Malf on 12/11/2025 at 10:25

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Gamepass has made me uneasy for a while, and the price hike just made it easier to ditch. Even when I could snap up a year for stupidly low money, I generally only ever played maybe one or two games a year through it.
I really don't like the idea of any company becoming the "Netflix of gaming", and see it as a further erosion of consumer ownership rights (the whole Ubisoft "You'll own nothing and be happy" bollocks.)

However, despite claiming I'd wait for a sale, after finishing VTMB2 on Sunday night, I found myself hankering something similar, yet with deeper RPG elements, and OW2 was right there.
Also, having recently finished paying off my mortgage (YAY!), I've found that I've had more disposable income than I'm used to, so buying it didn't sting as much (although I worry that my lack of willpower helps justify Microsoft's forcing of higher price points.)

ANYWAY, personal dilemmas aside, I'm beginning to enjoy the game.

The intro mission is particularly strong, offering plenty of opportunities for playing with different mechanics, and showing you the possibilites for repeat playthroughs.
It does unfortunately lose some momentum when you land on Arcadia, and the first town feels less coherent than the first town in the first game. But once you start engaging with some of the larger scenarios, it picks up again. Last night, I took the bridge, and am already wondering how many other ways I could have approached that. Despite being offered a compromise by the gate guard, I opted to sneak in, botched hiding, then exploited the stupidity of the AI to clear the entire base.
Where in similar games, I previously would have save-scummed when failing stealth, I decided to roll with it. I wonder how this will affect things moving forward. Oddly, it didn't seem to negatively affect my reputation with the Protectorate (the faction holding the bridge.)

I've started my character as a Lucky Gambler with a focus on Speech and Observation, and have already branched out to add some points to Hacking and Lockpicking. Reviews have noted that it's better to specialise rather than try to become a Jack-of-all-trades, so I'm going to try and limit myself to those 4 skills (which makes me think I should have taken Dumb, which restricts the amount of skills you can invest in.)
Certainly early on, the opportunities for Observation and Speech aren't quite as numerous as Lockpicking, Engineering and Hacking, so I worry that the game might be balanced more towards those skills.

Despite criticisms of Obsidian's position within Microsoft undermining the anti-capaitalist message, so far I'm finding it much more nuanced than the rather heavy-handed approach of the first game, and I think this is thanks to some welcome ideological differences between the three main factions.
The Earth Protectorate, of which you are an agent, seems to be a kind of representative of a more democratic society within the universe, attempting to undermine both of the others.
Autie's Choice is more representative of the ultra-capitalist organisations of the first game, being a merger between Spacer's Choice and Auntie Cleo's.
And The Protectorate represents and odd melange of monarchy and Soviet-era communism.

Of course, this makes it very hard to sympathise and side with The Protectorate, in much the same way it's almost impossible to side with Caesar's Legion in New Vegas, especially when it's revealed that they practice "Mental Refreshment", which seems to be something similar to a lobotomy or nerve stapling.

As for the hyped flaw system, so far I've taken 2 of the 4, that I've been offered.
The reload one, Overprepared, where you get expanded magazine size on all weapons, but do less damage for a period if ammo count ever reaches zero.
And Teetotaler, which increases healing from the inhaler by 25%, but also increases the toxicity you gain by 25%
I have also been offered Consumerism (vendor items cost 15% less, but you get 10% less when selling to vendors), but turned it down, which I'm kinda regretting, and Flawed, where you gain an extra perk point every 5 levels, but HAVE to take all flaws when they're offered, which I am not regretting.

Playing it back-to-back with VTMB2 is interesting too.
That game had pretty good combat with some interesting movement options, whereas so far combat in OW2 feels a bit vanilla.
But I suspect that over time, the increased enemy variety and options unlocked later on may tip the balance in OW2's favour.
Story seemed better developed in VTMB2, but despite some interesting choices, felt quite on rails and predtermined. OW2 started strongly, then dipped as previously noted, but I think the stronger differences between factions and your interactions with them may make the story more rewarding in OW2. At the same time however, I am fully aware that it's waaaaay too early to pass that kind of judgment on OW2.

And despite VTMB2 looking prettier at initial glance, the graphics of OW2 or more polished and consistent.
One of my recent treats to myself was a Sony INZONE M10S OLED monitor (with a frankly ridonkulous 480Hz refresh rate!), and the image quality is spectacular. Unfortunately for VTMB2, this increased fidelity served to reveal all of the graphical flaws of their implementation of UE5, including some nasty inconsistencies in shadows (textures appearing oddly oversaturated when in shadows, resulting in unsightly blotching; I'm guessing poor texture compression is to blame here), and a persistent, visible, red and oval vignette around the screen at all times, becoming more noticeable the darker the scene.

By contrast, OW2, while not looking as immediately striking (VTMB2's dark, neon-lit, snow-covered Seattle has incredible atmosphere), has none of these flaws and seems to be remarkably stable.

Personal, irrational bugbear with OW2: the dialogue box appearing at the bottom of the screen, so far from character's faces, means I have to make a conscious effort to look at those faces in dialogue. Otherwise, I'm just reading the dialogue box as they speak, and have no idea what they look like or how good the facial animation is.
Now I know this is the standard for this type of game; but for some reason, I find it more distracting in OW2 than I have in any other game, including VTMB2.

Anyways, those are my thoughts so far.

Malf on 13/11/2025 at 12:44

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FTFY :cheeky:

Malf on 16/11/2025 at 10:13

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Related, there's an option to sign in to XBox on the Steam version that loads your Game Pass saves.

Jason Moyer on 17/11/2025 at 20:34

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"Wish it would have been longer" is the best criticism of a game there is imo.

henke on 20/11/2025 at 10:01

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Yeah, I liked this one a lot.

[video=youtube;eguCXgnb9NA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eguCXgnb9NA[/video]