Outriders: Everything we know about People Can Fly’s upcoming RPG shooter

This week, Square Enix and developer People Can Fly lifted the curtain on Outriders. Here’s what we learned about the upcoming RPG shooter.

On Thursday, Square Enix and People Can Fly hosted a 30-minute livestream reveal for Outriders, an upcoming RPG shooter set in a “dark and desperate” sci-fi universe.

Outriders has your basic sci-fi premise. Earth is dying and humanity is looking for a new planet to continue life on. You (an outrider) travel to Enoch, a diverse world that seems all well and good until an anomaly turns it all to hell.

Brutal, violent storms force the outriders into cryosleep. You’ll awake 30 years later to a world ravaged by anomalies. The creatures of the planet are now advanced and incredibly dangerous.

But… so are you. While in crysoleep, your DNA has been rebuilt, leaving you “Altered” — imbued with special powers like the ability to control time, space and elements such as fire and electricity.

While Outriders is a multiplayer game, there seems to be an emphasis on storytelling. There are 90 minutes worth of cutscenes in the main story and an additional two hours worth of cutscenes for side quests. While in these scenes, each player will see their own custom-created character as the star of the story.

Gameplay

Outriders is a co-op RPG shooter, which makes sense considering People Can Fly’s history (Gears of War: Judgement, BULLETSTORM). The game supports between one and three players.

Outriders has your basic traditional RPG gameplay elements such as side quests, skill trees, classes and loot. There’s also a ton of customization options with your character and truck (essentially your mobile base).

Speaking of loot, it seems there’s a ton of focus on weapons. As you progress through the game, the guns will become more powerful, brutal and otherworldly. One weapon described during the stream was a “molten lava gun, that’s like morphing in your hand as you’re blowing the sh– out of people.”

Loot will have rarity levels that are color coded in traditional fashion. The more rare the item, the more powerful it will be. The inventory screen shown during the stream looked very similar to that of Destiny. This seems to be intentional as People Can Fly wanted systems that RPG fans were already familiar with.

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Release Date and Platforms

After originally being announced with a Summer 2020 date, Outriders now has a Holiday 2020 release window. It was likely pushed back due to the launch of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Outriders will also be available on PS4, Xbox One and PC.

Unlike most of today’s co-op shooter RPGs, Outriders isn’t being developed as a live service. Square Enix and People Can fly are said to be delivering the “complete package” at launch. I can’t imagine a game releasing without some sort of post-launch content or DLC plans, though, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens with this.