Everspace 2 is the sequel to EVERSPACE, and was released on April 12, 2023. While it is a direct sequel to the first game, featuring the same main character and the same world, it has undergone a complete Genre Shift. Rather than the Rogue Like features of the first game, Everspace 2 is a classic space sim in the vein of Elite Dangerous or more accurately in the vein of Freelancer.
Adam Roslin is one of the last remaining clone soldiers from the war with the Okkar. Having foiled Admiral Gorc's plan to restart the war between humanity and the Okkar and still hunted by the colonial government, he has been working in the Demilitarized zone as a mining escort when an ambush that injures his friend Ben has him cross paths with the Freelancer Dax. Dax has a job that could not only net the three of them a ticket out of the Demilitarized Zone, but enough money that Adam and Ben could retire from the grueling miners life.
If only things were that simple.
This game contains examples of:
- 11th-Hour Ranger: Ghost joins the group shortly before Adam tries to ground the G&B mining fleet.
- Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Beyond the standard things like wrap drives being possible, the game also makes sacrifices for game play and artistic reasons. Planets appear way larger in space than they should, asteroids stick together to make interesting battlegrounds, and explosions in space are fiery.
- Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Downplayed for the most part as the amount of money you gain scales with how far along you are in the game but played straight with crafting resources once you unlock the ability to sell them directly, as they are far less valuable when selling them than when buying them.
- The Alcoholic: Elek usually reminisces about various jobs and places he's been to in the context of what he drank there. The way to unlock his companion perk is even to bribe him with ten cases of liquor.
- Alliance Meter: Factions exist, though full faction interaction is not in the game yet.
- Always Chaotic Evil: The Bloodstar gang, who are basically murderous raiders. It's later revealed they are a subversion of this trope. They started as a democratic group of ex-G&B employees trying to help one another and others survive in the DMZ. When Bolton, aka Gasmask, took over, he turned them into a hardened criminal gang with himself as their tyrannical leader. When Adam and Dax kill Gasmask, causing the gang to disband, a few side quests open up that show that better side of the group. Adam can meet ex-Bloodstars desperate to leave the life of crime behind (and can help them find honest work), as well as a historical record of the gang written by a pre-Gasmask member listing their original noble deeds like helping starving spacers and swearing to support the widows and orphans of deceased members.
- An Offer You Can't Refuse: The Colonial fleet eventually corners Adam, and says he can either go undercover as the Adam clone employed by G&B to help them find incriminating evidence on the megacorp or he and his new crew can get reduced to dust by the fleets guns. Adam agrees to help.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: Challenges, as well as most sources of loot, may include cosmetic rewards in the form of cosmetic modules that change the shape of the ship as well as colors to be used when customizing the ship.
- Asteroid Miners: Grady & Brunt's bread and butter. Adam starts the game escorting a group of miners out to a remote asteroid to harvest the crystals there.
- Asteroid Thicket: Common setting for various Random Encounter instances.
- Black Eyes of Crazy: The rituals that indoctrinate people into the Redeemer cult leave them with black eyes, and they are all very insane.
- Boring, but Practical:
- The Energized Boost device gives your ship a brief boost of extreme speed on par with cruise mode, which can be used for anything from escaping a group of enemies to moving objects around faster.
- A Scout-class ship with the Rail Gun can do a lot of damage from long range, as the Scout's special ability increases weapon damage by 4% for every 100 meters between the ship and its target, which allows destroying enemy ships from a safe distance and often away from harm while the special ability compensates for the Rail Gun's relatively low damage output.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Elek, despite his eccentricity, is able to survive dogfights that would kill most pilots who aren't Adam.
- Butt-Monkey: Elek gets kicked out of pretty much every gang he tries to join, even when they like him on a personal level.
- Chain Lightning: The Sentinel-class ships' ultimate ability turns their guns into this, charging them with electricity and letting shots bounce between enemies.
- Clone Angst: Played with. As a clone soldier, Adam never really had to worry about dying; upon death he would simply reincarnate into a new body and carry on, memories intact. Now that the clone program is over, he's having to come to terms with the fact that the next time he dies it will be for real. That said parts of the trope are invoked. As a clone made for war, Adam has a complete lack of knowledge about a lot of things civilians do. He also remembers the deaths of all his previous iterations in vivid crystal clear details, which does haunt him. Oh, and one of the game's main enemies is another clone of him.
- Clone Army: What Adam was once a part of. There weren’t many left by the time the war was done, and in the post war period the remaining ones are hunted by the colonial government.
