Stellaris: First Contact Story Pack Revealed

Paradox Entertainment has found another way to increase the size of the expansive strategy game, Stellaris, by adding another story pack. This time they are doing a story pack that focuses on first contact with other space-faring civilizations. While the scope of this story pack has not been fully revealed, there is plenty of speculation that we can look into.

Let’s first analyze the description that was provided with the trailer from Paradox Entertainment: “You are not alone! The galaxy is vast and full of wonders, but it’s also full of alien empires you’re going to encounter, whether you’re ready or not. First Contact offers a set of new origins and mechanics that give players the chance to tell stories about their civilizations’ early encounters with visitors from the stars — ones that may not have come in peace!”

The part of this focused on gameplay discusses “a set of new origins and mechanics” which definitely points to a chunk of this DLC being focused on encounters that your civilization has before the start of the game. This could mean anything from being an uplifted species, starting as a vassal of another empire that needs to break free, or having fought off an invasion and learned from the technology left behind, and many other possibilities.

One of the origins that we see through the screenshot below is the origin of Broken Shackles, which appears to be an origin that is filled with possibilities. The mechanics would seem to indicate that there will be more options in how you deal with both space-faring civilizations and pre-space-flight civilizations. Another thing that has not been mentioned in anything written by Paradox Interactive, but has been hinted at by a screenshot is the possibility of cloaking technology being put in the game.

At this point, we have no release date or price tag attached to this DLC. However, there are a few things that we can use to make a rough estimate. The last story pack that was released for the game was Distant Stars from 2018. For that pack, the reveal trailer was shown about a month before release (April 23rd to May 22nd) so in theory First Contact should release around February 17th.

Pricewise, it should cost $9.99 since that is the price tag that has been attached to all previous story packs. There could be an argument that it might go up since developers and publishers are beginning to raise the prices of certain things. However, I doubt that will be the case for Paradox with this new DLC.

If any of you have any thoughts on this subject, feel free to leave them in the comments below. If you would like to read about other Paradox Interactive games, consider reading Keiran McEwen’s PC review of Cities: Skylines here.