Games

Well friends, I have reached the end of the storyline in Outriders. I struggled a bit with the final boss and dealt with it by lowering the difficulty and just steamrolling it. This is apparently maybe something specific to my class because my friend Tipa said she had no real issues with it on Trickster. Also she had been farming gear quite a bit so was probably way better geared than I was at the same time. I was wearing mostly blues when I finished the campaign because that is ultimately what I had on hand at the time. I didn’t spend much time farming because it seemed somewhat pointless until I had hit the level cap.

Outriders is this weird blend of Destiny and Diablo 3 and there are a lot of parallels between this game and those two titles. However it seems like it has learned from all of the systems involved the traditional loot grind game model and evolved them quite a bit. For example I’ve had several Legendaries drop, but for me… I largely viewed them as a vehicle to get Tier 3 mods and ended up deconstructing them all so far. Here is an example of the difference between a Tier 2 and a Tier 3 mod. Minefields II causes an explosion of grenades to spawn when you kill an enemy. Minefields III however causes this same effect to trigger anytime you crit an enemy and it can happen every 3 seconds. So this goes from being an extremely effective means of trash wave clear… to an effective means of fighting pretty much anything and STILL being able to do wave clear.

Leveling up Epic and Legendary gear is extremely cost prohibitive, but slotting those same abilities in other items is extremely cheap. So one of my core goals has been to try and collect every mod I come across so that I can shift up my gear as needed. This process works much like the Enchanter in Diablo 3, in that you can only modify a single mod on an item… but unlike the enchanter it isn’t a random roll and instead just allows you to choose whatever mod you want in a given slot. Putting Legendary Minefield III on a blue quality gun cost roughly 400 iron which seems extremely reasonable for the significant power bump that gives you. Granted you are missing a full mod slot that Epic or Legendary gear would have, but for now I am making do with this.

I’ve officially entered the end game at this point since I wrapped up the campaign last night. I am one level away from the cap and from there it is only a matter of leveling my loot up to higher tiers. I believe the highest loot level in game right now is 50 which is a long ways off from where I am currently in progression. When you finish the campaign this game mode called Expeditions unlocks and for the most part these are a weird blend of a Destiny Strike and a World of Warcraft Mythic+ Dungeon. You are presented with a mission and you are timed while completing it. The faster you make it through the better the rewards that spawn at the end. I did not do so well on my first expedition but walked away with something silly like fifteen blues. I imagine those turn into purples and maybe even oranges if you manage to push through in time.

In expedition mode you are presented with a new world map and around it are various locations to reclaim resources from drop pods. It seems like at any given time there are going to be at least 3 different activities available. When I beat one another one showed up on my map, allowing you some freedom of choice as you move around the map knocking them out. It was a little frantic going in solo, but I am sure this is the sort of thing that would be great with friends, especially if you have some synergy between your builds. The one I ran was a standard kill stuff then do a thing and keep repeating this until you win.

It seems that the expeditions have their own leveling system called Challenge Tiers and that the World Tier from before has no impact on these missions. Continuing my converting things into Diablo or Destiny terms… this appears to be the equivalent of running Greater Rifts. The key difference here being that it is through these expeditions that you unlock the higher gear ratings. Challenge Tier 15 for example drops those item level 50 pieces that we will eventually be chasing. Similar to Diablo it sounds like there are absolutely times when you could get stuck in this progression because you lack the quality of gear to progress or your player build is not as optimal as it should be.

Another thing that I am finding out this morning, is that there are apparently repeatable quest chains that will reward a legendary each time you make it all the way through them. I am probably going to do a bit of farming in this department to at least complete a set of the various mods. Supposedly you can drop down to World Tier 1 and burn through some of these quest chains quick given that the only thing that actually matters is the final turn in, which will give you an on gear level legendary pick. For example I picked up The Landlubber last night which I immediately deconstructed to give me access to Legendary Minefield III that I was talking about earlier.

Pretty much every bit of content in the game is repeatable, and as such you can figure out what activity makes you the happiest and farm it indefinitely. I’ve heard folks have had good luck with the “Nature Calls” questline… aka the dude stuck in the outhouse. It is pretty quick to complete and involves a large number of captains in a very short period of time. I’ve run it a few times and didn’t get spectacular drops but I can probably keep bumping up the world tier in order to increase the drop rates and make it worth my time. Now essentially I need to finish leveling the rest of my final level… and then shift focus to gearing.

