Pioneers, you've been hearing a voice since your first ride. It talks you through the hard parts, cheers the good ones and has opinions about your driving. Now you can see who's been talking.

Meet your companion

Take your train and a companion comes with it. It's a little steampunk core, a ball of hexagon plates with one big glowing eye, hanging from its own set of rotors. It rides on top of your locomotive. Step off, and it comes with you, hovering at your shoulder.

Stop for a moment and it turns around to look at you. Look somewhere and its eye follows. Every so often it glances toward where you ought to be going, with a little nod, in case you'd forgotten.

Seven of them, three levels each

There are seven companions, and no two are built alike. Each has its own shell, its own hood and shutters, its own trim and its own rotors. Each eye glows a color of its own, around a pupil of its own shape. Which one you get depends on whose voice has been talking to you.

Their names are Leonidas, Ada, Hobson, Judith, Finnegan, Dorothea and Eloch. To their friends, that's Leo, Ada, Hob, Judy, Finn, Dot and Eli.

Every companion comes in three levels, and you raise it yourself. Wanderers built in a town's hangar carry cores of their own, and when you shoot one down, its core drops out of the wreck. Pick it up. You can carry seven on your back at once. Bring them home into your train, and every seven you bring back raise your companion a level.

Each level is a little bigger and adds more: studs on the hood, ribs on the shutters, a band around the brow and a ring up top. At Level 3, every rotor gets an extra blade. And whatever colors you design for your Pioneer in the Depot, your companion wears them too.

It talks with its whole face

The voice comes from the companion now, so you hear it from wherever it's hovering. And it doesn't just talk. It acts out every line. The eye swells on the loud words, and the hood drops into a frown or lifts in surprise. The shutters narrow when it's suspicious, and the handles go up when it's excited.

Ping something and it looks right at it. It carries your headlamp now, too, and points the light wherever you look.

The couriers have opinions

Your couriers wear cores of their own, smaller and a good deal less composed. Walk into the courier bay and the courier says hello with its whole face. Its jokes come with a pause before the punchline and a laugh that shakes the whole core. Grapple it and it'll let you know exactly how it feels about that.

When your companion and a courier get talking, they turn and face each other and trade lines eye to eye. Your companion is the composed one. The courier is not. The wanderers that come out of a town's hangar have cores too, and they don't like being grappled any more than the couriers do.

And sometimes, one that isn't yours

Every so often, out in the distance and in plain sight, you might catch another core watching you. It looks a lot like yours. It isn't. It'll say something, and then it's gone.

Go take your train, Pioneers. Somebody's been waiting a long time to say hello in person.

PS You might also notice some terrain changes, but those details in a bigger announcement in the near future.