Outriders- 8th times the charm?

 I wonder if the word 'looter shooter' is getting as boring to read as it is to type

Egads! Scatter all ye mere mortals for a new behemoth has entered the ever cluttered pantheon of online looter-shooter live service extravaganza game thingies. A genre of game that absolutely has not been milked to ultimate death and has already pretty much presented everything it can in the way of success, ingenuity and prestige. Okay? They absolutely did not hit their utmost limit years ago and have been chasing that success ever since... so stop saying that... No, rather these sorts of games have become the golden hen of the game's industry, comparable in their folly to 'cinematic universes' to Hollywood or trying to seek a favourable trade arrangement with those notoriously avaricious Martians. (They'll haggle you out of house and home every time!) They all want a little taste of that sweet good pie though, don't they? The promise of a captive audience who'll drop everything they're doing to stare up at the sky for 2 hours for a painfully slow live event to drop. Who'll go nuts over spending on those low effort recolour skins that get popped out every two weeks or so. That'll support this game so that the devs can breath a little easier for the next few years. But how often does that work out? And how likely is that to work out today? Man- I don't know.

To be clear, though this is the first time I'm addressing Outriders in a blog, (with it being the main focus. I remember dropping their name in a list at some point) I've been looking at this game ever since it's first reveal. That's over a year ago, and yet I never bought it up once on this blog. Let me remind you, that this is the same blog where I construe entire thesis' on the most insignificant of topics, even going so far as to attack a topic for no over reason than to make as many covert Jojo references in there as I could. I'm not exactly choosy. And yet I didn't feel the desire once, the tug, or even the slightest of niggling, to turn my attention to Square Enix's newest entry to the looter shooter genre. Why? Was I just sick to death of Looter Shooters in general? Kinda, yeah. But there's a much more pertinent reason. Because the game just looked so gosh darn boring.

I mean, wow. How can something that gets published by freaking Square Enix, the kings of visual overcomplexity, look so drab, derivate and just dull. The story just follows some colonisation efforts on an alien planet which, surprise surprise, is hostile. Players take on the role of 'Outriders' who job it is to; charter a new alien world in hopes of making sure it's habitable for a colony ship? Sooo they're Pathfinders from Mass Effect then? Only with a new name that doesn't really make any sense. 'Outrider' sounds more like an outlaw/bandit kind of thing. (Maybe it's justified in the story. £20 on it not getting justified in the story) This quickly descends into a war against the inhabitants of the planet Enoch and if that sounds at all interesting to you, don't worry it's presented as generically as possible. Dialogue is cheesy side of lame and seems to directly contrast with the gritty 'realism' vibe that the visual department was going for, characterisation is non-existent (Although in fairness that's entirely through lack of trying rather than failure of execution) and the guns look mostly generic as heck. And yet despite all that; people seem to like this game.

Heck, from the threads I've read some people straight up love this game, and I'm still trying to reconcile that adoration with the dull game I briefly touched during the demo stage before concluding that drinking paint thinner would be a more constructive use of my time. And in a point towards the game, I think that my problem might have been that I was just personally not suited for this sort of title. Most seem to agree on one stipulation you must meet in order to enjoy this game. On back-door deal with Hadraniel you need to solve in order to make it past his gate into the realms of fun. You have to have friends. Whoops, guess that disqualifies me right off the bat. Fair enough, thanks for trying. What do you mean I have to socialise? I come to video games to escape people; what kind of topsy turvy backwards logic is this? (But seriously, no one says this game plays best alone.)

Actually the range of discourse I've heard surrounding this game is some of the most divisive I've ever read; or at least, coming from people who all still seem to be of sound mind and aren't lost in the cycle of 'must justify the money I've wasted'. There are folk who call this game a gallery shooter with unimpressive abilities and a pitiful selection of cool weapons to spruce up the mundanity. There are those who call it a refreshingly straightforward adventure with rare, yet tantalising endgame loot to keep players coming back for more with that sweet addiction. And then, here's the really confusing part, they praise the powers for being so robust and making the different classes play unique. Yeah, all those other points where just distinct viewpoints on the same subject but when talking about powers folk are straight contradicting each other. Who do you believe?

