The Alters: Last Variable DLC Review

[00:08] this time bringing you my DLC review for The Last Variable DLC for The Alters, anniversary yesterday received this expansion of sorts. If you happen to be

[00:20] unfamiliar, The Alters is a pretty unique game that released last year in 2025, of course, with the one-year anniversary. But at its very basic, it is a sort of survival-base building situation. What made it really unique,

[00:33] however, was that you played one character and many, many versions of yourselves as in order to escape this hostile planet you crash-landed on, you have to alter yourself, or basically make clones with subtle variations in

[00:46] their past and memories to be more proficient at the things you need them to do. And it was overall just a very unique game. However, if you played through the entire thing, you may well know that there was one sort of

[00:58] unresolved plot thread as the story wrapped up, or at least we didn't see what happened. And that's kind of what the DLC takes part in. So, everything from here is going to be a little bit of a spoiler for the base game, though not

[01:12] in its entirety, but something you should probably know because The Last Variable puts us in the role of the scientist alter from the base game. So, rather than the main character, we play the scientist that he cloned himself to

[01:25] be. That scientist, depending on one of the decisions and stuff you could eventually discover an oasis on this planet that is otherwise irradiated and uninhabitable. There is this literal oasis of life here that obviously comes

[01:38] with a million more questions. And the DLC focuses on that scientist's journey to then alter himself even farther into further sub-variations of scientist in order to explore the oasis and get to the bottom of it. And then naturally,

[01:52] this opens up a whole host of different options and gameplay avenues for us. But, as with pretty much every DLC to grace video games, this also released with a bit of a patch on the side of it. Patch 2.01 to be specific. But, as far

[02:08] as the base game patch goes, it isn't complicated to explain. However, it is a bit far-reaching. So, they updated the game's engine to Unreal Engine 5.5, and they also included a whole bunch of higher quality textures, nav meshes as

[02:23] you move throughout the game, alongside a whole host of other systems. But, with that extra graphical fidelity, I have already seen some reports of people talking about how this update kind of messed with their overall FPS, things

[02:37] like that. And I would not be terribly surprised by that given the nature of the base game changes. But, either way, that is pretty much all the base game patch did for this one, with the rest of it being about the DLC itself. And now,

[02:49] we're going to talk a bit about those mechanics. So, this oasis proved a bit troublesome for the original Jan, because we wake up to that Jan scientist already having grown old trying to do the initial research into it. And he

[03:04] altered himself or made a clone literally of just himself in the form of you to carry on that research. So, some time has already passed since the base game, and there's been an important discovery in addition to him kind of

[03:16] doing all of the legwork in order to get that research started. The main discovery that original scientist made was simply that the oasis is not was simply that the oasis is not destroyed every time the sort of planet

[03:28] cycles into its hot phase, which is when all the radiation happens that you have to avoid in the base game. Basically, anytime the sun is like fully up here, the planet is awash in radiation. And the assumption was that this oasis was

[03:41] dying when that happened, only to regrow somehow. But, that is not the case. The oasis survives this. And your job, as the sort of story of the DLC, is to get to the bottom of exactly why that is. And we're going to do that through,

[03:55] naturally, science. And of course, the continuation of the base building mechanics from the base game. Now, in that sense, because we are not on a roll, quite literally, with our base previously, we are now underground in a

[04:08] sort of bunker situation. And so, our upgrades look a tiny bit different than they did in the base game, at least in the sense that you have to still upgrade your base, but the layout and what you have available to you is slightly

[04:20] changed. Now, in order to affect the world around us, one of the really big things we're going to do is start terraforming the barren parts of the map we find ourselves on. The map is actually quite large, but through the

[04:32] terraforming technology that we are going to use in strategic locations to start bringing some of these regions back to life, which then gives us access to extra research samples, which allows us to then perform extra research,

