So Outriders is out and I decided to try it. This isn't really a game I was in any way stoked about but seeing that there's a fair amount of hype about it and a free demo I decided to give it a go. There's been a couple of first impressions of this game here in the Hive Gaming Community already. Nonetheless, these are MY first impressions. There may be many like it but this one is mine.

^Steam

What is Outriders?

I personally would describe Outriders as an RPG-shooter with a focus on action and loot. It takes place in a science fiction setting on a far away planet called Epoch. You play as an Outrider who has become altered which basically means you have superpowers.

The developers describe it like this:

Outriders is a RPG-Shooter with aggressive gunplay and intense action. As such, blood and gore is frequent, and core to the experience. The Outriders unique abilities are as violent as the shooting, with bloody and gruesome methods for dispatching of enemies. The world of Enoch is dark and desperate, and the characters that inhabit the world are equally so. The game has strong language, adult theme and scenes some may find distressing. ^Steam

First impressions

A good thing that Outriders has going for it from the start is that I have no expectations for it. I haven't been hyped about it and since I'm playing it for free through the demo I can't really get all that disappointed. The only thing the game can really do is impress me and get me to buy the full game.

Even through all this I managed to get disappointed right from the get go. Why? Well simply because I expect the game to work. I guess I had some expectations for it after all.

I managed to get in the game, create my character and sit through some rather boring cutscenes. I started the prologue and got about halfway through it. Then I disconnected the first time. I get back in and check it out! All my progress is gone! I'll just have to sit through these 15 minutes of boring prologue again then. Nope, disconnected again!

I decided that I wouldn't judge them by their launch day servers. Most hyped and anticipated games suffer from these issues. If only it was on the first day only and not three days into the release. Still, I decided to wait it out and give it another chance with a clean slate.

Second impressions

This time around the game impressed. The prologue was still boring as all hell but as soon as I got to see some real game and gunplay I was loving it. The gunplay, while nothing revolutionary, is good fun. The combat in general is great fun. It plays out like a decent mix og Gears of War and the Division. It takes the cover based combat from both games and fuses it together to something decent. I'm liking it.

The loot was one of the things that intrigued me about this game. I'm a huge sucker for loot. Any game focused on loot will have my attention in one way or another. I'm a couple of hours in and still in the demo area of the game but the loot has looked decent. While the early game gear is just different looking items with differing stats once you get to the blue rarity loot it becomes quite interesting. The guns and gear then start getting abilities which are cool. Like this revolver I found.

This is huge for me if I'm to stay interested in this game for a while. That means there's potential for build diversity. Coupled with the huge skill trees each of the four classes has it's gonna be fun to play around with builds that hopefully synergizes with the gear in some way.

Speaking of classes and skill trees I should mention that there are four classes:

• Technomancer - Long range support sniper
• Pyromancer - Medium range fire wizard
• Trickster - Close range teleporting rogue
• Devastator - Close range tank

All of the classes seem pretty cool and I had a hard time choosing. As I'm a sucker for fire spells and damage the choice eventually fell on the Pyromancer. The Pyromancer, non-surprisingly, utilizes fire to damage enemies. These spell works at a medium range and often come with a burn effect. Killing an enemy within 15 seconds of being hit by one of my fire skills will also heal me for a portion of my health. That's pretty cool and also something all of the classes has in one way or another if I'm not mistaken.

Choosing the main class is only the first step though. Once you start leveling you unlock class points which you can spend in the class tree. It's basically a large talent tree which is quite awesome. I love me a good talent tree. This let's you unlock talents that boost your stats that eventually leads you to become 1 out of 3 subclasses.

For the Pyromancer there seems to be one branch focusing on gunplay, one for utility and one for boosting powers. Each of these eventually culminate in a subclass. They also seem to connect so that you can choose to go for a hybrid build which is really great. You don't have to commit to one single branch. I'm gonna be playing around with this a lot for sure.

Non impressions

That's all of the good things covered. One thing that doesn't impress my all that much, at least not yet, is the story. It's not really that interesting for the first part of the game. It can be summarized like this without giving any big spoilers:

Earth is fucked and we had to leave it. After 80 or so years of space travel in cryo sleep we arrive to Epoch, humanities new home and last hope. Things pretty much immediately goes to shit and war breaks out between several human factions.

I don't find this interesting in any way. It's not a plot I care for at all. I'm gonna pull the first comparison to Destiny here and say that they have a thing or two to learn from Destiny. There doesn't seem to be any grandiosity or ambition to make a big and interesting IP. I am of course only a couple of hours into the game so it's to early to conclude on this, but Destiny had me curious, interested and intrigued from the get go.

There is however, finally after hours of gameplay, somewhat of a mystery starting to unfold so I hope that turns into something grand and cool. If it's all war between humans on a foreign planet they're gonna lose me pretty quickly.

Conclusion

Luckily I have it in me to look past a bad and boring story if the gameplay is great. And it is. Even though the story is boring me I'm having a blast playing this. I'm looking forward to progressing in levels, in world tiers and finding new gear. Most of all I'm looking forward to trying out different kinds of builds and find good combinations and synergies with weapon abilities. I really hope the game will deliver on this point.

I already decided to buy the full game before finishing the demo so I'm definitely gonna stick with it for a while. At least I intend to get to the endgame and give that a go.

Shout me out if you're playing Outriders so we can do some coop! I play on PC which means I can currently only play with other PC players. Eventually we'll be able to play together even if you're on console. They just need to sort out their shitty servers first.

All un-sourced images are screenshots from Outriders taken by me.