Although only a demo, Outrider’s latest sampling of gameplay seemingly has an unlimited amount of cutscenes. From teleporting to even just jumping bridges, the game has a 30-second scene for almost all actions that take more than just sprinting. It may appear as an unintentional mishap, but the creators at People Can Fly claim the decision to add these in was mainly due to playtesters not understanding where they were in the sandbox looter shooter.
“That was only because people in playtests said, ‘oh, where am I? Why was I teleported?’ So we needed to have these cutscenes,” creative director Bartek Kmita told Eurogamer. He later added that the team originally planned on having simple fade-to-black scenes before hearing feedback.Â
That doesn’t mean they still wouldn’t be as long as they currently are if they decided to opt for a basic loading screen. Lead designer Piotr Nowakowski reasoned that the loading amid these scenes consistently syncs all players to one lobby.
“I’m the person who’s triggering the travel, so I want to jump to the other side and start a battle on the opposite side,” Nowakowski hypothesized.
“Let’s imagine one of my friends is next to the city, to Rift Town. The second one is traveling along the main path towards the enemies there. I cannot just go there and trigger three different areas, because it will not work in a game without dedicated servers.
Kmita ensured that later portions of Outriders’ full game are “more consistent” but also indicated that further improvements will likely be seen after its official launch.
Outriders will officially land on PlayStation and Xbox consoles, along with PC and Stadia, on April 1. Its demo is currently available for the platforms mentioned above, with it allowing players to carry their progression to the full experience upon release.
