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Larger doesn't necessarily mean better. It's an old adage, but it's also the most accurate way to encapsulate my thoughts after spending 50 hours with The Outer Worlds 2. Developer Obsidian added more of all aspects to the next installment to its 2019's sci-fi RPG — additional wit, enemies, firearms, characteristics, and places, all the essentials in games like this. And it functions superbly — initially. But the burden of all those grand concepts causes the experience to falter as the time passes.

An Impressive First Impression

The Outer Worlds 2 creates a powerful opening statement. You belong to the Planetary Directorate, a altruistic institution dedicated to controlling dishonest administrations and companies. After some capital-D Drama, you wind up in the Arcadia region, a settlement splintered by hostilities between Auntie's Choice (the product of a union between the previous title's two major companies), the Protectorate (groupthink taken to its most extreme outcome), and the Order of the Ascendant (like the Catholic church, but with calculations in place of Jesus). There are also a bunch of fissures creating openings in the fabric of reality, but right now, you urgently require get to a relay station for critical messaging needs. The challenge is that it's in the middle of a battlefield, and you need to figure out how to get there.

Following the original, Outer Worlds 2 is a first-person RPG with an overarching story and dozens of side quests distributed across various worlds or regions (big areas with a plenty to explore, but not open-world).

The first zone and the task of reaching that relay hub are spectacular. You've got some humorous meetings, of course, like one that involves a rancher who has given excessive sugary cereal to their preferred crab. Most guide you to something helpful, though — an unforeseen passage or some new bit of intel that might unlock another way ahead.

Memorable Sequences and Lost Chances

In one unforgettable event, you can encounter a Defender runaway near the overpass who's about to be killed. No mission is tied to it, and the sole method to discover it is by exploring and listening to the ambient dialogue. 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 killed by beasts in their lair later), but more relevant to the current objective is a energy cable concealed in the foliage in the vicinity. If you follow it, you'll discover a secret entry to the transmission center. There's a different access point to the station's underground tunnels hidden away in a grotto that you could or could not detect depending on when you undertake a specific companion quest. You can find an easily missable individual who's essential to preserving a life 20 hours later. (And there's a plush toy who indirectly convinces a squad of soldiers to support you, if you're kind enough to save it from a minefield.) This beginning section is rich and engaging, and it seems like it's overflowing with deep narrative possibilities that benefits you for your inquisitiveness.

Waning Anticipations

Outer Worlds 2 doesn't fulfill those opening anticipations again. The second main area is arranged like a map in the first Outer Worlds or Avowed — a large region sprinkled with points of interest and side quests. They're all narratively connected to the conflict between Auntie's Choice and the Order of the Ascendant, but they're also vignettes isolated from the primary plot plot-wise and spatially. Don't anticipate any world-based indicators directing you to alternative options like in the initial area.

Despite forcing you to make some difficult choices, what you do in this area's optional missions is inconsequential. Like, it genuinely is irrelevant, to the degree that whether you enable war crimes or guide a band of survivors to their death culminates in nothing but a passing comment or two of dialogue. A game doesn't have to let each mission impact the plot in some significant, theatrical manner, but if you're forcing me to decide a faction and pretending like my choice is important, I don't feel it's unfair to anticipate something further when it's over. When the game's earlier revealed that it has greater potential, any reduction feels like a compromise. You get expanded elements like Obsidian promised, but at the expense of complexity.

Daring Ideas and Absent Drama

The game's intermediate phase tries something similar to the primary structure from the opening location, but with distinctly reduced style. The notion is a daring one: an linked task that extends across two planets and motivates you to request help from different factions if you want a smoother path toward your goal. Beyond the repeated framework being a somewhat tedious, it's also just missing the suspense that this sort of circumstance should have. It's a "deal with the demon" moment. There should be difficult trade-offs. Your association with each alliance should be important beyond earning their approval by doing new tasks for them. All this is missing, because you can just blitz through on your own and achieve the goal anyway. The game even makes an effort to give you ways of achieving this, indicating alternative paths as optional objectives and having companions inform you where to go.

It's a byproduct of a wider concern in Outer Worlds 2: the fear of allowing you to regret with your decisions. It regularly goes too far in its attempts to ensure not only that there's an different way in frequent instances, but that you realize its presence. Locked rooms nearly always have various access ways signposted, or no significant items internally if they don't. If you {can't