The Outer Worlds: Murder on Eridanos DLC Previews
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With the Murder on Eridanos DLC for Obsidian’s sci-fi RPG The Outer Worlds launching in just a couple of days, on March 17, 2021, you might want to know what to expect from The Outer Worlds’ final piece of story content that will task you with solving a pulpy murder mystery. If that’s the case, you can find a few hands-on previews below:
Fun fact, when we sat down with narrative designer Nitai Poddar, he told us that everyone who plays this DLC should do a "dumb" run at least once. "Everyone needs to play this expansion with low intelligence even once. We even tell players in the beginning that if they don't have high intelligence, certain interactions get really weird." Even the sounds that the Discrepancy Amplifyer makes are changed, instead becoming a garbled mumble that you can't understand because you're not smart enough to. I'm doing this run now, and let me tell you: I've never been more excited and entertained by people telling me I'm stupid. It's great.
Not much has changed mechanically from the base game to Murder on Eridanos. Your companions and combat still remain the same, so if you’re already well versed on how those mechanics work, then you shouldn’t have much trouble coming to grips with things in the expansion. Of course, there are plenty of new and colorful NPCs to meet and chat with along the way—as well as tons of new side quests—all of which offer the same corporately focused wit and charm that helped the original stand out back in 2019.
One of the things fans of The Outer Worlds wanted more of in the base game was more opportunities for the player's companions to guide the flow of in-game conversations with NPCs, and Murder on Eridanos includes a number of great interactions players can only see if they brought along a certain Outer Worlds crewmate at the right time. It's not just during stoic conversations where the improved sense of emotional attachment comes up, however, and Starks says the development team worked hard to marry exciting story beats and conversations to exciting gameplay elements throughout Murder on Eridanos so players felt as immersed in the world and situation as possible.
“The Discrepancy Amplifier was us pushing the boundaries of what we know we could do,” Poddar explained. “We know we can have conversations. We know you can aim down a scope. We know that you can change the world a little bit if you aim down a scope, so we put those things together and we said, ‘we could probably make some kind of device that lets you see clues in the world, and then interact with those clues, using conversations’.”
“We knew we wanted clues in the world, but we didn’t want it to be like pixel hunting in scenes,” Cain added. “Someone had the brilliant idea of, ‘what if this clue-gathering device actually could talk?’
“It opens up the narrative designers to make a wonderful — and very funny — set of interactions you can have with that device. But it also lets you use your skills, because if you have good medical or engineering, you can actually interact with the device when it’s revealing a clue to learn additional things.”
