I yelled at Outriders.
The Outriders demo is out and it is…well it is something. Once you get past the bit where the servers were offline part of the day and there are some missions that are completely broken, the underlying game is fine. Just fine. Won’t be making any GOTY lists I’m sure. It feels like a relic from 10 years ago but as a fan of mindless looter shooters and an overbearing masochist I will probably end up buying this day one. Because if I hate anything it’s myself.
But I yelled at Outriders a few times while playing and it wasn’t because of the glitches. The pacing of the first hour really annoyed me. Maybe I am spoiled by games that integrate storytelling into their gameplay. Maybe it’s just the hundreds of hours of playing Destiny 2 and other looter shooters. Maybe it’s Maybelline.
For the first hour or so everything is done through thirty second jabs. Walk around for 30 seconds, get a cutscene for several minutes. Walk around, get a cutscene. Turn the page, wash your hands. I just want to play the game. Just let me play the game! There is no reason that Outriders needs this many inconsequential cutscenes when the dialogue could just be funneled in while I’m running around. The only reason I powered through this in the demo was out of knowing my progress would transfer over to the full game.
The game shoves all of this set up in a cheap feeling way to invoke emotions when it kills off most of the prologue characters. The attempt fell flat on its ass for me since by that point I was so frustrated by the constant interruptions and the fact I’d barely touched my character that I just wanted to get on with it. Especially if one of those connections is “I’m taking a selfie so you can relate to me, player.”
It didn’t work.
MMO Fallout 