- Close-Range Combatant: The striker-class ships gain a damage bonus based on how many enemies are close to them, and their ultimate allows them to bounce damage they inflict on multiple nearby ships. Their expertise enhances their boost speed, allowing them to close the distance quickly.
- Color-Coded Item Tiers: Items go from gray (common) to green (uncommon) to blue (rare) to red (superior) to orange (legendary).
- Cult: The Redeemers, one of the enemy factions. They worship the Ancients and have been driven completely insane by exposure to dark energy and Ancient artifacts.
- Deadpan Snarker: Your ship's HIVE unit. His programming means he has no choice but to assist you, but his sentience means he can be very clear about his opinions on that fact.
- Death Seeker: Played for laughs with the ships HIVE unit. His dream is that someone will install a self-destruct unit into him.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: Delia starts as (rather understandably, since you kidnapped her by accident) standoffish and business only. Slowly as the crew reveal they aren’t just outlaws, she warms up to them. Elek being Adams friend, and Adam wanting to help him, is the only argument she needs to agree to allow in Elek without complaint.
- Derelict Graveyard: The "Ghost Fleet" in Ceto. A huge mass of war wrecks that the Bloodstar Prospectors have assembled then hidden.
- Distress Call: One of the random events as you're in supralight travel. Results can range from a Big Damn Heroes moment as you swoop in and save a freighter from outlaws, a full-scale battle between two factions, or even a fake distress call that leads you into an ambush. Another random event involves destroying the transmitters broadcasting the latter so other spacers don't get fooled. Naturally, the outlaws jump you when you blow up their relay.
- The Don: Mr. Kato, who practically runs the entirety of Prescott Station. Anyone who isn't in his employ is at least under his influence. Thankfully, he's very reasonable for a crime boss.
- Driven to Suicide: Played for Laughs. It's implied the onboard AI of Elek's ship willingly ceased to function after meeting its new pilot.
- Drone Deployer: Vindicator-class ships are miniature carriers, which can turn enemy wrecks into drones, and use them in battle as minions. Enemy factions have legitimate full size carriers that deploy endless drones to harass the enemy until taken out.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: Maddox dies in an unceremonious manner, having his ship shot down by the Elite G&B Squad shortly after arriving in Drake. His viridium-mining freighter is also blown up by Adam after he found out what mining the comet would really entail.
- Elite Mooks: They come in two flavors:
- Occasionally enemies may be Elite, having increased stats and better loot than average.
- The Elite G&B Squad, which is full of ruthless fighters and are led by an Adam Roslin clone.
- Energy Weapon: There are plenty of those you can mount on your ship:
- Pulse Lasers and laser beams.
- Thermo Gun that fires homing projectiles.
- There's also Blasters which fires weak, but plentiful bolts of energy.
- Everyone Has Standards: Fallon Pango may be a shady hacker but even he believes that an evolving sapient digital virus that takes control of ships and attacks other ships would make the DMZ an even more hellish place, and helps the protagonist defeat it.
- Evil Counterpart: A major antagonist is none other than… Adam Roslin. Or rather, another one of his clones, who is far more vicious, sociopathic, and bloodthirsty than the Adam Roslin clone you play as.
- Fire/Ice Duo: The Zurilia and the Retaliators are constantly battling in the Drake system. A side-quest involves keeping them that away through false flag operations, but eventually it almost backfires and they briefly unite together against the Coalition before being crippled for good.
- Fold the Page, Fold the Space: How Adam initially assumes Spatial Bypassing works.
- For Science!: The reason why a few scientists are still staying around in a solar system full of brainwashed cultists. They task the protagonist with analyzing every species that appears there.
- For the Evulz: Blakemore orders his mining fleet to deploy, even though it has been crippled by a Mainframe Disruptor, with explosive consequences, merely citing We Have Reserves for why he did that.
- Fragile Speedster: Any of the light type ships would qualify, but special emphasis on the Scout-class, which boasts the highest base speed of any player-ship, and is designed for long range combat, gaining a damage buff based on how far the enemy is. Their entire tactic is based on staying out of enemy weapon ranges.
- FTL: In several flavors:
- Supralight travel is the most common form, in which a ship propels to FTL speeds after a period of charging, and is done inside a star system.
- Wormhole travel is only available to the Okkar and involves energies that are uniquely produced by viridium.
- Jump Gates allow near-instantaneous traveling between two connected Jump Gates and is used for moving between star systems.
- Spatial Bypassing allows the connection of very specific locations in order to allow instantaneous traversal between them.
- Funny Robot: Your ship's HIVE unit does not seem to enjoy his job, and he will make this very clear whenever he can.
