The Outer Worlds 2

SCORE: ★★★ THE BREAKDOWN +Enjoyable build options and strong, consistently polished combat +A clever flaw system based on how the player fights and interacts with the world +Gorgeous environments and scenery +Companions are likeable and have substantial dedicated missions -The writing feels workhorse and industrial in quality -The difficulty curve struggles to keep up well before the end of the game -The story and most non-companion characters simply aren't memorable I've got a complicated relationship with Obsidian Entertainment. A fan of theirs ever since their stellar Knights of the Old Republic II changed my perspective on Star Wars back in 2005, I saw them as one of the strongest forces in meaningful decision-making and compelling personalities in RPGs. From New Vegas to Pillars of Eternity all the way up through the oft-forgotten villain simulator Tyranny, this remained true and I always walked away from their games with a deep appreciation for their talent. Even if the gameplay was often not my cup of tea (such as in Pillars, as I'm an avowed Real-Time With Pause hater, sorry) I'd still be glad I played for the interactivity, consequences, and characters. Ever since the first Outer Worlds, however, that started to change. I liked The Outer Worlds, to be clear. It had a novel setting, some funny running jokes, and pretty satisfying combat for a game of its size. Unfortunately, what I felt it lacked was memorable writing. The story and characters weren't bad, but they were ultimately workhorse in quality; serving their role in the plot, providing direction, and occasionally creating drama...but not much else. It didn't help that it felt a little rushed, and there were plenty of rumors of development trouble. All in all, while I enjoyed the game, it didn't really have the pedigree I had come to expect from the studio. I had similar feelings on the writing of Avowed, their next RPG in the Pillars universe, and I started to worry this was going to be a trend. It didn't take long for Outer Worlds 2 to prove to me that my concerns were warranted, even if I still wound up liking the game overall. The sequel places the player in the authoritative boots of an Earth Directorate officer sent in response to the distress call that went out at the end of the first game. Sent to get to the bottom of why the colonies have been in disarray, the player character discovers that reality-threatening rifts are starting to tear apart the solar system - and before they can investigate further, a sudden betrayal leaves them stranded in an escape pod and frozen for a full decade. Upon awakening and reuniting with the only other survivor from the incident, they get right back to work, but the dominant factions in the sector - an authoritarian dictatorship, a hyper-capitalist corporate conglomerate, and what's best described as a religious math cult that worships probability - don't make it easy for them. By and large, these factions are made up of stereotypes more than characters. Only party members really tend to be more than caricatures of their original group's belief systems, and while I did enjoy them, I struggled to feel as strongly about them as I ever did the likes of KOTOR II's Atton Rand or New Vegas' Raul the Ghoul. Ask me to put a finger on why, and it's difficult to articulate - but if I had to guess, it was that despite them often talking a bit game about challenging my beliefs if I ran against their own, nothing much ever seemed to come of it; and while their personal quests were fun and often decently involved, I usually felt like I was helping them solve problems and not learning a whole lot about them in the process. Maybe I'm just shallow and not personally coded to not remember characters who don't get their own 'big moments' in cutscenes, but I think it goes deeper than that. I think that the issue is that so much of what I see in them is just how they are defined by their relationship to the Commander. They're admirably involved in quests, often providing opinions and sometimes unique solutions, but I struggle to remember any times where they interacted with others without the player ultimately being the final authority, and that gamifies them in my mind. But while the narrative might falter due to its reliance on shallow archetypes, the gameplay quite frankly goes hard as hell. Shooting and melee feel visceral for a game of this scale, and interesting weapons and armor allow for a wide range of playstyles and unique power-ups. Companions are helpful too, with meaningful activated abilities and generally contributing a decent amount of damage. Quests - whether or not they had interesting stories to them - often led me to exciting locations, like poison-filled canyons and robot factories full of design documents that left it little surprise that they turned rogue. It's rare that I didn't enjoy my time exploring and picking fights, though I did notice that by about the halfway point, my build - a heavy gunner with an emphasis on using bullet hoses and inordinate amounts of drugs to outpace anything else on the field - got so overpowered that even the hardest difficulty failed to throw anything but minor speedbumps at me. Even so, I found myself generally having a whale of a time, especially when it came to one particular highlight: the Flaw system. As I played, Outer Worlds 2 did an admirable job of making note of how I approached encounters and conversations. When it discovered certain habits I had, I'd be offered a Flaw - something that hilariously called me out while offering a usually significant double-edged perk. For example, I'm a chronic reloader in any shooter; if even a single bullet is missing between fights, I'll reflexively top it off. The game not only poked fun at me for this habit, but offered me an interesting Flaw: a significant damage bonus as long as I kept to my usual habits, but an equally serious penalty if I actually did run try and reloaded an empty clip. There are dozens of Flaws like this, and on top of making for pretty funny stories, they contributed significantly to me being able to pursue the drug-addled gun-berserker playstyle I wanted. All in all, I was left with a bittersweet feeling by the time I wrapped up my playthrough of Outer Worlds 2. It was frequently funny and great fun to blast my way through hordes of enemies with, but I also had to accept that by and large, Obsidian doesn't mean what it used to when it comes to depth of character writing and meaningful narrative choice. Sure, I got to make plenty of decisions through the story and choose my dialogue - and I'm not saying those didn't matter - but due to the reliance on caricatures to represent each faction, I felt more like a Saturday morning cartoon protagonist than the lead of a nuanced RPG. I still liked the game - quite a lot, at times - but like the setting's serialized comics, the actual plot felt like popcorn, enjoyable in the moment but ultimately not filling. Unfortunately, that may have to be enough for me when I decide to buy an Obsidian game in the future.