The Outer Worlds 2 Review: Obsidian’s sequel does little to stand out in the RPG genre

It’s hard to classify a game like The Outer Worlds 2.

Developer Obsidian is once again presenting the series as an RPG. On paper, it ticks enough boxes to earn the category — you gain experience, level up, upgrade your stats, gain perks, and get to pick between dialogue options that can ramificate into different outcomes. After hitting the end credits, however, I can’t shake off the feeling that my trip to the Arcadia star system didn’t leave much of an impact on it, and vice versa.

The premise of the sequel plays a similar tune to its predecessor. You’re thrust into a space colony overtaken by a megacorporation, working under the banner of the Earth Directorate. This entity is meant to bring a semblance of order amid clashing factions, tyrannies, and corporate greed. After an important mission goes awry, you’re tasked with assembling a crew to hunt down a specific target, while also examining the presence of rifts, which are anomalies that are appearing everywhere in the solar system, threatening their surroundings.

If you were expecting a bold change of pace, the sequel couldn’t be farther from it. With the main story as your north star, you take your ship to multiple planets, exploring open regions on a condensed scale. There are side quests to pursue, if you fancy going off the beaten path to explore largely empty spaces. Most of the time, however, you’ll be shooting an ever-growing assortment of guns, while occasionally putting your stats and perks to the test just enough to justify the time spent deciding what to pick.

In a way, this isn’t a bad thing, since Obsidian has improved gunplay significantly compared to The Outer Worlds. Weapons feel distinct from one another, whether it’s due to their fire rates, special gimmicks, or even the ammo type they carry. Elemental damage is a big aspect, as corrosive bullets and shock rods can affect certain enemies in different ways, to name a few examples. Something I liked is that, even after finding my favorite picks, I’d run out of ammo consistently, forcing me to open my inventory screen and try other weapons until I found a vending machine or a workbench to buy or craft supplies, respectively.

Most of the gadgets and, arguably, the perks you choose tend to be combat-oriented. There’s a consistent progression in place that is heightened by having companions tagging along with their own special abilities to complement yours. There are times when these encounters falter — fighting human enemies is, well, kind of boring, and boss fights don’t offer much of a challenge on top of spamming the healing button when needed. When synergies come together and you’re fighting space creatures or the more involved mech-type enemies, The Outer Worlds 2 feels akin to exploring planets and fulfilling bounties in Destiny 2.

That being said, my gripes with Obsidian’s latest became more prominent when I wasn’t pulling a trigger. For starters, the anti-capitalist sentiment of the first game gains a different meaning in our current context. When you boot up The Outer Worlds 2 for the first time, Moon Man, the no-quite-a-Vault-Boy-equivalent mascot, tells you that “any similarities to real-world dystopian corporate branded hellscapes are purely coincidental.” The satire is there from the start.

However, in the modern world, it’s impossible to divorce these rhetorics from the fact that Obsidian is an Xbox Game Studio under Microsoft, a company that has perpetually laid off workers and shuttered studios in recent times. Some of the quotes provided by Xbox spokespersons ring similar bells to the corporate talk you can find in The Outer Worlds 2, such as saying that redundancies were made to “enhance our efficiency”.

“Even if you sideline real-life parallels looming overhead, there’s the inescapable factor that both games in the series feel oddly shallow when compared to Obsidian’s previous work.”

In one of the first settlements you set foot in, holographic signs repeat the tagline that you’re not a cog in the machine, you’re the cog in the machine that keeps everyone productive, and there are countless other examples, from conversations between scourged NPCs about being subjected to life-threatening labor to propaganda signs about union-busting.

There are times when The Outer Worlds 2 attempts to do meaningful commentary around these issues, but when said commentary is commodified freely as part of the marketing campaign for the game, how heavy can that blow land, if at all? As much as I searched for an answer, I couldn’t find one.

The closest I got is the fact that both main factions suck in their own particular ways, and the game is constantly pushing you to pick one in order to receive support during tough moments of the main story. Ignoring this insistence altogether and just sticking with my crew of companions to the very end was the one act of the rebellion I could muster.

Even if you sideline real-life parallels looming overhead, there’s the inescapable factor that both games in the series feel oddly shallow when compared to Obsidian’s previous work. You can make the argument that the likes of Pillars of Eternity and Neverwinter Nights 2 are aimed at a more enthusiast RPG audience, while The Outer Worlds is intended for a more casual target.

Even though the series might never be able to stand outside the shadow of Fallout New Vegas, especially with Obsidian deliberately trying to evoke the Fallout tone, it’s impossible not to look back and see the elements that have been sidelined. I rarely felt compelled to explore my surroundings in search of more organic encounters, and whenever I tried to, I was rewarded with more combat or yet another weapon for my arsenal, rather than anecdotes to remember and share with others.

Obsidian has put immense care into building Arcadia, something that’s best showcased in the illustrated propaganda signs you see during loading screens, portraying factions and major events that occurred in the story. The regions themselves also have a clear effort to be distinct from one another. But it all feels like it’s just one or two steps away from being truly memorable, inciting you to see what’s out there and find things that are uniquely part of The Outer Worlds nowhere elsewhere. If a sequel wasn’t able to address this, perhaps nothing will.