On February 25, the Outriders demo landed on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. The demo is a huge slice of the full Outriders game, offering the opening chapter and first three hours or so of the game, with all four classes available to try out, single-player, co-op, and the option to transfer progress to the full game. It’s a hefty appetiser for the full course, which arrived on April 1.
As it’s the start of the game, there’s a good focus on story, as the world of Enoch – and humanity’s struggle to colonise it – is introduced to the world. But what were the events that lead to the start of the game?
In a brand-new animated trailer, we can see how the Outriders journey began, as we follow their expedition to Enoch from Earth.
And this is where the demo – and start of the game – picks up.
The Outriders demo is tremendous in terms of its scale and scope, and so we wanted to talk to Bartek Kmita, Creative Director at People Can Fly, about how it went down and how it’s helping in the run up to the game’s full release on April 1.
Toby Palm: At the time of writing, the Outriders Demo has had over two million downloads. What’s been your reaction to the reception of the demo?
Bartek Kmita: It was a real rollercoaster of emotions to be honest. At first, I was excited that so many people wanted to play as soon as the demo was live, but this was followed by a brief panic-moment when servers were not scaling fast enough. When the server situation was resolved we started to see first impressions of the game itself, and the whole team has been watching as many streams, Let’s Plays and think-pieces as we can – it’s been amazing to see what everybody thinks so far. In the end, I’m extremely happy that so many people played the demo and that they are enjoying it.
TP: Some players have managed to rack up, 20+ hours in the game. Several players on the Outriders Discord have played for over 100 hours! Does this surprise you, and what does it say about the size of the full game?
BK: It’s very encouraging for us because a huge, sprawling RPG journey was in essence of our designs. To give people a game with almost endless possibilities around how to build your character and make the whole process of character development as satisfying as possible. And looking now at how people are playing the demo, and how they experiment with all the loot they found gives us a lot of satisfaction. I hope that after the full release, when our players get their hands on all our toys, they will stay