There may have been better games this year, but I felt DREDGE more than any other. Part of that’s down to the day-night cycle, which seeped into my bones as I played. There’s nothing quite like the fear of being hours away from port as the time ticks towards 8pm. That frantic lidless eye appears at the top of the screen, and the world distorts. I’d panic, wondering whether my hold full of fish would make it. My spoils of war threatened to be spoiled in a very different way.
Playing DREDGE was like wandering into a dark mist with only a lantern in my hands. As I said, it may not objectively be the best game of the year, but it’s my personal Game of the Year. That’s because it suckered onto me like a lamprey: I’m not going to forget it any time soon, and the vibe it generates is unlike anything else I’ve played.
As you can imagine, then, I was thrilled at the prospect of coming back for some DLC. The Pale Reach is the first paid expansion to DREDGE, arriving – just – in the same year as the base game. You could get snooty about it being paid-for DLC at £5.99, but this is a decent chunk of DREDGE. It’s exactly the same size as the game’s other regions. We’d say that’s a bargain.
Some housekeeping: DREDGE: The Pale Reach can be played at any point in the game’s story, as long as you have visited the game’s lighthouse. As soon as you hop back into the game, the mayor of The Marrows and the travelling fisherwoman will prompt you to head as far south as you can go. This isn’t a DLC pack that demands completion of the main game, nor is it difficult in a way that requires plenty of upgrades.
The DREDGE regions tended to come in two flavours. There were the exploration-focused regions that weren’t particularly hazardous to be in (Gale Cliffs, Stellar Basin), and there were the panicked, oh-my-god-I’m-going-to-die locations (Devil’s Spine, Twisted Straits). The Pale Reach definitely skews towards the former. Like the Gale Cliffs, there’s an entity who’s going to hustle and bustle you, but you’ve got control over whether they do so, and you’re mostly left to your own devices. That will be music to the ears of DREDGE players who prefer their islands insidious but not off putting.
There’s not much story to preface your visit. There have been sightings of some drifting ice caps. Bish bash bosh – that’s it. So you head to The Pale Reach (we recommend that you stop to pick up some Photographer’s Kit on an island that’s on the way), where the traveling fisherwoman is already waiting for you. Some things never change.
The Pale Reach wears its Lovecraftian influences on its chest – much like the other regions. We won’t reveal too much, but the narrative involves some frozen seafarers and two gargantuan beasts. One is a threat, and the other is a chthonic beast who merely watches. Do you get involved? What will happen if you do? Are the beasts truly malevolent? DREDGE, as usual, gets muddy.
Coming back to DREDGE, we were more than a little daunted. Not because of that big, lidless eye at the top of our screen, but because we’d forgotten how much of it was based on knowledge: knowledge of the map, knowledge of the many different interlocking systems, and which fish we had caught or not caught. It took an age for us to get back into the swing of things, and you might find yourself in a similar situation. While this isn’t a difficult batch of DLC, it might still be worth revisiting older areas just to bring yourself up to speed.
But while we were daunted, we shouldn’t have been worried. DREDGE: The Pale Reach absolutely matches the quality bar of the regions that came before it. In fact, it’s become one of our favourites, only beaten by the deep-sea musings of Stellar Basin. In basically every category, it delivers with gusto.
There’s a whole new type of fishing to be mastered, as ‘Ice’ fishing becomes a thing. That means a new rod type, and – more importantly – a new lot of fish to catch. There’s been no skimping here: not only are you getting a dozen or so beasties, caught in both the day and night time, but you’re getting their aberrations too. These are just as imaginative as the ones from the main game, and we still get that little burst of joy whenever the guitar-twang informs us of a trophy or aberration.
There’s a few new mechanics, too. Icebreaking is the biggie, as your first task is to find pieces of an ice shovel attachment for your ship. Suddenly, you can blast through icebergs, giving The Pale Reach a Metroidvania aspect – more so than the rest of the game. But there are ice blocks too, which can freshen up fish in your cargo, while a couple of rewards – which we refuse to spoil – are so impactful that we wish we’d found them before we finished the rest of the dang game. They completely outmode a couple of our upgrades.
DREDGE: The Pale Reach could have left out the details, but it comes packaged with them too. Debris, giant crabs, obelisks and aberration-challenges all circle the Pale Reach, giving you yet more reasons to explore everywhere. The fact these are included mean that The Pale Reach feels absolutely part of the world. This isn’t a map stapled onto the previous one: this is baked in.
Are there flaws? Let us rifle in our papers. Aside from being left wanting more – The Pale Reach is no more than a few hours, tops – the narrative can be a little too inscrutable, even for DREDGE. A Photographer appears at the start then buggers off, and she could have provided a little more of the human element. Some spectres talk in broken sentences, and they’re not quite enough to piece together a larger story, or feel affected by what came before. Journals help, but it’s not the same as actually meeting and talking to characters.
But mostly we were just happy to be returning to DREDGE with The Pale Reach. Our personal Game of the Year has returned with a whole new region, and it’s no afterthought. DREDGE: The Pale Reach is a contender for best region of the game, and it’s cutting no corners, with new fish, a new method of fishing, several new mechanics, some virtually game-breaking rewards and umpteen secrets.
If we could get one of these every six months, we’d sign the demon pact that made it happen.
