In its personal phrases, darkish and gritty sci-fi like Outriders is what Polish studio People Can Fly does finest.
On a dystopian mission to discover a golden world for humanity away from a dying Earth, your workforce of Outriders settles on the planet of Enoch, solely to be pushed again right into a 30-year cryosleep after a run-in with the enigmatic Anomaly.
You wake to seek out Enoch ravaged by continuous conflict, and that your encounter with the Anomaly has left you Altered – capable of management time, area, and parts like fireplace and electrical energy.
“We just wanted to tell a mature story,” Szymon Barchan, lead narrative designer at People Can Fly, says.
“Like in Bulletstorm it was a little more funny, so we’ve already delivered something like that. Now we want to show we can make a mature story too.”
“It’s just always in our DNA; this brutal approach,” Rafal Pawlowski, lead stage designer on Outriders, continues.
“Many of us really love RPG games. It was our goal to make a game merging those two genres: RPG and shooter. As you can see, we set that challenge for ourselves.”
As a mission, Outriders has been in full growth for 4 years since People Can Fly’s break up from Epic Games in 2015. The Warsaw-based studio co-developed Gears of War: Judgement with Epic, in addition to engaged on the primary iterations of Fortnite.
Now unbiased, however working with Square Enix to publish Outriders, there was at all times an urge for food at People Can Fly to return to constructing its personal IP.
“It was always there,” Pawlowski says of when People Can Fly knew it needed to make its personal sequence.
“We wanted to create this game we are presenting now really – the vision was very clear from day one. Co-op, RPG, shooter. Dark, desperate, sci-fi universe. Those were part of the vision from the beginning.”
“And gunplay, awesome gunplay with skills,” Barchan provides.
“Those were the cornerstones for this project. We wanted to do our own IP and have control and give it direction. We showed it to Square Enix, they love the idea and said: ‘go for it!’ That’s how it finally started.”
“We had the cooperation with Epic on all our projects going back to Painkiller, Bulletstorm, Gears of War: Judgement and Fortnite even,” Pawlowski explains. “All these experiences had been essential for us and possibly even helped us to make that call.
“This is the most ambitious project to date for People Can Fly.”
Although the workforce at People Can Fly is making an attempt to place collectively an efficient story, they’re doing it with a create-a-character. It’s one thing that labored properly within the Mass Effect sequence, from which Outriders appears to attract numerous inspiration, however remains to be a tough scenario to drag off.
“When it comes to the player character, we always wanted players to have their own Outriders story,” Pawlowski says. “When you choose your path and create your character, you evolve with the world.”
“It is a challenge,” Barchan explains. “But we actually labored arduous on all the opposite characters you meet within the game. They’re not simple, black-and-white, so you’ve gotten this capturing and abilities gameplay, however we additionally wish to present you a narrative.
“With cooperation between telling the story throughout the levels and game progression, we worked really closely on having the environment merge with the story. There was some iteration obviously, but we wanted to create this big universe that is really living, takes you in, and you can feel the surroundings.”
Outriders is about to launch on current-gen {hardware}, PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC round Holiday 2020.
The release date was pushed back to better coincide with new consoles from Sony and Microsoft.
For our first impressions of Outriders, check out our hands-on preview, here.
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