Outriders is an upcoming looter shooter from People Can Fly and Square Enix. PCF's experience with games like Bulletstorm and Gears of War: Judgment paved the way for Outriders' overall philosophy and gunplay, but the story behind its four unique classes is interesting as well. In Outriders, players will choose between the close-range assassin-like Trickster class, the close range tanky Devastator, the medium-range crowd controlling Pyromancer, or the long-range jack of all trades Technomancer.
As players begin the game, leaning into these strengths brings a level of familiarity with the class style but also the various mechanics in the game. The idea, however, is that characters can learn how to make these characters fit any playstyle, and in a recent group interview that Game Rant took part in, Outriders director Bartek Kmita and lead game designer Piotr Nowakowski shined some more light on this kind of freedom. And as it turns out, the game didn't originally have classes.
As players advance through the game, these classes are designed to open up and give the player more freedom. By using the various skill trees, weapon mods, and more, players should be able to turn a close-range class like Outriders' Trickster into a long range class and really accomplish any sort of character build the player wants. On this, Kmita said in reference to this player freedom, "
From the beginning, that's why we made classes. In the beginning, there was no classes at all in our game, and people were lost too much. Because we gave too much freedom. So, we decided we need to help new players in the beginning understand what kind of game it is, to help learn the basics. And when you know the basics, you'll go to the more intermediate things, you can change this and this, and this class will be totally different.
As a result, it seems Outriders' classes are designed to give the players the structure they need until they learn the games' systems, in which they'll find more freedom in building characters as they move throughout the story and perhaps into Outriders' Expeditions/endgame content. After all, this freedom comes not just from all the components working together, but even how players fill out their skill tree is meant to change the overall gameplay experiences. Instead of typical classes, Outriders is meant to fulfill a player's fantasy, be that with "more fire or more technology," according to Kmita. This freedom behind the classes sounded appealing, and it was an important aspect of the game's development.
That was our pillar from day one. It was a nightmare from a development point of view, balancing all the things, but as we see players play and build new things, it was worth it.
While players have slightly more than a month to wait before they can get a full taste of this freedom, the demo releases tomorrow, February 25. Hopefully, this gives players enough time to consider their Outriders class for the main game and begin building their character.
Outriders releases April 1 for PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.