If the embed won’t play, the announce trailer is also here on YouTube.
Obsidian has finally put a price on the first proper slab of extra Outer Worlds 2, and in keeping with a game where every product carries small print longer than the product, the label reads Side Effects Guaranteed. It arrives on 2 December for $14.99 (€14.99 in Europe), or comes included for anyone who bought the Premium Edition or the Premium Edition Upgrade. It’s billed as the first half of a two-part story expansion, with part two pencilled in for spring 2027.
The set-up is pure B-movie, in the best way. A distress signal draws the crew of the Incognito to a derelict ship whose crew have put themselves into suspended animation, because they’ve been infected with something that causes explosive cell death. As medical conditions go, it at least has the decency to be unambiguous. The hunt for a cure leads to Elysium Valley, a new region on Eden, home to vicious canids and what Obsidian describes as primal sprats: ordinary sprats, only about a hundred times bigger. Along the way you’re steered towards Gordon Hazen, a leading agent of Sub Rosa, the criminal outfit whose members prefer stealing from the corporate factions to working for them. The fate of the settlement, the stricken crew and Sub Rosa itself is left in your hands.
For the number-crunchers, the level cap rises from 30 to 36, with more than 15 new perks, four new flaws, fresh weapons, armour and outfits for every companion, and a Sub Rosa-run radio station playing 20 new songs. An alternate start lets you skip straight into the DLC from the main menu with a ready-made save, and a free update arriving for everyone at the same time lets you respec your character whenever you like. That last one may be the most liberating feature of the lot, given how many of us built a commander around a perk we’d stopped using by the second planet.
Here at SFcrowsnest, we’ve always liked the fact that Obsidian’s corporate satire has teeth. The first game’s Peril on Gorgon expansion was a grubby little mystery about company science gone badly wrong, and this has the same whiff of laboratory disinfectant about it. Choices made here carry over into part two next spring, so pick carefully. Any self-respecting megacorp in Arcadia would, of course, recommend you read the leaflet first, then sign the waiver without reading that.
Join the conversation (0)