Outriders the Game
A Sci-fi Shooter RPG Masterpiece
Hello readers, as usual I have been a bit tardy in publishing some new articles I have been working on but I will deliver them in rapid succession with my first being this one. I wrote a review for this game on Steam and I have used parts of it here in this more detailed write up.
Outriders is a masterpiece of the sci-fi shooter RPG genre! The base campaign is designed around a 30 level cap but there is also an expansion which I just reached after finishing the base campaign yesterday. At this stage in all shooters I am ready to move on due to the monotony having been playing the same game, with the same mechanics and crafting system for many hours on end. HOWEVER not with this game! I am anxious to go back into a few of the main campaign side quests I left undone then progress onto the expansion. Enemies seem to scale with your current level even in the main campaign so all of this is like new content that I "skipped" over in my rush to finish the main campaign story line.
The real draw is the amazing crafting system which seems like a bit much at first but you quickly get the hang of it as you play the game. I can honestly see myself playing for another 50-100 hours or more just to create the perfect Outrider for my game style. I already achieved this for the main campaign BUT the final boss level had me dying several times as I realized I had used the amazing strategy capabilities in this game to get to the end a couple levels too low! The fact that I was able to use strategy to push forward and enjoy the game at the higher levels while being a level or two too low is proof of the depth of game play on offer with this game! This is a form of chess not tic-tac-toe as so many shooters these days are!
As a developer trust me when I tell you the AI in this game is top notch. If you try there are some choke points in some areas you can funnel enemies into and knock them down as they come through but in most cases battle areas are expansive with multiple pathways to protect. Also the enemy has "tank" characters that will storm your position along with ancillary forces if you sit at it too long as a sniper in a shooter such as this is apt to do. It is truly brilliant shooter design to make such a game enjoyable for all play styles. I am a sniper at heart so when these enemy rushes came I had to use the tricks up my sleeve (special skills) to stave them off then return to the long distance mayhem.
The story is top notch and the voice acting is superb in the English version (the one I play). The IGN review said, "The game takes its story a bit too seriously..". For me this is one of the best parts of Outrider. It is a true sci-fi classic as the story is CLASSIC sci-fi from its golden age. Not to spoil it for you but generation ships and their idiosyncrasies form the main basis of the story. If humanity ever goes to another star system as of current scientific understanding it will be sub-light which will require generation ships. It feels good to see a top notch sci-fi shooter embrace this staple of the golden age of sci-fi and do it justice. Also the constraints set were realistic as per the technology and the time frames.
I felt connected with the characters, the story flow was very well done, levels were also very well designed. Difficulty was well balanced but at the higher game difficulty settings you will probably stop playing due to the difficulty spikes at those higher difficulty settings. Be warned, take it slow and find your ideal setting to enjoy this game to the fullest.
I would strongly recommend any true sci-fi fan get this game and play it at the lower difficulty settings for just the story. That's how good this game's story arc is. The writing is also top notch and a hard core sci-fi story NEEDS to take itself too seriously sometimes. I'd give this a 10/10. I am VERY happy I purchased and played this game. I was expecting to be done with it by now and instead I have my "forever RPG shooter" at least for a while. I feel like how I felt playing the original Borderlands while in the middle of the story but this is past the end of the story!
I let all of the credits roll at the end and it ran for what felt like 15 minutes! These guys take game AI seriously and in a multiplayer game that is almost unheard off. They have created a true masterpiece of a shooter that also makes you part of an epic sci-fi story. This harkens back to a time when story had to make up for level size and content. Game makers had to truly invest in the story. This art has faded away as technology has allowed games to dump so much content story is forgotten.
This section is where I deep dive into the history of how this game was made and some mysteries behind it you may read across the Internet. I will also add my own analysis of the situation as my two cents worth. As always, I aim to inform and stimulate not dictate. That is for the massive corporations that have stamped out creativity.
The creative force behind this game, the company “People Can Fly”, has had an interesting history. It started as a small studio in 2002 and developed a pretty successful major game called “Painkiller”. Flush with success the young studio expanded, spending loads of capital to build an even more challenging game. However what most gamers don’t know is how BRUTAL the gaming industry is to true talent. It is a world where operation are measured in the BILLIONS and young talent is literally consumed by the larger studios. Don’t be fooled by the flashy “we get you type” advertisements. Almost all major games cost 10s to hundreds of millions of USD to make. This is not chump change or even creativity, this is big business.
