Outriders Impressions: Grimy Observations, Hopes and Worries

The demo for Outriders has been out for a little while now, long enough to even receive a patch. I thought it would have a mission or two with some “open-world exploration” to showcase some of the game’s ideas. However, this demo offered a lot more content and a deeper understanding than I originally expected. Because this demo showed us a good look into what we can expect to play next month, we can see some amazing things now, worrisome aspects to come, and gives some hope for a looter shooter that won’t be dead on arrival.

Let’s first talk about what is most promising, the RPG elements. Between the loot, customization of abilities, and complex progression, the RPG elements feel profound, impactful, and exciting. While stats and numbers are fun, the best thing is that relatively basic items can have wild perks that enhance gameplay a lot and force players to make tough choices between two pairs of simple boots. There are a vast amount of these perks, and they are all very specific to each class. So, there is a lot to look forward to in searcher out certain perks, making insane builds, and being surprised by the wild ability changes from random world drops. Also, the fact that these perks come on armor, guns and can even be saved from legendary items to be used in other places really opens the game to many levels of customization and creativity. Lastly, this is all just from the demo, I can’t imagine how many class-specific perks there will be in the full game.

The customization of the abilities and progression trees are the other big, positive parts we can see in this demo. Players will unlock new abilities and points for a skill tree, very similar to Borderlands or Diablo. And compared to those two franchises, Outriders does a surprisingly good job. Almost every ability in each class can shake up the gameplay a lot. I wish that some of the abilities were a bit heavier-hitting, maybe even taking up two or three slots, but overall, it is a tried and true formula that works. The skill/progression trees also look to be a fine web of customizing stats like damage, defense, lifestyle, AOE damage, and more. There are also a lot of additional upgrades and changes to existing abilities mixed into the skill tree that can alter how a player will approach the battlefield. All this in combination with the random loot perks could make some bonkers builds that will allow players to revel in their power as enemies melt before them.

Now that is all the good stuff, let’s talk about what worries me. The story is a mess. It feels overly complex and disjointed at best while feeling vaguely familiar in numerous ways. I think that this game could/should start out simple with a growing and evolving story that layers complexities and lore instead of being a “human’s finding a new world and oops superpowers” tale. Even if the story was amazing, the presentation of cutscenes and missions is uninteresting at best. The voice acting is all over the place. The jitteriness of the camera and the way cutscenes are edited into gameplay is almost painful. This is a demo...but it is also set to release on April 1st, which is less than a month away. Even if things were to improve immensely, I don’t know if the narrative could be saved. All this is a bigger concern than one might think. This isn’t meant to be a live game service, it is meant to be an enclosed story and experience. And if this is the narrative I’d have to experience on every playthrough or repeating bland missions and enemies, I don’t know if I’d have the steam to play through it on more than one or two characters.

Along with the questionable story, the actual look of this game is...bland. Everything seems to be covered in a layer of mud and grime. The textures and details in models and animation all feel rough. It may be because it is only a demo. But even considering that, the design for the characters, environments, and camps feel uninspired. The loot here doesn’t look good except a few of the guns and maybe one or two armor pieces. Each helmet, jacket, gun, and pair of boots look like they been thrown down a hill and left in a smelly, sludge-filled river for a week. I’m sure the full game will have plenty of spiffy shoes, strange guns, and cool helmets eventually. But it seems that unless it is one of the rarest items in the game, then it will look terribly mediocre and generic. The aesthetic for the whole game is like this, which can make sense for the story and world, but does EVERYTHING have to be gray, brown, or beat up?

I hope that this demo was an extremely limited and uncharacteristically bad demonstration of the story and visuals we’ll see next month. I hope that the plot elements are fresh and the technical issues and editing are better sorted out. I am extremely hopeful and excited about the actual gameplay, going crazy with ability builds and unique guns against hordes of enemies. While the cover system is a mess (it isn’t fun anymore to play peek-a-boo with waves of enemies and have grenades thrown at you whenever you sit behind a wall for more than three seconds), at least the guns actually shoot well enough to get the job done and abilities can devastate big groups. I hope that we’ll see more interesting enemies and more creative battlefields, not just a hundred alleys, rooms, and campsites that are bunches of rectangles arranged in random ways.

Outriders seriously impressed me with its loot and skill/ability progression. It is lacking a lot in narrative drive and could have better enemy encounters. But I think there is hope for this game to give players a fresh and fun game that allows for some seriously intense builds that obliterate enemies.