Square Enix’s new co-op third person shooter RPG, “Outriders”, doesn’t have anything to do with the Marvel heroes. Just, the last demo I played of this sort was Marvel’s Avengers, and I didn’t have a great experience with the co-op features, and this title was just there, for some reason.
So, what is “Outriders” if not Marvel’s Avengers? I hadn’t even heard of this game before a couple days ago, when it exploded all over my Twitter timeline. I (being at work at the time) demanded someone patiently explain to me what kind of game it was so that I could join in the fun.
I’m not a huge fan of shooters. I tried Destiny 2 and didn’t like it. I tried Mass Effect but got bored with it. I sucked at Star Wars Battlefront. But, I trust my friends, and demos are free, so I downloaded it… and I kinda liked it.
Having recently finished a 150 hour adventure with Eivor of the Raven Clan in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, when it came time to create a bad-ass warrior of the future, I knew just the warrior to bring. Eivor! Of the Raven Clan!
The story thus far: Earth is dying because of some sort of jackpot scenario: Overcrowding, terrorism, war, climate change, asteroid strikes, whatever — the Earth is doomed, and the only option is to build two gigantic arks to carry a small fraction of humanity to its new home, a verdant green paradise in a solar system 12.5 light years away from Earth — call it Tau Ceti.
One ark never makes it out of Earth orbit — a mysterious explosion takes out its engines and its fate is unknown. The other ark breaks free.
The game opens with a forward scouting party landing on the planet Enoch, with the recently unfrozen mercenaries — who call themselves The Outriders — taking the measure of the new land. The mission commander chose a protected valley for their first colony, a valley relatively safe from the violent storms that stalk the majority of the planet.
Things… begin to go wrong — very wrong, and everyone involved begins to make incredibly bad decisions.
There was a movie a few years back, Prometheus, where the scientists made astonishingly bad choices. They have some of those Prometheus scientists here, too, as one of them makes the irrevocable decision to unfreeze and disembark the entirety of the ark just when it becomes clear that something is very, very wrong in paradise.
This is when I started getting interested in the plot, and I think they did it on purpose. One annoying thing I like to do is to try and guess where the plot of any RPG is going by guessing what the most terrifically obvious twist could be (there is always a twist — always), and then see if it plays out.
The game makes such a big deal out of the fate of the second ark that I could only think that the second ark repaired its engines, and then set off to Enoch and got there somehow way before the first ark, and Enoch’s reaction to this first human invasion has led to the situation the current crew is facing.
The need to find out if I’m right pulls me through these kinds of games.
While scouting out a mystery signal, our hero is infected by a black mist, makes it back to camp but just barely, nearly dies, and it tossed into a cryofreeze unit for 31 years. (This is the prologue — I’m not spoiling anything here). When the hero unthaws, the verdant valley is embroiled in a war that has been raging for decades. Humanity is unable to leave the valley due to the violent “Anomaly” storms, and the pressures of dwindling resources has everyone in a foul mood.
Tossed out of the insurgent city where the hero’s pod was buried, they discover that they have gained mysterious powers somehow — they are now one of the “Altered”, those who have been ravaged by an Anomaly but not killed — the fate of most of those caught unprepared by the mysterious storms.
It’s a world now in ruins, and our hero has to find their place in it, discover the use of their powers, and perhaps save all that remains of humanity.
This sets the stage for the rest of the game. Finishing the demo gives glimpses of the rest of the game, and the monsters just get bigger and the challenge just increases. It looks like a great story — and I am absolutely down for seeing how ark #2 reveals itself.
The last shooter RPG I played was “Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet”, that shares many elements with Outriders — the constant upgrading of gear, a decent story, character customization and all that. But where Fatal Bullet gave you NPC party members, in Outriders, any party members you have are going to be actual other players. This is where the game enters familiar online shooter mechanics.
The player powers fall into four broad categories, though each can be customized to a great degree by spending points in skill trees.
- Technomancer — a gadget-based support class. This is the only class that can heal party members, though each class has powerful self-heals.
- Pyromancer — a fire-based ranged DPS class. This one is your basic wizard.
- Trickster — a highly mobile melee DPS class. Gets in, does damage, gets away. Your rogue.
- Devastator — an earth-based tank class.
Groups in Outriders consists of three party members. Like any online RPG, if you want to have the best group, you’re going to want a tank and a healer, with those two DPS classes battling it out for that last slot.
The game has a dynamic difficulty level called “World Tier”. This starts off at World Tier 1, “Story Level”, for those who don’t want to sweat fights that much. World Tier 2 is slightly easier than normal, World Tier 3 is the “normal” difficulty mode, and World Tiers 4 and 5 give more challenges but commensurate rewards. The tricky thing is, unless you turn it off in options, as you unlock each difficulty level, the game will promote you into that new difficulty without telling you. That’s how I found myself in World Tier 4 when I was just barely making it in World Tier 3. Still, it wasn’t terrible even then — the video embedded above was in World Tier 4. That meant I had to be careful rushing enemy positions, whereas in World Tier 1 you can rush right in to most situations. The higher difficulty, ironically, slows the game down, and might actually be better for casual, solo players.
I only had to lower the difficulty for one boss after making no progress on him after several tries. So when you need the help — it’s there, no questions asked. That should go a long way toward helping casual players progress through the game.
I played the demo, finished the demo, went back and redid some missions for fun. I think it’s safe to say that I liked the game. At no time did I play in any groups. I considered queuing for a multiplayer mission, but I remembered my toxic experiences in Marvel’s Avengers and couldn’t bring myself to do it again. It would be a good game for friends, though.
Maybe more to come on this game when it releases on April 1st.
The title of this makes me thing of the old Ang Lee Hulk movie. Instead of “Hulk Smash” it was more like “Hulk Sad”, or “Hulk Has Ennui.” While I applaud him doing something well and truly different from everyone else that has worked with the character, it didn’t work at all.