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Sometimes, less is more

Image: Obsidian

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Midway through The Outer Worlds 2’s second act, I bumped into an NPC who was about to do some very bad things. Having collected the right information in my travels, I was thankfully able to talk the guy down, and the conflict ended peacefully.

Then my newest companion — an unapologetically bloodthirsty cultist named Aza — helpfully offered to torture the guy for additional information. Being the good Earth Directorate agent I am, I politely turned her down (much to the relief of the guy whose life was hanging in the balance). But the moment stuck with me for hours after I’d put down the controller. This wouldn’t be the last time Aza suggested a comically violent solution to a moral conundrum, and moments like this have made me realize something: The Outer Worlds 2 is what I really wanted out of Starfield.

Before you reach for your pitchfork, hear me out. The Outer Worlds 2 and Starfield are obviously different in many ways. Starfield has ship-building, space combat, outpost management, and thousands of planets to visit. In The Outer Worlds 2, you take the ship you’re given, cannot fly it yourself, cannot build outposts, and there are only a handful of planets to visit. Obsidian’s newest RPG is much, much smaller in scope than Bethesda’s enormous contribution to the “space game” genre. And you know what? It’s better for it.

Starfield promised players the world (well, the galaxy), but ultimately failed to deliver on multiple fronts. It was held back by its enormous scale, bogged down by the weight of its own bloated list of features. The ship-building mechanic is incredible, but even after multiple tweaks, space combat still sucks. (I cannot tell you how many times I’ve tried to help a faction fend off the Crimson Fleet, only to get a bounty on my head because one stray projectile accidentally hit a non-Crimson-Fleet ship.) Outposts can be fun to build, but they’re largely cut off from the rest of the game, and resources are plentiful elsewhere, so there’s no reason you absolutely need to build one. But *Starfield’*s biggest issues are its bland companion characters, over-reliance on procedural generation, and complete lack of humor.

Aza actually feels like a cultist. Andreja feels like her cult’s politically correct PR rep.Image: Obsidian

Like The Outer Worlds 2, Starfield also has a companion character who is part of a cult. When players first meet Andreja, they witness her murder a guy in cold blood. I was pretty excited when I initially encountered her, happy to finally have a member of the crew whose morals deviated from the chronic case of goody-two-shoe-itis that seemed to be afflicting the rest of my companions. Since I’d given Andreja the benefit of the doubt after watching her kill a guy, surely she’d do the same for me.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. In theory, Andreja seems a little edgier than the game’s other companions, but in practice, her moral code is identical to the rest of the Constellation crew. She will get angry if you kill any innocents, and if you’re in a romantic relationship, she’ll even divorce you if you don’t behave.

By contrast, in The Outer Worlds 2, Aza frequently suggests that you lean into your bloodthirsty side. The game even features a “Psychopath” perk that boosts your XP gain when killing members of a faction you have a poor relationship with, and a “Serial Killer” perk that sees you harvesting human hearts from innocents in exchange for a boost to your max health. But other members of the crew have malleable morality, too. Niles, for instance, is very much a good guy who wants to avoid killing whenever he can. But he also holds an immense amount of resentment for a former Earth Directorate agent who betrayed him in the past. When I managed to peacefully convince her to stand down, Niles was not happy, and I feared he might leave my crew. (Depending on certain skill checks and your previous actions, it’s possible that he will leave your crew over this.) But due to a dialogue choice I’d made during an early game conversation with him, I was able to mend our relationship. With Starfield, there is never any real opportunity to change the way your companions think.

Later, Niles and I infiltrated a Protectorate facility and stumbled across an NPC who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The poor guy begged for mercy, and as much as I wanted to let him live, the risk to the mission was far too great. This NPC met an unfortunate and untimely demise at the hands of my team, and Niles was understandably pissed. After the mission, Niles confronted me again, and even alluded to the previous mission in which I let his nemesis live. He had a point — I’d let a known manipulator walk away unscathed, but chose to end a potentially innocent man’s life. How was that fair? But because I’d managed to cultivate a positive relationship with Niles, I was able to get him to see my perspective, and he agreed that sometimes, as awful as it is, killing is necessary. Not only do The Outer Worlds 2’s companions have very different moral codes, those moral codes can change as a result of your actions in-game. Starfield’s cardboard-cutout companions never present you with the opportunity to change the way they see the world, and they all see the world the same way.

Unlike your crew in Starfield, companions in The Outer Worlds 2 won’t immediately bail on you for doing things they disagree with.Image: Obsidian

Starfield promised an expansive world where choices matter, but Bethesda ultimately delivered a game that was a mile wide and an inch deep, literally and figuratively. The inflexible, identical morality systems of Starfield’s companion characters already had me pretty frustrated, but what made me put down the controller for good was the overuse of procedural generation to fill out the game’s endless, empty planets. In a single play session, I discovered the same named NPC’s corpse in the same spot inside the same exact building on three different planets. I can suspend my disbelief to a point, but Bethesda’s overuse of copy-and-pasted buildings, NPCs, and loot made exploring Starfield’s numerous planets feel like a repetitive chore, not a galaxy-spanning adventure.

The Outer Worlds 2’s planets are bigger than they were in the first game, but are much smaller than the ones you’ll find in Starfield, and there are far fewer of them. But all of The Outer Worlds 2’s planets are visually distinct, colorful, and incredibly detailed. Every corner of each world is filled with loot, consumables, and crafting materials that were clearly placed by hand, making exploration feel worth it. You will never come across identical buildings with identical layouts and identical NPCs corpses with identical loot. Opening safes and locked rooms in The Outer Worlds 2 doesn’t require an annoying minigame, and for the most part, the rewards inside are worth however many Mag-Picks you had to use to gain access to them in the first place. I lost count of how many times I cracked open a safe in Starfield only to discover I’d wasted a lockpick for half a sandwich and a handful of credits.

The Outer Worlds 2’s exploration is also vastly superior to Starfield’s. These planets may not be as big as those in Starfield, but they’re infinitely more detailed, and far more beautiful. Once you’ve acquired the P.A.L.E. Double-Jump Boots early on in the game, these worlds open up even more, as you can now climb rock formations, jump across toxic rivers of Zyranium, and avoid most fall damage. The fact that I didn’t have to waste skill points to acquire these boots (as I did to get my Boost Pack working in Starfield) was just the cherry atop the spacefaring sundae.

Everywhere you look, *The Outer Worlds 2’*s environments are colorful and striking — a pleasant reprieve from *Starfield’*s desaturated, barren planets.Image: Obsidian via Polygon

But the best aspect of The Outer Worlds 2 is its sense of humor. I get that Bethesda’s vision for Starfield was a realistic, “NASA-punk” vibe. But that vision also led to loads of empty, colorless planets, and while I understand wanting to tell the game’s story with a serious tone, anyone who was hoping for “Fallout in space” was bound to be disappointed. I’m happy to report that Fallout’s irreverent, tongue-in-cheek sense of humor is alive and well in The Outer Worlds 2. The Outer Worlds was fantastic, but it was far too small. The sequel lands right in the Goldilocks Zone: not too big, but not too small either.

For me, Starfield was a sterile, bland, and — despite the presence of romanceable companions — incredibly lonely experience. The Outer Worlds 2 isn’t perfect, of course, and there are plenty of aspects of the game that get on my nerves. But its focus on dark humor, handcrafted environments, companions with emotional depth, and choices that actually matter finally scratched my “Fallout in space” itch in a way Starfield never could.