Our exhaustive review of The Outer Worlds was awarded an 85% by listing a vast world, a worthy script, dialogue, fighting and a comprehensive formula that offered a rich if perhaps too much traditional experience among its overriding features: today we face the title again to analyze the first official expansion of the game released by Obsidian, "The Outer Worlds: Danger on Gorgon".
A DLC that adds a new campaign, a new storyline that will lead us to explore new areas on a devastated asteroid. Will the game be worth the candle? Let's find out together.
The Outer Worlds: Peril over Gorgon, like The Outer Worlds, is a first-person shooter framed by a deep and vast role-playing sector. The expansion begins in an uneasy way: a package sent aboard the Unreliable - our ship - will soon turn out to be nothing more than a macabre container in which we will find a severed arm whose hand holds a tape recorder. We will soon discover that the one-piece limb belongs to an old acquaintance of Captain Hakwtorne, who will make us understand that he is at the center of an “operation” with very high risks but with proportional gains. Of course we and our “lovable” crew will decide in one fell swoop to embark on this promising adventure.
Once we reach Gorgone - a massive asteroid protagonist of a mysterious failed project - we will discover that the whole area is totally in ruins., devastated by the aggressive local fauna, by marauders and by the terrible guinea pigs at the center of the project now in freedom. Of course we will be the ones to investigate the mystery that envelops Gorgon, with the mission of tracing the diary of a scientist who had worked on the project.
A not particularly original incipit which, however, will lead the way to a well-thought-out and engaging plot, although certainly not comparable in length to the narrative plot of the main title. A story that will unfold between dark secrets, palace intrigues and dialogues on the verge of madness: as we can expect, the extreme irony that was the background to the events narrated in the first chapter will also be completely translated here. Of course, this will not result in a banal storyline: here too we will have the power to make decisions that will open up different narrative possibilities and that will naturally hold the thread of the events we will witness by the hand.
If we wanted to summarize in a stringent way, at the same time simplifying the concept in order to better frame it, we could say that Peril su Gorgone is a longer than average secondary mission which, with small aesthetic variations on the theme, will put on the table a meal consistent with the main course and in some ways, even more demanding in terms of mere challenge. In this sense, the various dungeons scattered around the game map are appreciable, rather vast and labyrinthine and which will host some challenges within them that can be overcome using particular skills or objects found during the game.
Having an identity, in a world of Battle Royale and similar, is certainly essential: the expansion of The Outer Worlds essentially re-proposes all the founding features of the basic chapter of the Obsidian title. If we wanted to sum up to the extreme and extreme, Pericolo su Gorgone does not introduce any significant new gameplay compared to the original title, neither on the more purely mechanical front, nor from an interpretative point of view of the role-playing concepts expressed.
A permanence that also insists on the aesthetic variety of situations and opponents who, in principle, will not introduce any variant worthy of mention. Pericolo su Gorgone is a conservative emanation from the first chapter of the game, enclosed in one storyline of about 15 hours: a product of undoubted quality and that will make the happiness of those who have loved the main chapter to madness, even if the lack of the "flicker" in order to make the expansion really personal, in the end, is missing.
We have come to the technical and aesthetic section: even in this juncture, nothing has changed compared to the original chapter, for good and for (very little) evil that we told you about in the original review. A sure applause to the artistic direction that, in its conceptual "simplicity" (after all we are on an asteroid and an asteroid is made of rock) has succeeded in the difficult task of making an environment pleasant and varied which, of course, does not offer strong visual emotions.
The same goes for the mere technical component: the DLC does not move an "inch" from the experience of The Outer Worlds. During our sessions on PlayStation 4, using the Pro version of the current Sony flagship, no slowdowns or errors were encountered that deserve a mention.
Pericolo su Gorgone is an excellent DLC, rather long and full of activity and which at the same time also offers a well-made storyline. If we really wanted to find a mole to the overall production, it could be related to the conceptual and content “copy / paste” from the first chapter. Obviously, this is not a negative figure, but we would have to dare a little more to make Pericolo su Gorgone a complementary experience and not a mere extension of The Outer Worlds.