Morning friends. I have been playing an excessive amount of Outriders over the last few days. I started the game a bit late but have been picking up pace, largely as the story has grabbed me. At this point I am sitting at level 27 of 30 and I believe that I am nearing the end of the main story. The game could of course throw me a monkey wrench at the end but it seems like I have more or less reached the end of the map and also nearing the source of the signal. I would have kept pushing forward last night but I effectively ran out of time and had to be up and around fairly early this morning.

There are a lot of times someone will say a game has “Adult Themes” and what they mean by that is an extreme amount of sexualization. However there is another side of that coin, and that is the side that Outriders lands on. This game deals with the horrors that humanity can enact upon itself and is a slide show of our base instincts. In many ways it reminds me of the early days of The Walking Dead, back when the show still had a point. We have this clear mission… to venture forth into the unknown and find a signal that has been broadcasting since humanity reached planetfall. On this journey a lot of bad things happen and some of them will feel like a sucker punch… and others will feel futile and pointless.

In a game like Diablo 3, each act of the game has a base of operations where all of the infrastructure required to play the game exists. In Outriders this “camp” travels with you as you move across the map. The central conceit is that you have one of the only vehicles that is “analog” enough to withstand the electrical interference brought on by the anomaly. Each time you stop in a new area you set up a base camp until it is time to move the vehicle forward again. This is a bit of weird concept to get used to because, each of these areas ultimately represents a sub-region with its own travel system and then to traverse the larger world map it requires you to pack up camp and move the vehicle again.

Along the way you gather up a group of companions that will end up being more permanent fixtures in the story. I wasn’t sure what I would think about them but I have grown to love them all in their own way. In a lot of ways Outriders feels like an alternate universe versions of Mass Effect Andromeda. Both games have a similar focus on exploring new regions and finding a new home for humanity. In Andromeda a lot of things go wrong… but in Outriders every conceivable thing goes wrong and ends up with humanity mired in an endless war for decades over the few resources that are left. This isn’t high minded exploration… this is slow trench warfare fought in inches not miles.

One of the big things leading up to the launch of the game were all the farming that folks did in order to try and amass a vault full of legendary weapons. I feel like this was largely futile because upgrading legendary and even epic quality weapons is a losing battle. I tried for a bit to keep upgrading the weapon on the far right because it is by far my favorite item I have gotten in the game. The combination of perks was just amazing… and I have held onto it hoping that some day the resources will be plentiful enough to push it all the way to the level cap. The legendaries however… I am mostly holding onto them for deconstruction fodder in order to learn the mods they contain.

These instead are my workhorses that I have carried forward in the game. The sub machinegun I found as a random drop that just happened to have burning bullets… which are extremely powerful. The second is one of the preorder weapons and in both cases I have leveled them forward each time I dinged and was able to push them up one more level. Thankfully I have managed to maintain a good stash of resources and have been able to pull up my gear one level at a time as I progressed through the game. You can effectively do this with blues… but the purples I get I just vault for later deconstruction whenever they cease being useful.

In many ways Outriders is the strange mutant child of Destiny and Diablo 3 and because of that it is directly in my wheelhouse. I really enjoy the gameplay of Devastator with its up close and personal… kill all the things to heal style of interactions. I look forward to seeing what the further gameplay is like once I have finished the main story and capped my character out at thirty. I know at some point I will have to start leveling up my world rank again, but I am largely focused on doing that once I have hit cap. Similarly there are a lot of hunts that I have not partaken in, in part because they seem to reward purple or better items and I wanted to wait until closer to the level cap before doing a lot of these.

It is a really great game, but I still feel like I need to keep warning you… that whatever you think of as a “dark game”, this game is going to keep getting darker. The blend of science fiction and horror reminds me quite a bit of Event Horizon, so that if you were cool with that movie then you might be just fine with this game. Think back through history at some of the greatest atrocities of mankind… and that will also prepare you for the mindset that this game forces you to experience. There are absolutely going to be some folks that just nope out of the game at various points and that is okay. There are moments that make The Division seem cheery. At some point I will do a more holistic overview of the game, but for now I am still engaged and nearing what I think is the end.