Monthly Archives: March 2021

Blog: Crowdfunder – 03/31/21

Crowdfunding can be a beautiful thing that allows people to directly support the ideas and products they believe in, giving folks the chance to truly vote with their wallets. Aside from the dystopian nightmare of people crowdfunding their medical and legal bills through services like GoFundMe, as well as the vaporware projects that either never make it to market or are just flat out scams, crowdfunding is a great concept. It’s also a really good way to get me to spend even more money on tabletop role-playing game systems and paraphernalia than I already do. So here are some of the money-pits that I’ve recently tossed my cash into that luckily for you and your wallet, are either finished or about to finish up their funding campaigns. You’re welcome.

DUNGEON ALCHEMIST

https://thebonusworld.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/52597-b657f7_5324401a31fd4445827ee97c35d14a6cmv2.gif

Let’s start with the project that started my descent into crowdfunding hell. Dungeon Alchemist is an AI powered 3D map making tool that sells itself on its ease of use and quick automation. The idea is that you draw the size of a room, select a theme, and the software auto-populates it with various flotsam and jetsam that make sense within said theme. Smartly, the software will absolutely allow you to get a bit more granular and select specific items too place as you please, as well as adjust its size and rotation, allowing for a fairly unique map. Or at least, that’s what the pitch is.

And the pitch is very good, especially when you see how much money this thing has raked in. The original goal was set at €45,000, or about $53,000, but by the campaign’s conclusion it had raised a total of €2,462,821 or about $2,886,020, easily blowing past all stretch goals including the final one set at €1,000,000. That’s an insane amount of money and pressure to suddenly have to grapple with, and I hope the team behind Dungeon Alchemist are able to live up to the expectations of their 57,000+ backers. Luckily, everyone is super understanding and compassionate on the internet.

LET’S ROLE

Despite owning a king’s bounty worth of materials on one of the most popular virtual tabletop (VTT) platforms out there, Roll20, I found myself wanting more than their hit-or-miss approach to basic functionality like a fucking pause button for music tracks and their servers that work only when they feel like it. There are other services I could utilize, but Let’s Role has a style to it that really caught my eye. From rolling dice to YouTube integration and even a customizable hot-bar to make it feel more like you’re playing a video game, Let’s Role has some cool functionality that I’m very into. Being in the alpha, I can say that it’s still very janky and needs some more features and bug fixes in order to be something I’d use instead of Roll20, but it’s still very much in active development with a long way to go before its official release.

While I’m very hopeful for Let’s Role to become an actual competitor in the space, the big question for me revolves around external integration. I need a VTT that is simple too use and has the books and modules I use to be fully integrated, and they’ve mentioned that there will be some of that, but to what extent I can’t quite say. If they can provide me with the books and modules that I frequently use in a more accessible and serviceable way than Roll20 offers, then I think it could become my new home for my group’s game nights. Here’s hoping.

DUNGEON MASTER’S LITTLE BLACK BOOK

I’m a big fan of having tactile, physical references when I play any TTRPG. Even throughout the pandemic where playing online was a necessity and not just a preference, I still have my books and notebooks all within arms reach, usually opting to use those instead of online resources if I can. What I like about Dungeon Master’s Little Black Book is how straightforward and useful it appears to be. It is just a handy guide filled with various tables for me to utilize whenever I need to throw something interesting at my players, which is something I could definitely make great use out of. It also helped that the physical books were priced very reasonably, making supporting the project a no-brainer.

STONETOP

Stonetop is a game system that’s been built off of the excellent Powered by the Apocalypse system set in what they call, “an Iron Age that never was.” I really like the PbtA system and have actually had some successful games using a variant of it called Monster of the Week, so I knew what to expect when reading up on Stonetop. If you’re looking for a new game system that isn’t very rules heavy and relies more heavily on role-playing and collaborative storytelling than anything else, I recommend it. But Stonetop posies itself as a bit more of a grounded experience that doesn’t assume that all the players are playing as adventurers, rather, the conceit is that all of the players are from the same village and are protecting it from external threats. Meanwhile, the players will have manage the village itself through fortifying, expanding, collecting resources for it and more. It seems to be solving the classic D&D problem of having just a bunch of homeless, wandering murderers for hire, with no connection to any particular place from the outset.

