After six years of fans waiting, The Outer Worlds 2 is finally here. It is without a doubt a better game than the original in several key ways. It looks better, the beginning starts with a bigger bang, there is now a third-person mode, and the list goes on. It’s everything a sequel should be and more, while not rocking the boat too much to revolutionize the gameplay or the core idea.
As good as The Outer Worlds 2 is, it’s still not a great shooter on the level of other RPGs like Destiny 2 or even Borderlands 4. Let’s go through why the game is a better RPG than a shooter, to convince those on the fence that they don’t need to beef up their gunplay skills to jump into Obsidian's latest.
Creating Your Character
Establishing The Life Of An Earth Directorate Officer
No matter what Background players give themselves at the start of The Outer Worlds 2, they will be an Earth Directorate officer, essentially serving as the space police. Like most big RPGs, players can customize their character to a wild degree, from their facial features to their body, including any cybernetic appendages.
Skills and Traits can be chosen at the start of The Outer Worlds 2, and as players level up, they can earn Perks too. While some shooters also offer customization options, fans of RPGs live for the minute details, even if it takes two hours just to make one character.
The Dialogue System
Let’s Talk About Text, Baby
The dialogue system in The Outer Worlds 2 is exactly why it isn’t primarily a shooter. Players eventually have to get into gunfights with other factions or tear it up with monsters. However, it can be fun just to spend hours talking to NPCs and setting up quests, some of which don’t even require gunplay.
Thanks to the upgrades over the original, almost every character aspect in The Outer Worlds 2, from Skills to Backgrounds, matters in conversations. It makes sense that a Renegade, or a Professor, would bring in their knowledge or biased opinions into a conversation, or that a character gifted with hacking skills could solve certain dialogue disputes. It makes the game feel more dynamic and treats words more like the game’s secondary bullets.
The Hunt For Materials
A Slower Pace
Most shooter fans come into a game expecting a lot of action, and the dialogue example for The Outer Worlds 2 is one reason why things will slow down in this RPG. Also, players are going to spend a lot of time sifting through houses and abandoned buildings, exploring for items and crafting scraps, or looking at downed bodies hoping for some sweet loot.
This then leads to a lot of time spent in menus, which isn’t exactly the most fun, but it is a necessary part of the RPG experience. The Outer Worlds 2 is a great game that lets players progress at their own pace. All of these smaller details could be ignored to play it more like a shooter, but in that case, players would be at a disadvantage, since stats do matter here, unlike in a Call of Duty game.
Your Squad Matters
Be My Companion
Building a party is a big part of the RPG experience, and The Outer Worlds 2 has some great Companions to recruit. Players will start with Niles and Val, and later unlock Inez, among many others. They will fight automatically in battle, but most characters have special attacks that players can activate with the press of a button.
Managing squads can be a big part of shooters, including some Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Tom Clancy games. However, gun battles in The Outer Worlds 2 aren’t intense firefights like in those franchise examples, and the player's teammates actually have personalities to get to know, along with specialties. They aren’t generic soldiers, in other words.
The Gadgets
Space Is Weird
Beyond Companion-based powers, players also have gadgets and weird weapons that don’t factor into common shooter templates. Like its predecessor, this sequel has more in common with the Ratchet & Clank series than it does with the bigger shooter brands. For example, an early gadget will let players manipulate time, slowing things down to pop off the perfect shot, or perfect by The Outer Worlds 2's standards at least.
There is a weapon that can dissolve bodies, and of course, Science Weapons with weird functions like the ability to shrink enemies. Using gadgets and weird weapons like these examples doesn’t require as much accuracy, which is uncommon for shooters where accuracy is everything.
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This article originally appeared on GameRant and is republished here with permission.
