Playing through the opening of The Outer Worlds 2 I'm reminded of something – RPGs like this can just be fun, whether that's aiming down the scope of a futuristic pistol to drop a guard patrol, or navigating the strange bureaucracy of a weird, colorful planet. It's been a while, but that's always been the case. Playing the opening of The Outer Worlds 2 for an hour or two, I feel more connected to its zany world than any RPG like this in a long time.
For as serious and grim as games like The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion or Fallout: New Vegas can be, it's never those bits that stick with me. Instead, it's the awkward encounters with strange NPCs, the bizarre quests and moral dilemmas that litter the wasteland, or simply the ragdolling of corpses after (ideally) some sort of explosion. The Outer Worlds 2, coming from the developers behind Fallout: New Vegas, seems to better understand this than Bethesda themselves. The Outer Worlds 2's take on space questing packs so much life that it makes Starfield look like a curled, clingfilmed sandwich in comparison.
