How To Start The Outer Worlds’ Peril On Gorgon DLC

The Halcyon System is now big enough to get lost in. Yesterday, nearly a year after launch, The Outer Worlds received its first major story expansion, Peril on Gorgon. The campaign sends players to a science outpost on the system’s fringe, the titular Gorgon asteroid. There, it’s more Outer Worlds: first-person shooting and looting, all wrapped up in a biting satirisation of corporate America. If you liked the main game, you’ll like this expansion.

But accessing this wayward asteroid — and its plunder of quests and gear — isn’t as obvious as you’d think. For one thing, you need to make it to a certain point in the main campaign to access it. For another, if you go too far, you’ll be gated out. Those dusting off an endgame save could find themselves stumped. So here’s what to do:

1. First you need to beat the “Radio Free Monarch” quest, a main mission partway through the game. If you’re not sure you’ve knocked it out yet, here’s a litmus test: Is Nyoka in your party? Great! You’ve almost certainly completed “Radio Free Monarch.” (You could also just scroll through your completed quest log and double-check, but who has the time?)
2. Once you’ve completed that mission, travel anywhere in Halcyon. You’ll get hailed by an interplanetary delivery company. One of their messengers has a box for you. Accept it.
3. Find that box in your cargo hold, open it up, and interact with the contents: a dismembered arm. That should trigger a conversation with your crew. Once you finish that, you’ll be able to travel to Gorgon and get the Peril on Gorgon campaign underway.
4. Make sure SAM is in your party. There’s no practical reason for bringing everyone’s favourite not-so-shiny cleaning machine. I just want to take every opportunity I can to spread the gospel of Outer Worlds’ best companion. Indulge me.

Here’s what not to do:

1. Load up your most recent save file (presumably one that’s steps away from the game’s final conversation), initiate the endgame, go through the dialogue options, sit through the epilogue cinematic, watch the credits roll, realise you’ve gone through all of this before, end up back at the main menu, load up the save file again, try some different dialogue options, sit through the epilogue cinematic again, realise it’s just not going to work from that save file, run through your litany of backup saves, learn that someone else in your household has apparently been running a second character on your account, find one of yours from before the final area, load that one up, and then hope to Law that it all works.

Seriously, don’t do that. No comment as to whether or not that happened to me, but it sure sounds like a tedious process.

Light spoilers for the main campaign of The Outer Worlds.

The catch, in case I wasn’t clear, is that you can’t reach Gorgon once you’ve started the endgame stretch and travelled to Tartarus. You’re locked into that final quest through to the end. After you release Phineas from his prison, the game ends, and you’re sent back to the title screen. Hitting “continue” will just drop you into that old save.

It’s been 11 months since I last played The Outer Worlds. I completely blanked on how the game railroads you straight into the credits, so it’s a good thing I created approximately one bazillion backup saves.

If you’ve played any role-playing game with a branching narrative — from Fallout to Mass Effect to The Witcher — you’ve likely been conditioned to create multiple backup save files as you go. The Outer Worlds is no different. In fact, the game itself prompts you to create another manual save before you head to Tartarus, so the likelihood of getting locked out of the Peril on Gorgon DLC is imperceptibly small. Still, take my advice and save yourself 11 minutes and 47 seconds of face-palming frustration.