Copyright Polygon
As excited as I was to finally get my hands on The Outer Worlds 2, I was also a little apprehensive. After my experience with the original game's first big choice, I knew that at some point in the sequel, I'd have to choose between two NPCs with wildly differing views. Lo and behold, that's exactly what happened, as I was forced to side with one of two characters — the snakelike Milverstreet or the battle-hungry Kaur — in an early mission. But the outcome is a letdown, and the situation itself is reminiscent of one from the first Outer Worlds. The first major choice players were faced with in The Outer Worlds came via the main story quest, "Comes Now The Power." Workers in the company town of Edgewater have begun deserting their posts, due in part to their distaste for the town's administrator, Reed Tobson. The deserters — led by Tobson's most vocal critic, Adelaide McDevitt — are hiding out in the nearby botanical lab. Tobson tasks players with forcing the deserters to return home by shutting off the botanical lab's power, but they can also choose to side with the deserters. On its face, this seems like a fairly straightforward choice. Tobson is an easy guy to dislike, and it's not hard to see why someone would want to get the hell away from him and the disgusting Saltuna factory he oversees in favor of eating freshly grown GMO fruit at Adelaide's botanical base. The town's recent plague outbreak (which killed Adelaide's son) is a direct result of Tobson's ignorance of health and safety issues, and after the disrespectful way he speaks to fan-favorite companion Parvati, it very much feels like the game is nudging you toward the outcome that sees Adelaide replace Tobson. Adelaide has even discovered a cure for the plague: freshly grown food. But the catch is that she's secretly using corpses as fertilizer, something players will discover if they investigate her closely enough. Curing the plague would mean that eventually, Adelaide will run out of corpses to fertilize her crops. The current setup might be enough to feed her and her fellow deserters, but it's unsustainable on a large scale. The best solution would be to convince Tobson to roll back the changes he implemented at the Saltuna factory, which caused the plague in the first place. Frustratingly, this is not an option. In The Outer Worlds 2, players encounter a similar situation in a main quest called "The Saboteur of Paradise." Two Auntie's Choice associates — a dapper fellow named D.B. Milverstreet and Fairfield's trigger-happy acquisitions officer, Kaur — want to bring Paradise Island's Protectorate-loyal citizenry over to their side, but have very different ideas of the best way to go about it. Milverstreet says he favors diplomacy and subterfuge over violence, but also expresses interest in mental refreshment, a barbaric brainwashing procedure that turns people into barely functional human husks. Kaur prefers a straightforward assault, arguing that although people may die, her way will take less time and is more ethical. I like that both of these options are equally horrifying. Sure, more people will probably live if I side with Milverstreet, but they'll be brainwashed shadows of the people they once were. Kaur's method is more honest, but it's also more violent. I weighed my options for a while, and reluctantly sided with Kaur, pleased that the game wasn't nudging me to side with one character over the other. At the end of the quest, I was faced with an even bigger choice that put far more lives at stake. Without getting into too many spoilers, a very large building ended up becoming airborne, and it was up to me to decide where to crash-land the thing. Option one was Fairfield, the town where Milverstreet and Kaur can be found. Option two was Westport, which — wait a minute. What the hell is Westport? Milverstreet and Kaur both have exclusive quests you must complete once you decide who you're supporting. Kaur's quest sends you to the Protectorate's Automech Repair Facility. Milverstreet's sends you to Westport, a Protectorate-aligned town on the northeast side of the island. I'd come near Westport once while completing a companion quest, but because I didn't side with Milverstreet (and because the town is tucked away on the far side of Paradise), I was never prompted to explore the area. This completely took all excitement out of the Westport versus Fairfield conundrum. I found it hard to care about the people of Westport, who I had neither heard of nor met, and felt sure I must have missed something vital or encountered a bug, but that wasn't the case. By design, every player will encounter Fairfield, but not every player will encounter Westport, leading to a first-act climax that's meant to be shocking but is just straight-up baffling instead. There's a way to save both settlements, but not every player will have access to this option, which is only accessible if you selected the Lucky trait during character creation, or have a Hack skill of at least 4. I met the latter qualification, and managed to spare both Fairfield and Westport, but ended the quest feeling pretty annoyed. If I hadn't passed the requisite skill check, I'd have been forced to choose between a town I was intimately familiar with, and one I'd never even heard of before. Even if you do take Milverstreet's side and get the Westport quest (or stumble across the town while exploring), it still feels like the game's writers want you to save Fairfield. Westport is smaller than Fairfield, there's not much to do there, and it generally just feels like a one-off quest location, not a settlement full of innocent souls that players should care about. Meanwhile, Fairfield is a major location with multiple quests, vendors, and memorable NPCs.