[04:46] giving us all sorts of bonuses to everything we need to do along the way. But at the core of that, the base game play loop has not really changed. We gather up materials, spend them on the things we need to spend them on, advance

[04:58] the plot, alter ourselves, etc., expand the base, that kind of thing. Now, this gets a little more interesting in two respects. The altars themselves that we have access to this time around, and then of course, the new mechanics around

[05:12] all of this technology that comes with new resources to gather and manage. Now, the altars are ultimately just different breeds of scientists. So, we're we are just sort of a general scientist, we can get access to a physicist, a chemist, a

[05:26] biologist, and a geologist. Each of them, of course, having their own for you around the base. And while you only access two of them initially, you get access to eventually all four of them. And what's more, you're actually

[05:39] going to see some of them grow old and get replaced. And this is because this get replaced. And this is because this time around, we are using cryostasis for our main character to survive the cycling of the planets and those cycles

[05:51] last a significant amount of years. And so, between each cycle, while most of us are going to cryosleep in order to get the research done that we need, we leave behind some of these altars in field labs to study the entire time. And they

[06:05] do exactly that. And so, in addition to each individual one of these altars bunch of variations to like their dialogue in terms of how many times you've talked whether or not you put one of them in a field lab, that kind of

[06:18] thing. And so, there's a lot of interesting stuff there behind the core draw of the game, which I was happy to see. Another big part of it though is those new resources. So, in order to track down all of our new uh technology

[06:31] and everything, we need new resources, of course, to go with that. This comes with uh new methods of acquisition, namely pipes and extractors. So, one thing that is unique to the big map we find ourselves on are the geysers. So,

[06:45] these geysers are going to be the homes to phasers, which will take extracted material, which is slightly different from the outposts in the base game, but rather you put an extractor just generally where the materials would be,

[06:57] and you use pipes to then transport them. And while that will get you the raw material, by activating a phaser over a geyser, you can then have a phased version of that material. And the combination of both regular and phased

[07:11] materials through extra things like mixers, etc., is going to finally drop off the end result to your base through a series and networks of tubes that towards the end of the DLC gets extraordinarily complicated, as you can

[07:26] hopefully see on screen here. But the gist of it is combine these materials using these systems in unique ways to get the unique material you need to actually do the literal research and stuff to keep pushing forward the main

[07:39] story. So, it takes the base game's gameplay and kind of cranks that up to 11 and as such you're still going to be uh traversing anomalies and exploring the world, tracking down all these resources, gathering up samples, etc.

[07:54] And to that end, as tends to be the case with DLC, if you didn't like the base but I think if you enjoyed the base game, this is a nice continuation of that in a really fun way that does some interesting stuff both with the

[08:08] mechanics and the story itself. With the main drawback being that the big changes likely going to affect performance for at least a good chunk of people. Personally, the thing I enjoyed the most about this DLC was putting yourself into

[08:22] cryosleep and watching the map change both via terraforming and then of course these field labs. With the big draw just seeing the planet come back to life as you do all of this. And then also, there is a certain amount of logistical fun

[08:36] and mapping out all of the pipes and the runs you need to do and everything to get all of the material you need to get to the end game of this DLC. And overall, I would simply say that if you enjoyed the alters, this DLC seems to be

[08:51] taking all of that, refining it, adding some new stuff, and giving us some interesting loops to mess around with. With that in mind, through uh most of the rest of July, the base game is 50% off bringing it down to just uh like

[09:05] off bringing it down to just uh like $17, I think. And then the DLC is $15 that's why I didn't mention it at the beginning. I paid for this DLC and I out of it. Which is where I think I'm going to leave off this particular

[09:20] video. So, if you enjoyed that, by all means like, comment, subscribe, all that or if you're planning on playing the DLC or if you've played it already, I'd love section below. But regardless of any of that, truly, just thank Thank so much

[09:35] for watching. I really do appreciate it. May you wander in wisdom and have an May you wander in wisdom and have an amazing day.