Over the last few years, the FPS RPG sub-genre hasn’t gotten the mainstream attention that it commanded just a few years ago. In the rare cases that games similar to the likes of Fallout and Deus Ex do release and aren’t canceled, they either release with a litany of bugs or quickly fall into obscurity. While there are some exceptions, lately, we’ve only gotten remastered versions of games like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, rather than something brand new.
One of the only companies still trying to bring the genre back to its former luster is Obsidian. Obsidian has worked on some of the best RPGs in the medium, namely Fallout New Vegas and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II. Sadly, its recent games, The Outer Worlds and Avowed, haven’t really had the same appeal for me. That brings us to the studio’s newest game: The Outer Worlds 2.
I paid no attention whatsoever to any of the game’s marketing, gameplay trailers, story teasers, or anything else of the sort. While my interest occasionally perked up at some references to “immersive sim-esque gameplay,” I wasn’t too invested in the prospect of an Outer Worlds sequel. However, after having a chance to play The Outer Worlds 2, I can confidently say that this is a worthy addition to the RPG genre, despite some major technical issues that are littered throughout the experience.
A Universe Where Capitalism and Corruption Run Wild
You begin The Outer Worlds 2 as a member of the Earth Protectorate, sent to the Horizon Point station. Your goal is to infiltrate the labs and investigate the technology behind “Skip Drives” to turn the tide in an ongoing world. If you’re playing this as someone who doesn’t know anything about the first game or its world, you may be a little confused. Thankfully, after a horrifying incident at the station, your player character is thrown into a new normal that is just as overwhelming for them as it is for you.
You do not need to play The Outer Worlds to understand its sequel. It may help provide context, and I personally wish the sequel had a glossary to explain some of the factions and worldbuilding details, but it’s not necessary. This is mainly because, after the prologue, The Outer Worlds 2 introduces a lot of new key factions such as Auntie’s Choice, a corporate merger between The Outer Worlds‘ Auntie Cleo and Spacer’s Choice, and The Order, a religious organization that believes the universe is governed by equations and math.
Part of the reason why The Outer Worlds 2‘s story feels so effective is the emphasis on player choice. The game starts with you building your character. While part of this is determining how your character looks, a lot of it is building their traits. You can choose your character’s name and their background, with options varying between making your protagonist an ex-convict or a professor, among other selections. You can also select their traits, two of which are positive, one of which is negative. Whatever options you decide on will be reflected in both your gameplay experience and dialogue.
For instance, I chose my background to be an Ex-Convict. Throughout the game, there are countless dialogue options where you can mention your history, and it will potentially affect how certain conversations play out. This applies to the traits as well: I chose brawny, so I was able to open doors that were broken with just my bare hands. While some trait options, like Lucky, are clearly overpowered compared to other builds, there is no “wrong” approach. I had so much fun with the build I chose, and I imagine it would be the same with any other that I go with in subsequent playthroughs.
Another strength of the narrative is its characters. This is a massive universe, and there are a lot of characters to talk to, each with their own unique personality traits and weaknesses. Compared to Avowed, which didn’t really have any characters that I found compelling, The Outer Worlds 2 makes up for that in spades. Every single character I encountered kept me hooked because of their dialogue and personality, whether they were an NPC or a party member.
One of my favorite examples was in the first major area of the game, Eden. As you’re trying to get closer to finding a figure key to the story, you have to work with someone from Auntie’s Choice. Before he can help you, he guides you to a man by the name of Vigilant Hogarth: the head behind a small community known as Westport. Hogarth is a former member of the Protectorate who fears retaliation after he betrayed the faction. As such, he tasks you with finding equipment to repair the mechs you find around the zone.
However, you can choose to try and get the people of Westport to join Auntie’s Choice and be protected by them. Sure, they might lose their autonomy, but they’d be paid for their work, given the proper resources, and more importantly, they’d be safe. There are pros and cons to each choice, but the best choice you can make is locked unless you’ve invested in the right perks and traits. It’s a great way to build these characters while also rewarding you for your build. If you don’t have the right build, there’s always your next playthrough.
