Well, I’ve reached the end of the Outriders demo.
Five times now.
I have beaten the demo five different times, once on PC and four times on console with all the classes. I have farmed for an ungodly amount of hours for a single legendary. I have maxed my materials, I have hit the world tier cap and I have gotten “blue builds” that do a ton of work based on the limited selection of armor we have access to.
So, what’s my ultimate verdict on these early hours of Outriders, even though I’ve clearly listed some misgivings?
Potential. A lot of potential, and hopefully one of the very, very few games in this genre that might get a lot of things right at launch.
Simply put I have never seen a demo in this genre that didn’t just give a taste of the story and combat, but also managed to put in a mini farming loop as well to give us a sense at what that will look like. You will rarely ever see games like this let you make “builds” or farm legendaries this early on, but given that it’s such a core part of the endgame, and why people sign up for these games in the first place, I have been deeply impressed with how Outriders has managed to convey that here.
It’s wild to me that blue items, blue items, are giving us perks that would be the equivalent of legendary modifiers in Diablo or exotic modifiers in Destiny. And Epic and Legendary gear only ramp things up further from there. We only have two points in the skill tree and already you can see how that can be used to make some crazy builds down the road. And it’s all so flexible, with free respecing and perks that can be extracted from gear like gems and socketed into other gear on a whim for maximum creativity.
All of this combines to…an incredibly fun combat experience, once you learn not to cower and cover and go take on your enemies face to face, killing to heal in various ways for the different classes. Some classes like Devastator and Trickster make this easier than others, but by the end of the demo, I had geared out my Trickster and Pyromancer where both didn’t need to use cover at max world tier either. And if that system of combat continues (I really hope we’re not forced to hide indefinitely in world tier 15 due to how much damage enemies are doing) that’s going to feel great.
In short, this demo was able to convincingly portray a combat and farming loop that I found instantly addicting, and very much like the game that clearly inspired it, Diablo. Many games have echoes of Diablo and Diablo-like systems in their looting and combat and skill set-up, but this is genuinely the most “Diablo with guns” game I think I’ve ever played.
I will give the story more time. It’s too early to judge it now, and I should talk to more people and see how it pans out before I declare it bad. I did not like the prologue at all and I think it should be cut entirely. And I just don’t think the voice acting is very good, particularly for our character, male or female, which will be a problem if it doesn’t improve.
For me, the two biggest problems with Outriders at the moment are the aesthetic, which consists of relatively bland environments and some truly disgusting looking legendary weapons, but more pressingly the world and its design. I have never seen a more anti-open world in the modern era with loading screens for every door opening and gap jump. The instancing here is extremely poor, and while I know this was done to accommodate co-op, even the developer itself has said on the record it’s a lackluster solution, and something they’ll continue to work on.
While yes, I also spent 100+ hours with Anthem and Avengers, so saying I will do that with Outriders is not really a big deal, I will say this shows more promise than either of those did early on, at least in terms of the loot itself, which is the core of these games. And Outriders does not have the added pressure of being say, the only thing megadeveloper BioWare was working on, or a live-service game Crystal Dynamics said would last for years. It just has to be good at launch and if there’s enough interest, maybe it gets some DLC or something. No pressure. And that seems to have helped the game at its core.
We are a month away from official launch, and I know I’m going to get the itch to go back and farm the rest of the 9 legendaries I’m missing, even if world tier 5 drop rates are hilarious (RIP to my friend Chevy who has gotten 1 in 42 hours). In general, this demo has gotten me excited for Outriders, and what it does right blows past what it appears to get wrong.
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