Something like this occurred to “People Can Fly” when after spending all of their capital expanding the studio, the game they were working on was cancelled. This lead to financial issues and Epic Games buying a majority stake in them in 2007 and buying them out completely a few years later. They worked on several games under the Epic umbrella but in 2015 they spun themselves off as the original “People Can Fly” company with their original logo.
Outriders is their first title under their reincarnated company, “People Can Fly”. The reason I went through that brief history is so that any players who played this game and enjoyed it or those thinking of giving it a try can help support original ideas in gaming. The reception of the story of a game like Outriders is highly subjective, as it should be. Many critics panned the story when the game released but I found it amazing.
Looking at it through a critical lens I can see the story in this game didn’t conform to “mainstream” gaming narratives of the time period. Not spoiling the story but I can say tough decisions were made. The main character had variance in his character that is quite common in hero types but is usually whitewashed away in mainstream game narratives. This is why in my opinion today most shooter games keep rehashing the same old story with no originality.
In Outriders there is a particular scene which I believe caused some of the issue. It has to do with how the stupid decision of one of the major characters (one you have to deal with throughout the game) lead to the death of a minor character and this death was simply brushed aside by the main character.
This nonchalant dealing with an issue might offend certain sterile gamer story palettes that are accustomed to cartoon cookie cutter characters but in the real world the behaviors were actually acceptable given the absolute dire situation of the game world. In war death is common place amongst those you consider kin. If you can’t compartmentalize you will die. In other words certain parts of the story are written more as a novel requiring adult analysis rather than as bane filler.
I was taken aback in a few scenes and by the scene I described above in particular. However I was so engrossed in the world that the writer had created any divergence from my ideal was just like when the narrator of a novel treated a certain situation in a way I didn’t agree with but the base story was undamaged. There was nothing of the gravity that I felt I didn’t want to follow the story any more and would uninstall the game. I am actually a player for whom the story in deep games such as this matter a lot. I have stopped playing games because of story malfunctions. This is the reason I was one of the ones who didn’t buy the last installment of the BRILLIANT Mass Effect 1 and 2.
Shooter games with significant RPG and crafting aspects are NOTORIOUSLY difficult to have deep stories tied to. The fast paced action and the total divergence of characters development skill tree wise makes telling a good story difficult, especially if that story has original aspects that might drift outside the mainstream normal.
I would like to point out something else. The way Outriders has crafted their story and the continuing play ability they put into this game is HEAD AND SHOULDERS ABOVE most games in this genre. This means when you spend your money and invest your time you have a game you can probably play for upwards of 250 hours just by YOURSELF! It is easy to chalk up hundreds or even thousands of hours when you have friends to play a game with online but doing so as a single player is almost unheard of.
I would advise anyone reading/viewing reviews of games before purchase also remember that in this day and age, ALL content creators who make money from producing reviews, etc have a bias. Professional game review sites have editors that look at and have input in game reviews before they are made public. Private content creators can have a follow up customer in a company they are a little too gentle with OR too harsh against, by way of benifits from a competitor. A game that offers you much more play after the story ends is a challenge to game companies who want to sell you a $65 USD titles every two years.
In the end the buyer decides but the buyer is swamped by so many game titles and so much marketing it is difficult to make choices. I got to Outriders a couple years after its release but I deeply enjoyed the Outrider experience. My hope is to see an Outriders 2. There have been some rumors that Outriders 1 “didn’t make a profit” but from the weird history of this company I hope you see this information is not necessarily fact.
A talented company was saved from financial ruin and their expertise in the dominant game engine (UNREAL) owned by the purchasing company was used extensively to push the engine’s development further. Just because you read a supposition article in Forbes doesn’t mean the analysis is the truth and this is true of my analysis as well. It is up to us gamers to ensure these mega corporations that can get away with a couple millions in fines that barely show up on their balance sheet for KILLING people keep producing the games we want and DESERVE.
With game prices inflating yearly and gaming hardware getting more and more expensive who you listen to and who you give your money to en mass is more important than ever.
If you want a good sci-fi romp with stellar game play I advise you give the game a try. Thus concludes my review on the base campaign of Outriders. I may update in a future review as I tackle the after game and expansion pack.