The announcement of a sequel to Obsidian Entertainment’s The Outer Worlds has fans both surprised and excited. Their trailer, which debuted at this year’s E3, was very self-aware, being deliberately vague and overall hilarious, with jabs at how game developers promote and market their games without showing anything worthwhile about it.
Since barely anything was confirmed for the sequel, there’s a lot to speculate about what will be in this game. As great as the original was, there were certainly some shortcomings that many other titles have done better. With a AAA budget thanks to their partnership with Microsoft, Obsidian should have more than enough time and money needed to expand upon The Outer Worlds, creating a quality experience for fans.
Greater Enemy Variety
Despite all your travels across an entire star system, there weren’t that many different enemies and monsters to fight most of the time. Including all of the DLC, there were only about six alien monsters across all of the planets, and most of the human enemies’ players will fight are copy and paste marauders. There’re also some robot enemies to face occasionally, but you’d think there would be greater diversity when exploring untamed alien landscapes.
The Outer Worlds 2 trailer gave fans a glimpse of a new terrifying enemy they jokingly said wouldn’t be in the game (we very much hope it will). With new monsters like that, combat can be made into a thrilling and epic experience with each fight, rather than just feel like a mundane chore after a while.
New, Bigger Worlds to Explore
The regions players can travel to are diverse and spread across the entire star system. From small struggling communities across Terra II and Monarch to asteroids on the edge of the system, to even floating islands inside the gas giant of Eridanos, there are endless wonders to be found by the crew of the Unreliable.
The sequel is confirmed to take place outside of Halcyon, this time in an entirely new system. While diverse and home to all sorts of interesting locations, many of these regions were small compared to other open-world games and could be completely explored after only a few hours. Making them more sprawling and filled with unique locations and encounters would greatly improve future adventures.
Choices That Matter
A feature that’s sometimes lacking in RPGs is the feeling that player choices have impactful, lasting consequences. Some of these decisions can be found in the previous game, such as the overarching fate of the town of Edgewater. But that impact can be taken a step further by creating or importing a profile of decisions made by players in previous games. The best example of this is Bioware’s Mass Effect trilogy. Obsidian has also implemented this with other IPs, namely the Pillars of Eternity series. Since The Outer Worlds 2 is planned to be an Xbox exclusive, it might be difficult for PlayStation copy owners to import their own saves, but it would be great to see the consequences of player actions in the sequel if possible.
The Big Story Cliffhanger
The big reveal at the end of the first game was that for whatever reason, Earth had gone dark and Halcyon couldn’t expect to get help from the homeworld for its own problems plaguing the colony. This reveal was a shocking surprise and had huge implications not just for Halcyon but virtually every other colony world across the galaxy.
So, what caused Earth to become silent? Civil war? Alien invasion? Did a science experiment go horribly wrong? There’s no telling what might have happened to Earth, but this plot thread may be a central part of the story for the upcoming sequel, and players will be thrust right into the situation to either try and make it right or screw over everyone just for fun.
Same Great Humor
There are not many games out there that can make players laugh out loud with their content, but The Outer Worlds has some of the funniest moments of any RPG that fans would love to see more of in the sequel. The dark humor surrounding corporations and their incompetence/disregard for employees is found nearly everywhere and the dialogue options with NPCs are amazing, especially with low intelligence or certain perks and flaws.
Even combat moments can be ridiculous fun when in the middle of a fight with some marauders when all of a sudden one of your companions dropkicks their leader. The rare and unique science weapons like the shrink ray or mind control ray make battles even more chaotic and hilarious. Bringing more of this zaniness to future titles will help give its own identity among other RPGs.
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