After nearly an entire year, Outward developer Nine Dots is adding a DLC pack to the game this Spring: The Soroboreans. With its tense exploration and careful gameplay, the game is ripe for some new content to die in. This DLC, then, will likely be a treat for fans hungry for more adventures to sink their teeth into.
Onward and Outward
We don’t know much just yet, aside from a few additions. It will feature not only new places to explore, but also new gameplay elements, skills, and ways to modify your weapons. Specifically, the DLC adds enchantments for your trinkets and weapons. These are set to “change” your weapons, likely with buffs to attack statuses. As the game can be tough and quite unforgiving, that will probably be very helpful for players.
A set of screenshots show off a range of new places, including a mountainous region, a town at dusk, and a neon-flecked interior. These certainly pique my interest, especially the town. I’m sure we’ll find all manner of NPCs standing still in the middle of the street at all hours of the night for you to randomly drop your gear next to.
As for the new gameplay elements, the biggest one is the new corruption system. Those who have played Outward will likely recall its survival bars, such as being cold and being too hot. Well, corruption adds another onto the pile. While other status effects could often be lived with at the expense of speed and stamina, corruption promises that, if you can’t remove it quickly enough, it may just kill you. So… yay?
There are also new skills up for grabs in The Soroboreans. In the base game, you had to get these from trainers in the game’s settlements. Oh, and they’d die sometimes and take all their precious skills with them. We don’t know yet how many skills there’ll be or what they’ll do, aside from the fact that they’re supposed to help you manage your corruption. Still, let’s hope that the person who sells them isn’t already dead in your playthrough.
Finally, there are new status effects on top of the new corruption bar. These will likely put another new spin on dying alone in the middle of the wilderness. Details are scant now, but there are developer diaries forthcoming, so we won’t have long to wait in before we learn exactly what’s in store.