- Gameplay and Story Integration: In the prologue Adam and Ben will make a wager over whether their Pointy-Haired Boss Callahan will threaten to cut the current shift from their tally for not arriving soon enough. Once he threatens them Adam gains 10 credits, which also adds up to 1337.
- Gargle Blaster: Red Plasma Gin. It's considered to be worse to smuggle than viridium and it is extremely volatile, even though it is meant to be consumed. Part of the main quest requires you to smuggle a box of it through Union, and it is so volatile that it will blow up your ship if agitated enough through combat, and will turn into gas if in supralight for too long, requiring interacting with stabilizing beacons along the way.
- Gatling Good:
- Gauss guns are the energy weapon equivalent, and ramp up speed when fired.
- Autocannons make their debut in this game. They are chainguns that fire high velocity rounds.
- Go Back to the Source: The G&B Adam Roslin clone takes the protagonist to the crashed cloning ship where they both originated from.
- Great Offscreen War: The war with the Okkar that lasted from around 3022 to 3042 is what created the Demilitarized Zone the game takes place in in the first place. It was calamitously destructive, and the Zone is absolutely littered with capital ship wrecks.
- Long-Range Fighter: The scout-class ships are designed around sniping. They gains a damage buff based on the distance to their target. Their ultimate cloaks them and lets them fire a single, extremely damage boosted shot the longer they take aiming it. Their expertise gives weapons a range buff.
- Human Popsicle: Long voyages are made with people in cryogenic stasis. It is also used to keep badly wounded people alive until they can receive medical treatment. Good news for Ben, not so good for Delia.
- Hyperspace Lanes: Ships on their own can fly through systems with ease, but anything more than that requires the use of these.
- Jerkass: Considering how cutthroat the Demilitarized Zone is, it’s no surprise that Adam encounters quite a few of these.
- Maddocks is paranoid, gruff, rude, racist and eventually betrays you to try to mine the asteroid, even if it means reigniting the human-okkar war.
- Daryl, Mr.Kato’s nephew, initially tries to kill Adam and Elek in underhanded ways. While Mr. Kato eventually beats some sense into him, he remains caustic and standoffish even when he becomes the Kato Clans primary mission provider.
- Clockwork, another Kato Clan member. Best exemplified by how she responds with “Don’t care” to Adams attempt to introduce himself after saving her life. She and Daryl end up an item, and HIVE comments it’s a perfect match.
- Kidnapped Doctor: When Ben is critically injured, in desperation Adam hijacks a medical cargo unit for supplies. It comes complete with a full set of medicine and surgical equipment...along with Delia Wendo, a doctor in cryo-stasis. She's not terribly happy to find out what happened once she is unfrozen, but agrees to help if the crew will get her out of the DMZ.
- Last Lousy Point: It can be significantly difficult to find the last few secrets in a location. Eventually an update has added the "Supra Vision" perk that reveals the positions of the last few secrets remaining in a location after finding most of them, specifically to avert this.
- Last of His Kind: After the events of Everspace many clones of Adam Roslin that roamed the DMZ and attempted to reach the homeworlds were intercepted and killed over the years by Colonial authorities, and all of the cloning facilities have been shut down. By the events of Everspace 2 only the protagonist remains as well as another clone working for G&B.
- Luck-Based Mission: Downplayed. "Flawless" and "Pure" versions of materials have a small chance of being harvested from a resource field instead of a regular material, which are required in significant amounts for certain perks and high-end components.
- Macross Missile Massacre:
- Destroyers have missile pods that can do this. You can do this as well with certain secondary weapons. The accuracy leaves a lot to be desired in terms of dogfighting ability, but its very effective against bases and large ships.
- Bomber-class ships are designed around this kind of tactic, as their passive trait turns the ammo of secondary weapons into a recharging energy bar, and they have more secondary weapon slots than most ships, encouraging the player to make liberal use of missiles & rockets.
- Magnetic Weapons: Coming from its predecessor:
- Rail Guns are use for sniping.
- Coil Guns fire solid projectiles magnetically.
- There are also Gauss Guns which are separate from Coil Guns, while in reality they are used as synonyms.
- Meaningful Name: Player ships are named based on the wings used, which use a theme for each class:
- Bombers are named after Greek deities with the Cyclops and Titan.
- Gunships use the names of World War 2 bombers with the Dominator (B-32) and Liberator (B-24).
- Interceptors use a "hunter" theme, with general names like the Predator and Stalker, or Greek mythology with the Gryphon and Orion.
- Scouts are named after spirits, with the Banshee and Spirit (Itself referring to the vital essence).
- Sentinels use names from various comics, such as Nemesis, Reaver, Thunderbolt, and Tormentor. Notably, these are associated with villain names.
