Stepping foot onto the flagship of the mega-corporation Auntie’s Choice is seeing the horrors of capitalism laid bare – robots dart in your direction, in a cacophony of blaring advertisements, and burning your retinas with blazing neon lights. It was one of the most overwhelming moments I’ve had in a game in years, and then it dawned on me – this is really just a physical manifestation of going to a website and being frustratedly met with a dozen pop-up ads for cars, diapers, and mushroom coffee.
The Outer Worlds 2 is a massive RPG, and I don’t just mean that in terms of game length (although that’s long too). What I mean is that to an almost absurd extent, The Outer Worlds 2 presents a staggering amount of choice in nearly everything you do. It’s a maximalist game in many ways, taking the original concept of the first game to the absolute extreme, both in story and gameplay. The sequel utterly revels in the absurdity of its satire on capitalism, government, authoritarianism, and individuality – even if it takes a bit longer to get situated than the first game. But something we’ll definitely need to talk about, is how the tone and humor of the game takes on an entirely different flavor under the context of Microsoft owning Obsidian Entertainment. While Obsidian’s writing hasn’t lost any of its bite, it feels nearly impossible to interpret this sequel the same way as the first game, given how much the gaming industry has changed in just the short six years between them.