Of course, you can’t talk about an RPG like this without mentioning the companions. I really liked all of the companions in The Outer Worlds 2, and I especially liked that not every companion joins by default. Some of the companions you encounter are completely missable, and I even missed one that I never found for the whole game. I also appreciate how the characters don’t fit into traditional stereotypes, such as one being more tech-based, one having a dark past, and one being the more level-headed soldier. Each character you encounter has a darkness in them, and they’re by no means “perfect humans.”
Easily, my favorite companion in the entire game is Aza. She’s a borderline psychotic member of a cult known as the Glorious Dawn, which is religiously devoted to the rifts formed as a result of malfunctioning skip drives. She is constantly bringing up violence in every situation, even in situations where violence is the worst possible option. However, despite her violent tendencies, she has a great arc that focuses on her betrayal and trying to realize what her purpose in the world is.
That brings me to my biggest issue with The Outer World 2‘s story, though: the lack of romances. I know Obsidian has repeatedly mentioned that it fears that romances would undermine the core experience, but if anything, I believe it would add to it. For example, there’s a moment right at the end of the game where you can talk Aza down from making an extremely rash decision. If you have maximum speech, you can talk her down, which feels like a really impactful moment. Yet, with how quickly she drops the subject, it doesn’t feel like a natural choice for her character.
Having a romance between your character and Aza could add more depth to that relationship between the two, as it gives Aza yet another reason to stay with her partner. Instead, we get characters that are written very well, but never feel like real people with a real range of emotions that allow them to make real choices. Rather, we get characters who feel just like that: “characters.” This isn’t helped by how characters will only really have anything meaningful to say at select moments where there is a speech bubble over their head.
At the end of the day, while the narrative of The Outer Worlds 2 could have been even better, I still think that it’s overall quite strong. I was constantly enthralled by the story at every stage, partly due to the characters, strong dialogue, and the emphasis on player choice. With that being said, the gameplay of The Outer Worlds 2, while fun, has far more problems that continue to plague the game’s quality.
Shooting, Sneaking, and Glitching
The gameplay and presentation of The Outer Worlds 2 are a mixed bag. While there are some moments where both excel, there are just as many instances where either the gameplay or visuals are hindered by some fairly egregious bugs. Starting with the presentation, the game actually looked far better than I expected it to.
I was playing The Outer Worlds 2 on an Xbox Series S, and I fully expected it to look as rough as other games I’ve played on the system. For the most part, though, there are a lot of sections where it looks absolutely beautiful. I especially really liked some of the planets that are fully taken over by corporations and consumerism, where bright lights and technology run abound. These are in stark contrast to planets where The Order is in power, which has a far greater emphasis on the marriage between nature and science.
On the subject of the Xbox Series S, there were still some key problems with the game’s visuals that could either be attributed to The Outer Worlds 2 itself or the console. For example, there are a lot of pop-ins and textures that take a while to load in. Similarly, there are numerous instances of loading screens that pop up at inopportune times, and some odd visual glitches that also appear. In particular, there were two moments that required me to restart the game or find another solution.
For one, there’s a situation where I paused during gameplay, and for some reason, the pause text continued to appear while walking around. There was also one time where I walked towards the main ship, where you travel from location to location, and the screen faded to black as if there was a cutscene. I thought this would be because of an ambush, because I wasn’t able to travel back to the ship. Instead, I was able to walk around in the black screen and walk back to the ship as if nothing had happened. These situations and other similar circumstances, unfortunately, deterred me from any enjoyment I found in the presentation.
As for the gameplay of The Outer Worlds 2, this too is filled with high highs and low lows. For starters, I really enjoy the actual moment-to-moment combat. Whether you choose to focus on melee combat, stealth combat, or gunplay, each style has merit and enjoyment that can be found. You can also completely switch which style you choose to invest in. Personally, I started the game hoping to focus on stealth, but halfway through, I swapped to a gunplay build, and I was never punished for my choice.
