Whispers in the Woods is inarguably the biggest DLC that Pacific Drive has had since its release in early 2024. It adds a massive chunk of content, with another eight to 12 hours of gameplay and a new area of the Olympic Exclusion Zone. It also adds a slew of new gameplay mechanics that take the underlying frame of Pacific Drive's otherwise normal gameplay and shakes things up substantially. As a separate area, the content can be enjoyed either on an existing save or merely an hour or two into the game.

The Whispering Woods are an area of the exclusion zone that's separate from the area used in the base game. After completing one of the early missions of the main storyline, you return to the garage to find its interior lit only by red candles. There's a strange new altar in the side room that previously saw little use. A mysterious voice over the radio tells you alluring tales about the Whispering Woods and beckons you to drive into its depths and learn about The Fellowship.

To get started, you are provided with the Whispering Chart, which you can place in a new machine that sits in the garage to the left of the route display. Once the chart is in place, the route map switches from the main game area to show the Whispering Woods and any additional nodes you've unlocked. At first, you only have access to a very small number of nodes, but one of your earliest goals is to unlock an audio tape.

These tapes contain the story of Jack, a young man caught between the conflicting interests of ARDA and The Fellowship. To play the tapes, you place them in the machine instead of the chart, which also switches the route to the one specific to the audio tape. Completing that route unlocks more of the Whispering Woods and provides a new tape to find, and the cycle repeats.

Very little is familiar in these woods. In the game's normal areas, you progress along your route, scavenging points of interest and snagging energy nodes along the way. At the end of your route, and once you have enough energy, you can initiate a return to the garage and race toward that towering column of yellow light before the zone collapses around you. Once back in the garage, you can throw in parts for repairs or slap some repair putty on them, and you're ready for another run.

The Whispering Woods operate differently. In the upper left, there is a bar representing the Tide that is constantly filling up, the rate of which being based on how much synergy you currently have. There are "attuned" versions of the normal car parts: crude, steel, insulated, etc. Having these parts on the car raises your synergy, but to make them, it requires the attuned version of their crafting materials, and those can only be found in the Whispering Woods. This makes the gear you need for your car almost completely separate from what you use in the main game area. This is why the content can be equally enjoyed right off the bat or via an established save.

Several altars can be found within each area of the Whispering Woods. Some altars offer a choice of car parts, and while you can choose only one, it becomes a free part to do with as you wish. Other altars offer artifacts, which can best be described as "expected" quirks. Some artifacts are beneficial, such as one where your engine power is increased when your headlights are off. Others are annoying, such as your car honking if your trunk is closed. Others can be downright dangerous, such as causing lightning to strike nearby if your car isn't submerged in water. Their effects are random, and you never know which offerings an altar might have. Each one you carry also reduces your effective synergy, which makes the Tide gauge fill more quickly.

They're your ticket to getting back home, though. Certain altars allow you to sacrifice a number of artifacts, which you either brought with you from the garage or found along the way. This sacrifice gives you a bounty in return that you can then grind up in your garage for a bunch of attuned materials and other goodies. It also dramatically speeds up how quickly the Tide bar fills. Additionally, it opens a massive blue pillar of light somewhere on the current map; it's your ticket home, and there's no specific time limit to reach it. There are no closing rings to outrun, and there are no mad dashes through the undergrowth.

You see, the Tide brings some nasty entities of its own, and each quarter bar that's filled unlocks more of them. Groups of hooded figures roam the map and hurl red balls of energy at you, while others tower above the massive redwoods and move with great speed. With a full bar, the map sees the better part of a dozen of these dangerous entities spawning in from the edges. While they can't directly outrun your wagon, they always know where you are. It feels like less of a scramble to the finish, but it has its own feeling of weighty urgency.

Attuned parts of the car behave differently than normal parts do. While they take damage all the same, repair putty does not work on them. Instead, they are repaired using harmonic energy, which is unique to attuned parts; some wrecks within the Whispering Woods have such attuned parts as well. The Harmonizer is a new tool that lets you transfer harmonic energy from one entity to another, so you can transfer energy in those wrecked parts to repair the ones on your car. You can also get harmonic capacitors, which mount to a side mount on your car to carry spare energy.

There's no way to easily generate harmonic energy at the garage except for making new attuned parts to sap their energy for other purposes. This makes the Altar of Bounties, which contain car parts, even more useful. If you don't want any of the parts, you can choose which one has the most energy and use it for that. Some car parts, such as headlights and even an engine, can use harmonic energy, so it's possible to have your car set up so needs neither gasoline nor much battery power. Harmonic wheels can burn a new resource — sizzling quartz — to generate harmonic power, since the vehicle is in motion.

There are a host of new and familiar entities in the Whispering Woods to contend with. Among them are the Highwaymen, who act like Abductors on steroids and will lift you or your entire car and chuck it a hundred feet away. The Huntsman is a gross, spider-like entity that only exists to steal your gasoline by quickly siphoning it from your tank. Others include a strange void pocket; traveling within it temporarily makes you blind. There are also hooded ghostlike figures and the massive ones that the Tide brings, but there are many more entities. The maps are also populated with many of the same "normal" entity types.

There are no new additions to the tech tree, and while it still requires the normal energy types to progress, you can also find such energy in the Whispering Woods. It is possible to fully progress through the tech tree with the new content before flipping back to the main game storyline. Back at base, you unlock a refinery that can consume "souvenirs" as fuel and converts unwanted artifacts into attuned resources. If you throw an attuned car part into the refinery, you'll gain its blueprint so you can make it yourself, so it is often useful to bring new types of parts back rather than scrap them or slap them immediately on your car.

There are a couple of rougher edges in the new content. Using the Harmonizer to slowly transfer energy one pair of parts at a time can get monotonous, especially when you're at the garage and just trying to fix up your car, which requires manually walking around the car and clicking a couple of dozen times. It is annoying that most of the loot you'll find in the Whispering Woods is the regular kind, which cannot be used for creating attuned parts. You can only get attuned resources by refining artifacts, scrapping attuned parts, or from the chests of Pilgrim entities. Similarly, it is annoying that while creating an attuned part requires 100% attuned resources, scrapping them gives you largely regular versions of the same. It is annoying to juggle two entirely different sets of resources, so it's critically important to upgrade to the pneumatic lockers as early as possible.

Like an old station wagon though, those flaws don't do much to diminish the charm of the new content in Pacific Drive: Whispers in the Woods. I love how the new content is separate from the main game, and at any point, you can switch between the two route maps and make progress in either. The new content is certainly spookier than the base game, so it's fitting that it's being released a little more than a week before Halloween. The new features of Whispers in the Woods are a fresh coat of paint on the otherwise familiar wagon, and they're a compelling reason to get back behind the wheel if it's been a while since your last Pacific Drive.

Score: 9.0/10

Reviewed on: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, 64 GB RAM, NVidia RTX 4070 Ti