Sxynix Posted March 18, 2021 Posted March 18, 2021 Platforms : PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch Developers : Obsidian Entertainment Publishers : Private Division Release Date :March 17, 2021 Obsidian has leaned hard into turning The Outer Worlds into a sci-fi detective game with its two DLC expansions – a direction that plays to the strengths of its characters and writing. That’s smart, considering the combat has pretty much fully run out of gas by this point. The second and final one, Murder on Eridanos, is a more intimate and local whodunnit that has you following a trail of clues around a series of colorful floating islands to interview weird suspects and hold up a high-tech magnifying glass to highlight clues. It’s not a grand sendoff for this upstart RPG, but it’s another good chunk of time spent in its universe. After a brief setup in which the star of an in-universe TV show is murdered, you’re handed a badge and sent off to be an impartial investigator. I only wish we’d gotten to see or at least hear more of these noir-ish Halcyon Helen serials, since the small taste we do see is tons of fun and right up the alley of The Outer Worlds’ dark humor. The crime boss, the jilted lover, the weird self-help guru, the arrogant co-star, and more are on the list of people of interest, and most of them are in fact interesting people to talk to. It’s a bona fide murder mystery, and there’s a lot of dialogue here since so much of the sleuthing is climbing every branch of their conversation trees, and between that and reading emails on terminals, going through every detail for evidence it can take a while. Depending on how thorough you are, that can be over 10 hours – which is not bad at all for an expansion to a 25-hour RPG. As far as I can tell there isn’t a significant effect on the story based on your roleplaying dialogue choices, but there are a couple of big decisions to make once you close in on a suspect: for one, you get to actually guess at who killed the actor, which is a refreshing breath of fresh air when so many detective games are on rails. Sure, no matter who you accuse, the final confrontation is effectively the same, but it feels great to be given the chance to make a call and then find out if you’re right or wrong about it, which is a lot more than Peril on Gorgon did. And of course, then you have to decide what to do when you discover what really happened and the secret Halcyon Helen was killed to protect, and you’re given some justification to go either way. What We Said About The Outer Worlds Share Autoplay setting: On With The Outer Worlds, Obsidian has found its own path in the space between Bethesda and BioWare, and it’s a great one. And considering that new RPGs from either of those influential developers are still years away, this game couldn’t have been timed any better. It’s not as explorable as one big open world but it still packs in a large portion of flexible quests and conflicts within its series of smaller ones. And the combat, character, and companion systems have enough new spins on existing ideas to make it feel like an homage with its own personality rather than a copy. - Dan Stapleton, October 22, 2019 Read the full The Outer Worlds review You never actually leave Eridanos as part of the main quest, or even need to return to your ship – you’re given a temporary base of operations where your whole team hangs out and a billboard is automatically filled out with photos of suspects and crazy-person string connecting them so you can visualize everything without taking too many of your own notes. That makes Murder on Eridanos feel more self-contained than any other adventure; almost like its own game. But since you never leave, it’s a good thing that the map is impressively diverse, with each of the connected floating islands containing one or two distinctive areas. There’s the scene of the crime at an upscale hotel, the distillery Helen was there to promote, a crime boss’s lair, vast fields of purple flowers, weird caves, and more – this doesn’t have the feeling of a map that’s cobbled together from existing parts. The only obnoxious thing about it is the long bridges that connect the islands where you do nothing but walk straight ahead for about 15 seconds at a time, and how eagerly the main quest sends you back and forth across them. This kind of thing is exactly what fast travel was invented for. This kind of thing is exactly what fast travel was invented for. I didn’t feel bad about taking that shortcut in part because by the time you’re at the required level 30, The Outer Worlds’ combat doesn’t hold up and feels obligatory, even on hard difficulty, so skipping it felt inconsequential. Even the handful of new weapons on Eridanos don’t spruce fights up much at all, and the enemies are very much more of the same but with more splash damage. This does mean that it’s a very chatty DLC though, and best suited to players who enjoy hiking through a dialogue forest more than just a dialogue tree. It’s an ambitious story with a huge amount of ground to cover. So much so that it’s boa-constrictor-tight delivery – which sets multiple