- Stingers are aptly named after stinging insects with the Hornet and Wasp, owing to their third "stinger" gun.
- Strikers are named after birds of prey with the Harpy, Hawk, Osprey, and Raptor.
- Vanguards take the theme of messengers with the Harbinger and Mercury.
- Vindicators are named around storms with the Tempest and Typhoon.
- MegaCorp: Grady and Brunt, who run practically all of the Colonial mining in the DMZ. To say they have HR issues is a massive Understatement.
- Mêlée à Trois: Opposed factions hostile to the player will continue to fight each other even with the player present. The easiest way to see this is to antagonize a neutral faction while they are engaged with Outlaws.
- The Mentor: Dax, your first companion. He's also a soldier like Adam, but unlike Adam lived a "normal" life and is therefore street smart. He shows Adam the ropes on how to survive in the cutthroat world of the DMZ.
- Mentor Occupational Hazard: Dax dies as you leave the first sector, shot by another of Adam's clone.
- Mighty Glacier:
- Destroyers barely move, and move slow when they do. It is still a challenge to take them down, due to the sheer amount of firepower they have and their hull that can easily withstand all the ordinance you can muster.
- Bomber-class ships are the slowest type of ships available to the player character, both with the lowest top speed and handling. They however boast the highest base armor, shield and hull of any type of ship. Their expertise trait lets them regenerate hull on enemy kills making them even harder to take down. Their passive ability lets them turn the ammo counters of secondary weapons into regenerating energy bars, allowing them to unleash Macross Missile Massacres upon enemy fleets. Their ultimate the ARC-9000 is a powerful weapon that can one shot entire enemy formations.
- Money Sink:
- Many of the perks reach this point at higher tiers, requiring many resources (and credits), some of which are rare, for a barely-tangible benefit, such as the third level of the Tractor Beam perk requiring 200 Aetheum Crystals among other things just to make the tractor beam's pulling speed faster.
- Tier IV ships. They are the best category of ships in the game, boasting slightly improved stats and an extra passive compared to Tier III+ ships but the amount of resources needed to unlock buying them, as well as their cost means that you are likely to get them only if you take your time to do most of the side content first, as well as selling off most of the loot you acquire.
- More Dakka: Gunship-class ships have double the number of hardpoints for each weapons, 4 instead of 2, allowing them to pump double the number of shots downrange. This is at the cost of doubling the weapons' drain on the generator, meaning they can keep firing far less longer.
- Mundane Utility:
- The Vanguard's Time Extender Ult slows time down while leaving the ship unaffected, making it very well suited for combat. Or you can use it to attain better times in the Racing Minigame.
- The Flak Cannon can also be used to mine resource clusters in an instant thanks to its area-of-effect damage.
- My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Less hardline Okkar, including returning character Tareen, are met during the story. Most agree that their culture is very stifling and stuck up.
- Older Than They Look: You might not tell it from Elek's voice and mannerisms but he has been alive for at least 80 years.
- The Pollyanna: You have to work extremely hard to get Elek down. Left for dead in a space bug nest? He names them to pass the time while he hangs there. Fired from the gang he works for? It was time for him to move on anyway. Relocating to an abandoned asteroid base in the middle of nowhere? He trusts that since Adam lives there, it's gonna be lit. Ben even mentions it's nice to have someone with a positive attitude around.
- The Precursors: The Ancients, distant ancestors of the Okkar. They are long gone, leaving behind scattered and extremely dangerous technology and ruins.
- Private Military Contractors: Naturally for a setting like this. They range from corporate security forces to "freelancers", individuals or small groups who take mercenary contracts on a case-by-case basis.
- Purposefully Overpowered: Legendary items are rare (they can only drop naturally on the Nightmare difficulty, and specific ones are offered as rewards in several side quests) and cannot be upgraded nor modified, but they offer unique, powerful abilities as well as higher-than-average stats for their current level, allowing them to be used for many levels before they risk being obsolete. A ship also cannot have more than 2 equipped at a time.
- Random Encounter: As you warp between the hand crafted areas, you will happen upon things like "Distress Calls" and "Unknown Signals". These small areas are randomly generated, and while Distress Calls are always the same kind of thing, the Unknown Signals can be anything from a full size dungeon to a physics puzzle to a couple of Outlaws loitering around a wreck.
- Read the Fine Print: Delia bemoans this as the reason she's in the DMZ in the first place.
- Really Gets Around: Elek has married at least 5 times in a row and fathered dozens of children for whom he continues to provide. He is already a grandfather by the time the game takes place.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Mr. Kato, the crime boss who runs Prescott Starbase. He always prefers to talk things out before resorting to violence, doesn't take slights personally, and in general tries to run his crime family like a business. If only his nephew Daryl was taking notes...