Going back to player choice and the emphasis on unique builds, you’re constantly rewarded and incentivized for whatever you choose to do throughout the gameplay. My personal rule in any RPG is to always go for a speech build, because I really like my characters to be able to solve problems with words rather than violence. This turned out to be an extremely gratifying choice, as most conflicts could easily be solved through negotiation rather than a gunfight. Yet, it never felt overpowered, because in some situations, I wasn’t properly equipped, so I had to resort to improvisation.
My favorite example of this came through another task from Auntie’s Choice: this time, one where I had to break up a strike. You’re tasked with breaking the strike and getting the workers to go back to their jobs by “any means necessary.” At first, I wanted to negotiate and try and get the head of the facility to see reason. However, I didn’t have the right traits for it. I tried to do the same with the strikers, but I had the same problem. So, I figured I should try and kill the facility’s head in secret, thinking that would break the strike. Not only did it break the strike, but the facility had a new leader, and Auntie’s Choice representatives applauded me for a job well done.
This doesn’t even take into consideration some of the other exciting mechanics for you to chew on. There is crafting, upgradeable companions, hacking, and lockpicking, all of which can be used to varying success depending on your build. The feature I liked the most, despite the fact that I didn’t use it much, was the use of negative traits. During gameplay, you’ll eventually get a notification telling you that a negative trait has been discovered in your play style. For instance, if you spend a lot at shops, you can get a negative trait which makes it so that most of your money is inaccessible, but it grows through interest. These are optional, but it is yet another example of the game continuing to emphasize player choice.
Like with the performance, though, the gameplay of The Outer Worlds 2 still has some key issues that can be attributed to several bugs and glitches. There are quite a few moments where my game would crash, two of which happened in the same section, and one of which crashed my entire Xbox. There was also a moment where I killed a character key to the plot, just to see what would happen, yet the end of the game treated the character as if they were alive and well. This was a particularly annoying glitch, which slightly hindered the emphasis on player choice.
That frustration only continued with some of the game’s mechanics. Mainly, navigation and exploration are a true pain. A lot of times, a waypoint will show up on your screen, but the path to get to said waypoint is quite obtuse. I found myself flailing around trying to find my destination, and it didn’t help that the map was extremely useless. Even finding key items in areas is a pain, as it feels like looking for a needle in a haystack as you search for the right document or item, which led me to comb through the same area over and over again.
As a whole, while there were several points where I really enjoyed the gameplay of The Outer Worlds 2, that joy would quickly come crashing down due to glitches and mechanical issues. This dilemma is what makes The Outer Worlds 2 such a hard game to evaluate.
A Tumultuous Journey
Obsidian has been in an odd spot for the last few years. A company that built its reputation on making beloved RPGs has slowly drifted towards games in the genre that fail to fulfill its potential, or games in completely different genres entirely. While these titles have their fans, I can’t say I’m one of them, which is a true shame because Fallout: New Vegas is one of my favorite games of all time. Thankfully, The Outer Worlds 2 is a great step in the right direction.
The game does a fantastic job of taking old RPG mechanics and bringing them to the modern day. Player choice and customization dominate everything, making each playthrough completely different from one another. Further, the dialogue, story, and characters are great, though I do wish that romances were added in as some of the NPC interactions feel more “game-y” than natural.
Sadly, there are quite a few major problems that hinder the overall experience of The Outer Worlds 2. These can be attributed to poor hardware in the form of the Xbox Series S, technical bugs and glitches that cause crashes and texture issues, and problems with the game’s mechanics, which lead to frustrating exploration. These problems cascade upon one another, making for a game that is just as fun as it is annoying to play.
I would still say that The Outer Worlds 2 is worth your time. It’s a great RPG and is probably one of my favorite games from both Xbox Game Studios and Obsidian in a very long time. However, I would say you may be better off waiting for a lot of the bugs to be fixed before buying it. Even still, I am so glad to see the RPG genre making a comeback and Obsidian slowly returning to its former glory.
Disclaimer: Xbox Game Studios & Obsidian Entertainment provided an Xbox Series X|S copy of The Outer Worlds 2 for review purposes.
