Interview: Obsidian On The Outer Worlds’ Peril on Gorgon DLC

Developer Obsidian has announced that the first item of downloadable content (DLC) for The Outer Worlds, entitled Perils on Gorgon, will be released on 9 September for Xbox One, PS4, PC and Switch.

Obsidian showed Peril on Gorgon for the first time in the Microsoft Games Showcase, but we managed to speak to two key members of the DLC’s development team, Game Director Carrie Patel and Project Art Director Matt Hansen, beforehand, who provided plenty of valuable insight.

Obsidian described the general story arc of Peril on Gorgon thus: “A severed arm and a mysterious message lead the crew of the Unreliable to the Gorgon Asteroid, formerly the site of one of Halcyon’s most ambitious and disastrous scientific undertakings, and now a lawless den of monsters and marauders. Wealthy recluse Minnie Ambrose tasks the crew with finding answers about Dr Olivia Ambrose, her mother and the doomed project’s disgraced director, but they are soon ensnared in an intrigue that will change the colony forever.”

Patel described how Peril on Gorgon fits into The Outer Worlds’ overall story arc: “You can start it as a player any time after you complete the critical path of Monarch – basically between that point and the point-of-no-return save that you get at Tartarus. If you travel to another location, a special event will fire that will kick off the DLC for you and allow you to jump into the content.”

Avoiding spoilers as carefully as possible, she gave a personal overview of its storyline: “It tells the story of the Gorgon asteroid, which is the site of a now-defunct Spacers Choice research facility where Adrena-Time was developed. Over the course of the DLC, you’re going to explore that site, dig into the story of Adrena-Time, and understand a bit more about why it was shut down and the story of the corporate malfeasance there. You’ll also meet some of the people who have moved in since Spacer’s Choice abandoned the place. So [it has a] new setting, a lot of new characters and definitely a lot of the darkly humorous story-telling that players of the base game greatly enjoyed.”

As long as Monarch

Hansen suggested that Peril on Gorgon should provide a pretty meaty experience by the standards of story-led DLC: “There’s the primary Gorgon asteroid, then there’s, for lack of a better word, some off-world content that comes with it. All of that stuff combined is very similar in play-length to the experience that you had playing through the Monarch critical path. So, the amount of time that the player spent messing around on Monarch and doing all the little quests there will be roughly similar to the amount of time that they’ll have with the Gorgon asteroid and its side components.”

Patel also gave some insight into Peril on Gorgon’s original conception: “Players will recognise Adrena-Time as a consumable from the base game, something they can find and use as they explore Halcyon. But the story we’re telling around that is one that we sort of discussed internally, and there was an internal lore knowledge of, but not something that was obviously super-fleshed-out in game, and certainly not something that we had even fleshed out internally to the degree we have for the DLC.”

Hansen also teased what he believes are standout elements in Peril on Gorgon: “I don’t want to risk spoiling anything, but there is one particular, let’s say, organic landmark that I think people will really enjoy. There’s also a very interesting aggressive action the player can take at a certain point that has a really exciting pay-off.”

To which Patel added a modicum of insight into gameplay tweaks: “One of the challenges for us in creating games with branching experiences, that allow the player a fair bit of freedom in how they approach the content, is: how do we design around all the things the player could do, and all the things some players will definitely do? I’m proud of how we have iterated around some of those edge-cases, and managed to make them what I think will be very fulfilling and surprising play-experiences on their own.”

Neither Patel nor Hansen would be drawn on whether Obsidian intends to create more DLC for The Outer Worlds. But in the meantime, we’re greatly looking forward to returning to the Halcyon star-system and playing through Peril on Gorgon.