- Retired Outlaw: Once the Bloodstar leader is killed, the gang fractures and several make the attempt to go straight. Adam can either help or hinder this.
- Shout-Out:
- The Bomber-class ships' ultimate, the "ARC-9000" is basically the Doom Eternal BFG-9000 IN SPACE! and vehicle mounted, firing a similar energy orb which emits lightning that arcs to hit all surrounding enemies as it travels, before detonating when it hits max range.
- In one location mission a cargo drone has set itself a home. You can faintly hear it say 'space' when the mission completes.
- One relatively common type of space pilots is a Freelancer.
- One quote Adam might say when using a Spatial Bypass:
- Sociopathic Soldier: The G&B Elite Squad is made up of Blood Knight mercenaries who only feel alive when in the thick of combat or when killing others. Another Adam Roslin clone is their leader, and he’s just as bad as his squad if not worse.
- Space Mines: Oh, yes. Common jobs include clearing old patches of these by blowing them up. They can also be dropped by the player's ship in combat. Enemy ships can also use them, with Madcaps releasing several when they are blown up as a Taking You with Me attempt.
- Space Plane: The ships fly much more like VTOL jets than traditional spacecraft, and some ship classes like the interceptor straight up look like jets.
- Space Pirates: The main source of enemy ships.
- Space Trucker: Pilots of Freighters are treated like this more than like cargo boat captains. The unloading and loading seems to be totally automated, so the crew is minimal and it is treated more like a big rig truck with armed escorts.
- Super Special Move: Every ship type has an "Ult" that charges by destroying targets and grants a powerful combat effect. Most of them used to be modules and items from Everspace.
- The Bomber-Class ship can fire the ARC-9000, dealing ludicrous damage to anything caught in its way.
- The Gunship-Class ship can activate an automated turret that deals damage to enemies.
- The Interceptor-Class ship can use Weapon Overdrive, giving unlimited weapon energy and significantly increased damage output for the duration, which can be extended by destroying enemy ships.
- The Scout-Class ship can activate its Cloak system, allowing it to evade targets and deal up to 3x damage after a period of time.
- The Sentinel-class ship gains access to Static Overload, replacing the primary weapons with Lightning Guns that arc between targets.
- The Stinger-class ship can send out a Void Swarm that damages enemies and then repairs the ship based on the damage dealt.
- The Striker-class ship can connect nearby ships to a targeted ship with its Quantum Tether, spreading the damage done to that ship to all affected ships.
- The Vanguard-class ship can slow time down with its Time Extender, making it much easier to maneuver the battlefield.
- The Vindicator-class ship can activate Phalanx, greatly increasing its drones' fire rates and makes them focus on your current locked-on target. It also summons drones up to the limit.
- Synthetic Voice Actor: A few robots in the game are voiced using text-to-speech software, including an announcer at Prescott Starbase and the robot in Charybdis Bowl
- Uriah Gambit: Daryl tries this with Adam (and Elek) on multiple occasions. His uncle, Mr. Kato, is not amused, and is quick to apologize and make amends (while dishing out punishments to Daryl).
- Used Future: The Demilitarized Zone is not a pristine chrome plated kind of future. Only the ships look new and clean, and most are likely unused surplus from the war with the Okkar.
- Vice City: Prescott Starbase. Run by a crime syndicate in everything but name and noted by practically everyone to be a dangerous place to go to.
- World-Shattering Kaboom: The planet Palaemon was subject to this at the end of the Colonial-Okkar war when an Okkar strike force detonated the weapons-grade aetheum inside the planet and blew it wide open.
- Warp Drive: An impossiblility for the species in and around the Demilitarized Zone. But very possible for Khala’s race, who originate so far away she didn’t know what Okkar or Humans even were until told. Her broken warp capable ship left her stranded.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The G&B Adam Roslin clone has a HIVE with a feminine voice, but it is never heard of again after its initial appearance at the Ceto jumpgate.
- Worthless Yellow Rocks: A variation of it. When picking up credits, HIVE will occasionally chime in to question their real value.
- Wretched Hive: This is the reputation that Prescott Starbase has, to the point that your ships HIVE unit quotes the Trope Namer almost word for word. In reality, it's closer to a Vice City and not wholly irredeemable.
- Younger Than They Look: As a combat clone based on an individual born in 2995, Adam is simultaneously both this and Older Than They Look, being physically younger but mentally older due to his implanted memories from both the original Adam Roslin as well as his preceding clones.
