The Outer Worlds 2 Review – Starfield Needs to Take Notes- Xbox, PS5, PC
The Outer Worlds 2 is releasing to almost no hype, as a Game Pass Day One release in the same year that the same studio already released a Bethesda-ish RPG Day One on Game Pass earlier this year.
Obsidian’s ‘The Outer Worlds’ never really gelled with me all that well. Yes, it was made by the Fallout: New Vegas people and indeed felt quite a lot like Fallout in a way (and come before Starfield), and yes, you could feel Bethesda’s DNA in it, but it ended up feeling more like something similar to something I liked, rather than the actual thing I liked.
I am happy to say this is not the case with The Outer Worlds 2 so far, not for me at least, as it has landed a whole lot better with me this time around.
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Stranded in the Arcadian System
The Outer Worlds 2 has you create a character just like you would expect, but it is nothing to write home about. Once you have picked some character options, the story kicks off. In a nutshell, you are a commander of a ship on a mission, things go to hell, a baddie blows up something very important, and you are stranded in the Arcadian system, cut off from Earth.
So, not thousands of dead and empty planets to explore like in Starfield? Sounds good to me.
Speaking of sound, the game sounds and looks pretty good on the whole. And as with Avowed, it has options for performance, quality and one of my favorite new features of this generation of gaming: a 40fps balance mode.
While my memory of the first game is a little rusty, The Outer Worlds 2 does seem to do a lot of the same things. It just seems to do them better.
An Actual RPG
The game mechanics are a bit of a mixed bag. When it comes to gunplay, it is no Call of Duty, but it is decent enough, and it has the usual elements of looting, crafting and upgrades that you would expect from this kind of game.
I always love the fun and interesting hacking mini games that developers come up with for games like this, so I was a little bummed to realize that it is just a straightforward skill and prompt in The Outer Worlds 2. Stealth is also pretty underdeveloped and janky, to the point where I managed to sneak past some guards by just going right past them quickly enough that their attention meter did not fill enough for them to notice me.
I really must note that The Outer Worlds 2 is not afraid of leaning into what it actually is, an actual RPG. That means you will be doing a lot of reading and talking, and it is not all for nothing. Many of the quests rely on what you have found and what you know, although in many cases you will need the relevant skills to make good use of it.
In some cases, my decisions had some pretty notable repercussions, whereas there were a few scenarios where I could not really change what happened next.
Starfield Should Take Notes
As before, The Outer Worlds 2 opts for smaller open areas rather than a massive open world like you get in Skyrim or Fallout. In many ways, The Outer Worlds 2 feels like it is doing a lot of what Starfield should have done.
At the end of the day you are still quick traveling to different planets or locations, but The Outer Worlds 2 is not trying to convince you that it is any grander than that.
Satire, Style and Self-Awareness
Despite having a strong message, The Outer Worlds 2 does not take itself too seriously, and it is better for it. It is the kind of game that makes you laugh at its overly exaggerated vision of corporate greed and power, religious zealotry and political ambition. It manages to have fun while also making you feel uneasy with how much of the satire does not feel all that different from the real world these days.
I also realized that it is self-aware too, with a few callbacks to other games in the genre, like the Skyrim bucket trick. Except this time it is a bucket you can wear that makes you pretty much cease to exist, as long as you do not move.