side-quests sprawling from your discoveries almost from the off – can feel overwhelming at times and make you anxious you’re missing an integral clue in amongst the extras. You’re given plenty of breaks in the pacing to wander off before you report your findings, but the distraction factor is high and thorough searching often rewards you with unmarked clues to the various interwoven mysteries across the resort. It’s a lot to handle, and The Outer Worlds gives you a lot of credit to remember it all. More than a magnifier All of this doesn’t mean you’ll never have to lift a blaster, though. The recommended player level for the DLC is 30, which means this is end-game stuff, with plenty of tough set-piece fights placed at well-paced intervals throughout your investigation. While you start in the relatively sedate surroundings of the hotel, more hostile areas quickly open up and add an urgent edge to the mystery. But despite being equipped as a weapon, the biggest addition in Murder on Eridanos is non-violent. The Discrepancy Amplifier is your partner in solving crime, capable of highlighting clues in the environment to further your deductions. It’s a great in-universe implementation of the classic ‘detective vision’ which surfaces important information with enough input from the player to make you feel like an active participant rather than just having conversations placed under your nose. The sassy back-and-forth with the Amplifier’s AI is just one of the ways that the Murder on Eridanos DLC leans into The Outer Worlds’ goofier and more referential side, where the one-liners and silly player dialogue choices are a laugh-a-minute. There are plenty of unique asides from all of your favorite companions too, including some great set-pieces. The grand reveal Murder on Eridanos feels like The Outer Worlds at its best. Roleplay, diverging quest lines, and carefully balanced absurdity have always been at the heart of the game, and this DLC feels like a freer exploration of that core concept. Without having to juggle the high-stakes of the main story across an extended run-time and multiple planets, there’s more leeway to knit a larger cast of more interconnected characters together for a more engaging mystery. It could talk your ear off, but in true Outer Worlds fashion, it’s up to you whether you want to listen. The Outer Worlds: Murder on Eridanos is out now on PC, PlayStation and Xbox – with Switch assumed to be coming later. In The Outer Worlds’ second and final narrative DLC, Murder on Eridanos, there’s a mystery afoot unlike any other in the game. When superstar actress Halcyon Helen is murdered in the galaxy’s foremost luxury resort, the crew of the Unreliable is once again tasked with stepping into the shoes of a space-age sleuth to crack the case. poster When you think about the best DLC expansions for story-based RPGs, they all have a few things in common. They add meaningfully different areas to explore, deep side-stories to uncover, and interesting new mechanics that subtly subvert and add distinct layers to the way you play. Murder on Eridanos does all of those things, while still sticking true to The Outer Worlds’ tightly written, off-the-wall humor and dedication to enabling different kinds of role play. The Outer Worlds: Murder on Eridanos Review Luxury Living The Grand Colonial Hotel is a steam train short of smooshing just about every Poirot setting into one, where the hovering islands make it quite literally Death in the Clouds. Designed like a spoked wheel with the high-rise hotel at its centre, there’s everything from a not-so-flourishing orchard, wilderness nature reserve, and seedy harbor to sift through – all full of suspects, side-quests, and general intrigue on your way to the ultimate conclusion. Too often in RPGs we’re left picking over the bones of interesting events, sauntering through dilapidated corridors where everything happened long before you arrived. And that’s where I thought The Outer Worlds’ previous DLC, Peril on Gorgon, was at its weakest, as you milled about through abandoned labs on your way to press a button on a computer. One of my favorite things about Murder on Eridanos is its willingness to show us a part of the colony in full swing – where you’re interrogating major players and sniffing out clues as things happen instead of after the fact. ---------------------------------- System Requirments : ---------------------------------- Minimum : CPU: Intel Core i3-3225 or AMD Phenom II X6 1100T CPU SPEED: Info RAM: 4 GB OS: Windows 7 (SP1) 64bit VIDEO CARD: Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti or AMD Radeon HD 7850 PIXEL SHADER: 5.0 VERTEX SHADER: 5.0 FREE DISK SPACE: 40 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 1024 MB ----------------------------------- Recommended ; CPU: Intel Core i7-7700K or Ryzen 5 1600 CPU SPEED: Info RAM: 8 GB OS: Windows 10 64bit VIDEO CARD: GeForce GTX 1060 6GB or Radeon RX 470 PIXEL SHADER: 5.1 VERTEX SHADER: 5.1 FREE DISK SPACE: 40 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 6 GB ----------------------------------- Video Trailer :
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