and the exclusive means to find it is by searching and paying attention to the background conversation. If you're quick and alert enough not to let him get killed, you can save him (and then save his deserter lover from getting eliminated by creatures in their hideout later), but more pertinent to the immediate mission is a electrical conduit hidden in the undergrowth in the vicinity. If you follow it, you'll locate a concealed access point to the transmission center. There's another entrance to the station's underground tunnels hidden away in a cave that you may or may not detect depending on when you follow a particular ally mission. You can locate an readily overlooked character who's key to rescuing a person much later. (And there's a soft toy who indirectly convinces a group of troops to support you, if you're kind enough to save it from a minefield.) This opening chapter is dense and engaging, and it feels like it's overflowing with deep narrative possibilities that benefits you for your inquisitiveness.

Waning Hopes

Outer Worlds 2 fails to meet those initial expectations again. The next primary region is structured comparable to a level in the initial title or Avowed — a big area dotted with key sites and secondary tasks. They're all thematically relevant to the struggle between Auntie's Choice and the Ascendant Order, but they're also short stories detached from the central narrative narratively and spatially. Don't expect any environmental clues guiding you toward fresh decisions like in the first zone.

Despite compelling you to choose some hard calls, what you do in this region's secondary tasks is inconsequential. Like, it truly has no effect, to the degree that whether you enable war crimes or direct a collection of displaced people to their demise culminates in merely a casual remark or two of speech. A game doesn't have to let all tasks impact the plot in some big, dramatic fashion, but if you're making me choose a side and acting as if my selection counts, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect something further when it's over. When the game's earlier revealed that it is capable of more, anything less feels like a concession. You get more of everything like Obsidian promised, but at the expense of substance.

Bold Plans and Absent Drama

The game's middle section tries something similar to the central framework from the first planet, but with distinctly reduced style. The concept is a courageous one: an related objective that spans two planets and motivates you to request help from different factions if you want a easier route toward your aim. Aside from the repeated framework being a little tiresome, it's also lacking the drama that this type of situation should have. It's a "deal with the demon" moment. There should be tough compromise. Your relationship with any group should matter beyond gaining their favor by doing new tasks for them. Everything is absent, because you can merely power through on your own and achieve the goal anyway. The game even goes out of its way to give you ways of accomplishing this, pointing out alternate routes as secondary goals and having partners advise you where to go.

It's a byproduct of a larger problem in Outer Worlds 2: the fear of permitting you to feel dissatisfied with your choices. It regularly overcompensates in its efforts to guarantee not only that there's an alternative path in most cases, but that you are aware of it. Secured areas nearly always have various access ways indicated, or nothing valuable internally if they do not. If you {can't