In fact, some people out there even love the corny cheesiness of the main character's dialogue and derivative set-up, citing a comfort from the familiarity of it. To this I can actually start to see people's view, because I understand exactly how it is to step into a new world and sigh as you realise there's a thousand new stupid names and races that the devs want you take utterly seriously in order to be invested in this world. (Even worse when they want you to download a third-party app in order to read all this stupid lore to begin with; Destiny 1) But then there are other's who are praising the great world building, so I really can't pick up the temperature of this game. All I can add to the conversation on my part is that I had a little bit of time with the pre-release Beta and could not have been less interested. (Okay, that's no entirely true, I also played the beta for Homefront Revolution which endures as the single most mind-numbing beta experience I've ever endured; but if this game is even reminding me of that dumpsters fire, that's not exactly great company.) I suppose this really is a 'see it to believe it' situation.

Wherever the matter takes you, there's one point of contention which absolutely is not up for debate and that's the roughness of the online capabilities; because of course. In today's day and age you haven't made an online game unless you've hooked it up to a tiny server room under your kitchen sink, and then subsequently freak out when that cannot hold up to the sheer wave of newcomers. Do you sometimes wonder if these devs ever bother to go through the basics to prepare? Don't they hire some stress testers or keep some extra server providers on speed dial just in case? I just think it really helps you make that first impression, and honestly that's still the impression that matters. There's folk out there who'll argue until their blue in the face that No Man's Sky is amazing now; (Last time I played it was alright, I'd be surprised if it's improved that much) but general folk still remember the terrible launch days. Months from now are people still going to remember the constant server drops that attacked the Outriders servers for these initial weeks? Maybe not, because it's not as serious an issue, but it's still an inherently bad look.

And then there's the loading screens. Yes, if you know what I'm about to talk about you're likely scrunching up your nose to say "Oh come on, is this really that big of a deal?" And yes; it is to me! So this is a game wherein every single none shooting and walking action that you take, opening a door or jumping a gap, will send you into a brief cutscene. That's two fade to blacks whilst your character is shown doing a simple two second action. The excuse for this being that it's a rubber-band system that keeps co-op teams in the same play location without surprise teleporting them. So that means we have a game that can't load entire play areas, which sort of sucks given the new generation we've just entered, but also one that wastes just that little bit of time everytime you play. I know what you're thinking: "it's two half-second loading screens, get over it". And if that were it, I would. But we're talking every time you want to move to a new map, again and again. It's that small death from a thousands cuts that'd drive someone as neurotic as me literally batty.

People Can Fly are no strangers to sweaty action, having helped make 'Gears of War: Judgement' , so I have no doubt that the moment to moment shooting is as exhilarating as they can make it; so if that's what you're looking for out of a looter game then have at you. I'm just dubious to the rest of this game and whether there is truly enough incentive to attack this title for months on end, feeding off of every content drop for sustenance, or if half the fanbase is still in the honeymoon phase of the relationship. From where I'm standing I will say this; all those looter games that fell off did generally have much more negative general reception than this, so who knows; Maybe Outriders might be the one to go the distance and join the leagues of Destiny and Division as games that take a ludicrous amount of effort to keep alive and are just about worth it. (Keep shooting for those stars, guys.)

Outriders

You remind me of myself.

Remember when I said that there were two upcoming games that had wormed themselves out of the proverbial wood works to surprise me? No? Well I did, and the second game was one that I don't feel quite so positive about. But with the studios involved I feel inclined to pay some vague amount of attention toward this new title, and that title would be 'Outriders' from 'People Can Fly'. (That is what the studio is called, not a personal nugget of advice.) You may remember this particular studio from such games as; Gears of War Judgement and a whole slew of 'co-development' jobs on various Epic titles. But now they have a full blown game of it's brand on the way (Not remembering 2004's 'Painkiller.') and this one has picked up enough traction to sink publishing from 'Square Enix.'

Back when I was younger and still believed in such things, I used to look upon the Square Enix logo as a brand of quality. This perception was fuelled by those incessant articles that read like "We got Square Enix artists to draw this, and look what cool designs they came up with!", making it seem like the entire company was stacked to the brim with imaginative geniuses. Later I learnt that things weren't that black and white, and how, as primarily a publisher, things can actually be rather hit and miss with their games. It's with that perspective that I approach this new title with some trepidation as I'm not entirely blown away by what I'm seeing nor with who's involved, so I've very confused why so many outlets are so insistent on telling me that "Outriders is (my) newest obsession!"

