Warning: Spoilers for Fallout: New Vegas and The Outer Worlds 2 lie in front.
Fallout: New Vegas was the elephant in the room when it came to my experience playing The Outer Worlds 2. Game director Brandon Adler and creative director Leonard Boyarsky called it, respectively, a “natural comparison” and a “touchstone” in the development of their latest game.
“It had a lot of elements that we knew we wanted to push forward: deeper role-playing, more ubiquitous factions and how they fit into the world, the type of open-ended story we wanted to tell, and even just exploration of the world itself,” Adler said. GamesRadar back in August. “We even have several people in our studio who have already worked on [New Vegas]. It really matched the values we were trying to implement in the next game.”
As I wrote in my reviewI don't think New Vegas is a perfect comparison to The Outer Worlds 2. It's more in the realm of Recognizednot only bearing structural similarities to a fantasy RPG, but also feeling like it's at its best when it goes thematically on the lighter side and focuses on simple fun. New Vegas, on the other hand, manages to capture this lighter side while also bringing a more serious and philosophical depth to its world, which has helped maintain myself And other talk about it for a decade and change in the future.
Based on the post-apocalyptic America created by Interplay's classic Fallouts, in which Boyarsky and his Outer Worlds 2 co-star Tim Kane were key figures, New Vegas imagines a brutal battle to determine the future direction of a fractured nation slowly recovering from nuclear devastation. The fiery decline of the old world was completely wiped out. In a new chapter of history, new factions emerge, led by humans, seeking to seize the helm of humanity as they try to pull the world out of the chaotic state of nature, where simple survival from day to day is the only goal for most people.
The NKR, Caesar's Legion, and New Vegas itself are led by one or more highly motivated ideologues, with the player in turn able to become a faction leader if they choose the independent path. The ideas each of them represent are a return to the way of life of antebellum America; a radical and totalitarian rejection of the proposed return to the status quo, as a result of which humanity has reached almost complete destruction; authoritarian restructuring at the hands of a staunch capitalist who considers himself a “technological and economic visionary” are the pillars on which the main narrative is built. The main goal of New Vegas is to draw you into each of these visions before letting you decide which one you want to hand the ball of the wasteland to. Or try to come up with a new doctrine that will put the fate of countless people on your shoulders.
The Outer Worlds 2, on the other hand, is based on the player's quest as the chosen one to save the world by stopping some scientific things from doing scientific things. As for the main quest, its war – between the incumbent collectivist dictatorship the Protectorate, the invading corporatists “Aunt's Choice” and the deterministic scientists “Order of the Ascendant” – is a matter that you're usually only concerned with to the extent that it affects your ability to stop these scientific things. Accordingly, these factions and their leaders often don't feel as active participants in shaping the game's world as they would in a deeper role-playing game with more factions.
As for how The Outer Worlds 2 achieved this – amid a desire to retain the silliness of the first game while moving into more complex narrative territory – I think the recent interview Boyarsky and Adler gave Edge offers important information. In it, Boyarsky says that he and Cain have “always made games about what happens when people gain power,” but their goal with Adler wasn't for The Outer Worlds 2 to feel like it was reacting to the state of the world at a certain point in time.
Interviewer Joshua Rivera then asks Boyarsky if he thinks there's a “more evil undertone” to the sequel's satire, and whether it could lead to a more serious examination of how corporate overbearing can contribute to the rise of fascism.
“We’re not talking about the fascist aspect of this, but we all find ourselves in situations where we have no control,” Boyarsky responded. “Even people in power, whether it's the real world or these games, I think people in power are just as much victims of the system as anyone else. They think they control all these things, but no one person can really have as much power as people want. it’s simple: I have no idea how I got here, I guess I need to make the best of it.”
Boyarsky's position absolves those tasked with making decisions that have far-reaching consequences other than themselves from responsibility for these calls. We are all, of course, influenced by our circumstances, but pointing the finger only at a vague and faceless “system” seems simplistic and rather cynical.
Privilege also plays a role in how inescapable the broader circumstances you blame are, as those living below the poverty line are more likely to face scenarios that are not of their making, without a safety net or means to escape them. This way, your anger is best directed at specific people who have more power to change the situation. Fuck Elon Musk Jamie Dimonand Nigel Farage, not just fuck capitalism. The system is not some invulnerable and inevitable thing that works on its own. These are the people who support and promote its principles, those who profit from it or use it as an excuse to trample others.
In the case of The Outer Worlds 2, a corporate powerbroker sets in motion a hostile takeover of fellow corporation Spacer's Choice. She then invades Arcadia—the sector of space in which the game is set—in an attempt to stake out a fiefdom that could help save her job if contact with Earth is ever restored. This is the Sovereign and Consul of the Protectorate overseeing a lobotomy-style “psychic refresh” for all citizens deemed to be acting outside the approved norms, and then ignoring the needs of his population to engage in a misguided power struggle in the midst of conflict in which the player has no agency whatsoever. problems that she cannot prevent a sect of her order from getting out of control and planning to commit a series of murders for the sake of their equations.
The powerful are not victims. They may not be omnipotent, but they are involved in everything good, bad, and indifferent that comes within their sphere of influence. However, The Outer Worlds 2 doesn't seek to seriously hold these characters accountable for their actions and the world they created for the everyday citizens of Arcadia. Other than being able to shoot everyone, it doesn't give the player much opportunity to influence these factions or push their doctrines in different directions.
Instead, everything reflects Boyarsky's point of view that no one really has much power over their fate or the fate of the world around them. The result is a game that views the world with a cynical grin, portrays struggles mostly in practical terms as you scratch the surface, and treats ideologies more like pure buzzwords. This is just what people say to justify their self-centered burdens.
It's an interpretation of how society works that relies on nihilism rather than any idealism, and takes The Outer Worlds 2 down a very different path from an RPG perspective than New Vegas.
