Risk of Rain 2 is getting a second expansion with a new big bad

08.11.2023 - 21:31 / pcgamer.com / Of Rain

Risk of Rain 2 keeps on trucking. After last year's Survivors of the Void expansion added two new survivors and a smattering of new items and stages, Gearbox is following it up with Seekers of the Storm, which will again include «new survivors, new levels, and monsters, and more.» The most notable bit of the «more» this time is almost certainly a new villain named The False Son, who is born out of some deep deep Risk of Rain lore I had no idea existed.

I've played 133 hours of Risk of Rain 2, but I was lost within the first 30 seconds of the dev diary above introducing Seekers of the Storm. I guess I haven't been reading enough cryptic diary entries, because when Gearbox loremaster Kayla Larson starts dropping references like «The False Son is made in [Providence's] image by Lemurians who are very scared to be without Providence» I feel like she's talking about something quite different from the ludicrous item-stacking roguelike I love.

The video seems to be going over well with most Risk of Rain 2 players, though, at least based on the initial YouTube comments. «Holy shit Gearbox did their research, a lot of people were skeptical but they made most of the first expansion anyway so I'm optimistic!» says @slavic8433, echoing what seems to be the popular sentiment.

For Risk of Rain players like me who are not loreheads, Gearbox managing director of production James Lopez has a simpler message: «If someone's out there who 'just' wants a bunch of content, cool, we gotcha covered. For the person who wants more maps, cool, we gotcha covered. The person who wants more survivors, cool, we gotcha covered. Items, too, you name it.»

After dozens upon dozens of runs through the game, I'm happy for the prospect of a new boss in The False Son and hope that Seekers of the Storm will offer an alternate path through the game that ends with this new boss fight rather than a showdown with existing final boss Mithrix. I'm also interested to see if the addition of day and night versions of one of the new stages leads to Gearbox going back to the existing stages and adding alternate night versions to amp up replayability, as this one promises «props specific to the night version… and new areas that players don't get access to [during the day].» 

There's no word on when Seekers of the Storm will be out or who the new survivors will be, but I don't think we'll have to wait too long to find out; Survivors of the Void came out in March 2022.