Outriders is a drop-in, drop-out, 1-3 player online shooter RPG set in "an original, dark and desperate sci-fi universe." (Not sure about those first two points, but I'm definitely feeling the 'desperation' behind this marketing.) So straight-off-the-bat you may be noticing some similarities between this title and another co-op RPG shooter that favours 3 character classes, and that is because this title definitely sees Destiny as something of a foster father judging by how all the visuals designs have come out. (Especially with the player armours) As far as I can tell the story revolves around a colony of humans escaping "our dying Earth" and finding themselves on a hostile little planet called Enoch where they must fight to survive as they are beset upon my an army of various alien beasties. So with that in mind the narrative sounds more akin to 'Mass Effect: Andromeda' (Let's hope then, that there's no extended period of questlines that involve setting immigration policy with the world's most unfinished alien race.)

As far as actual story motivation goes,  those human settlers will find themselves immediately struck with an anomalous affliction that grants them one of three classes, then they are sent hunting a "mysterious signal" across the many wild environments that Enoch has to offer. So in that respect it seems that they are rivalling Gears of War for 'most flimsy driving force to base an action game around'. Okay, I'm being rather unrelentingly mean about this title right now, let me try and look at some of the positives. Some of the enemy designs look alright, although by the standards of creativity that we usually see from Square Enix partners Outriders' designs do seem comparatively lame; but the screenshots do look colourful, although the gameplay I've seen does look monotonously brown, so I'm conflicted on that front.

I find it hard to point to one thing about this title which I see as really unique or trailblazing, which is weird considering that's the one thing about this game that everybody else can't shut up about. "It's like Destiny, but so much more!" In what way? What are you seeing that I'm not? Am I going completely crazy? Quite possibly. I'm so disengaged by this title that even seeing some actual, honest to goodness, non-scripted gameplay wasn't enough to shake my doubts. Recently we've begun seeing snippets of gameplay courtesy of a press event held by 'People Can Fly', but the product of these sessions has been hours of gameplay that just look dull. I've seen trenches that look like they've been lifted from a World War 1 game, populated with out-of-place alien beings and a janky over-the-shoulder camera that reminds me of 'Binary Domian', in the worst ways. (BD wasn't quite so bad in hindsight.)

Straight away it's clear that 'Outriders' is trying to place itself as the next big 'Live service' that'll overthrow the likes of 'Destiny' to become the next must-have gaming sensation, and maybe that is why I find myself so inexplicably wary of this game. Admittedly, the marketing material has been very careful not to mention anything about a 'persistent world' and the like, but I've seen the lifeless hub world that player's have to scoot through between missions and I'm pretty sure I know what that means. So with this in mind, what does Outsiders do to insist that our gaming free time is best spent with them instead of everyone else? Honestly, nothing. The gunplay and animations seem average, the special effects are uninspired and the enemy variety is lacking. (Although I'd imagine there's a lot of enemies that the team have yet to show us yet, at least I hope there is.) 

If I'm right about this game's place as a 'live service' aspirant, then that means at it's most basic level that the developers have to deliver us a world that we want to explore, and that's something I'm just not feeling yet. With 'Destiny' we were greeted with a visually spectacular world brimming with haunting music and cool futuristic weapons, Anthem nailed the 'wild, hostile world' aesthetic and used the mystery of 'The Anthem of creation' to get people's imagination going and 'The Division' built upon it's 'teamplay' elements to deliver an unrivalled co-op experience. Of course, all those games spectacularly fell on their face for other reasons, but they had that initial 'wow' factor that got you through the door. Outriders borrows the 'search for a new home' plot from 'Mass Effect'; being granted with mysterious powers from 'Destiny'; having to navigate a 'wild, viscous planet' from Anthem; and chasing a mysterious signal from literally every lazy story ever made. Now an optimist might see this and go "Great, this game combines all my favourite things." but I get lost in wondering "But what does this new game do for itself?"

Maybe I'm just being an arse. (I usually am.) Perhaps you've taken a look at this title and thought "That actually looks pretty cool." And if that's the case then I'd encourage you to explain why that is to me, because I'd honestly want to know. I love being excited about upcoming games, even when they are for genres that I don't usually play in, so If someone could show me why I'm wrong about Outriders I would be very grateful to hear it. Until then, however, I'm going to lay down and likely immediately forget everything about this game like I have done several times whilst trying to write this blog. (Maybe I have brain damage?)