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Bigger isn't necessarily improved. It's an old adage, yet it's also the best way to describe my impressions after devoting many hours with The Outer Worlds 2. Developer Obsidian added more of all aspects to the next installment to its 2019 sci-fi RPG — additional wit, foes, arms, traits, and places, everything that matters in such adventures. And it functions superbly — at first. But the weight of all those grand concepts leads to instability as the game progresses.

A Strong Opening Act

The Outer Worlds 2 establishes a solid first impression. You are a member of the Earth Directorate, a well-intentioned agency dedicated to controlling corrupt governments and corporations. After some serious turmoil, you find yourself in the Arcadia region, a settlement splintered by war between Auntie's Choice (the result of a union between the original game's two large firms), the Defenders (groupthink taken to its most dire end), and the Ascendant Brotherhood (reminiscent of the Church, but with mathematics instead of Jesus). There are also a number of tears causing breaches in the universe, but right now, you really need get to a communication hub for urgent communications purposes. The issue is that it's in the heart of a combat area, and you need to figure out how to get there.

Like its predecessor, Outer Worlds 2 is a first-person RPG with an central plot and dozens of side quests distributed across different planets or zones (large spaces with a lot to uncover, but not sandbox).

The first zone and the journey of reaching that relay hub are remarkable. You've got some funny interactions, of course, like one that includes a farmer who has given excessive sugary cereal to their beloved crustacean. Most direct you toward something helpful, though — an unexpected new path or some new bit of intel that might open a different path ahead.

Notable Events and Missed Opportunities

In one memorable sequence, you can encounter a Defender runaway near the viaduct who's about to be killed. No mission is associated with it, and the only way to locate it is by exploring and hearing the environmental chatter. If you're quick and careful enough not to let him get defeated, you can save him (and then rescue his defector partner from getting slain by creatures in their refuge later), but more connected with the current objective is a power line concealed in the grass in the vicinity. If you trace it, you'll locate a hidden entrance to the communication hub. There's an alternate entry to the station's sewers stashed in a cavern that you may or may not observe depending on when you follow a specific companion quest. You can encounter an easily missable person who's key to rescuing a person down the line. (And there's a stuffed animal who implicitly sways a squad of soldiers to support you, if you're nice enough to rescue it from a explosive area.) This initial segment is rich and engaging, and it seems like it's full of deep narrative possibilities that compensates you for your inquisitiveness.

Fading Hopes

Outer Worlds 2 never lives up to those initial expectations again. The second main area is structured comparable to a level in the original game or Avowed — a large region scattered with key sites and side quests. They're all story-appropriate to the conflict between Auntie's Choice and the Ascendant Brotherhood, but they're also vignettes isolated from the central narrative in terms of story and location-wise. Don't look for any world-based indicators directing you to new choices like in the initial area.

Despite forcing you to make 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 end leads to only a throwaway line or two of speech. A game isn't required to let each mission influence the story in some major, impactful way, but if you're compelling me to select a side and pretending like my decision counts, I don't feel it's irrational to expect something further when it's over. When the game's previously demonstrated that it is capable of more, any reduction appears to be a concession. You get additional content like Obsidian promised, but at the price of depth.

Bold Ideas and Lacking Tension

The game's second act attempts a comparable approach to the primary structure from the opening location, but with noticeably less panache. The idea is a bold one: an linked task that extends across multiple worlds and urges you to solicit support from assorted alliances if you want a smoother path toward your goal. Beyond the recurring structure being a somewhat tedious, it's also lacking the suspense that this kind of scenario should have. It's a "bargain with evil" moment. There should be hard concessions. Your association with each alliance should matter beyond gaining their favor by doing new tasks for them. All this is absent, because you can simply rush through on your own and complete the mission anyway. The game even makes an effort to provide you methods of doing this, highlighting alternate routes as secondary goals and having companions advise you where to go.

It's a byproduct of a larger problem in Outer Worlds 2: the fear of allowing you to regret with your decisions. It often overcompensates in its attempts to make sure not only that there's an alternate route in many situations, but that you are aware of it. Closed chambers almost always have multiple entry methods indicated, or nothing valuable within if they don't. If you {can't