I’ve always enjoyed the idea of a campaign that was less about adventurers seeking another adventure, and more about normal people stepping up or being thrust into the action. That’s kind of how my current D&D campaign is structured and it’s been a great time for everyone involved, so having a system and setting embracing that from the start is very enticing to me. I like what Stonetop is pitching to me and I like the fact that I already have some familiarity with the system itself, hopefully making it an easy transition for my players and I once we wrap up our seemingly never ending campaign.

So yeah, that’s nearly half of the projects I’ve recently thrown money at because I have no self control whatsoever. But I actually like the things that I’m supporting and really hope they turn out well, but if they don’t, I know what I signed up for. And for those who are curious, yes, all of the other products I didn’t mention here that I’ve supported were also TTRPG related. They were mostly just source books and modules for me to utilize, or in reality, just more books for me to admire the spines of as they collect dust on my shelves.

Review: Adios

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I don’t know if I’ve ever actually experienced anything quite like what I did when I played through Adios. I don’t mean to imply that I was awestruck by it by any means, because I genuinely found it to be an incredibly underwhelming game to play. Yet despite its numerous mechanical shortcomings, this narrative-focused, first-person adventure game delivered a really impactful story that left me feeling pretty raw emotionally.

It’s hard to talk about Adios without wandering directly into spoiler territory because the game is only about an hour or so long, so I’m just going to talk about the first 5 minutes of the game to avoid anything too spoilery. The store page for Adios reads, “A pig farmer decides he no longer wants to dispose of bodies for the mob. What follows is a discussion between him and his would-be killer,” which was a pretty interesting concept that was the catalyst for me playing it at all.

The first thing you do in Adios is check your journal while sitting on your porch. Inside, the lone entry essentially says to “tell him that you’re done.” A white van pulls up and you’re thrust into the next scene where you’re taking wrapped bloody packages out of the back of said van, and chucking them into the pig pen alongside your would-be killer. What follows is a series of conversations and interactive vignettes with you and your would-be killer about their lives and experiences. It turns out that both of these characters have been doing this for so long that they’ve become close friends, a fact that looms over every conversation you have together throughout the day.

Your would-be killer is trying to convince your character to not stop doing what they’ve been doing for so long because the consequences are admittedly pretty bad. He spends the entire day with you trying to remind you of all of these reasons to stay and stick it out without explicitly ever saying that it’s the worst and final decision that you’ll ever make. Throughout the game you’ll learn more about both characters and their personal lives, while they both try to walk a delicate line between work and pleasure. It’s one of the few games that’s really emotionally impacted me, with the last one being The Bonus World’s very first Game of the Year back in 2017, Night in the Woods.

What made Night in the Woods great was a multitude of elements coming together in a well-rounded experience that had an incredible narrative woven throughout it. Adios on the other hand, is done a gigantic disservice by even being a video game. For how good the story, writing and acting can feel at times, they’re all unfortunately wrapped up in something that can barely be called a game, let alone a fun one. The structure of Adios is that you have a few locations of interest on your farm that trigger a scene for you to experience. In that scene you might need to do a mindless and mechanically uninteresting task like give a horse an apple while the two characters reminisce about the past. You finish listening to the conversation and move to the next scene. Most of these conversations are really well done, providing insight into the characters while uncovering their motivations, desires and general outlook on life. These are really the star of the show, so if listening to people talk isn’t your thing, then Adios has very little else to offer.

But these little vignettes you experience might not have anything for you to do in them at all. Sometimes you can just put the controller down as dialogue happens, only to occasionally pick a “dialogue choice,” all of which either don’t change anything about the story, or are grayed out for some reason. My guess is that there isn’t actually a way to pick those dialogue options, because they usually are things you’d rather say but your character can’t bring themselves to actually do. In this case, I thought that was very effective, but it doesn’t change the fact that most of these vignettes have you do a lot of sitting and listening.

When I bought Adios I thought it would be this little life-simulation kind of game with a heavy emphasis on the story. I wasn’t expecting anything revolutionary mechanically, but it cannot be overstated just how bad playing the game itself is at times. The first issue has to do with the presentation of Adios in general. From far away, the sweeping vistas of houses and farms in the distance have this painterly quality to them that I can appreciate. Up close however, things look a lot muddier. Look, I’m not one of those people who needs great graphics for everything especially if you’re very clearly trying to tell a compelling story over having dazzling visuals, but if that’s truly the case, maybe the character models should animate a touch better, or at the very least have any form of lip-syncing going on. Instead you’ve just got these weird caricatures that flap their gums at you while saying some heavy shit.

I don’t know what resources were available to the development team so I don’t want to sound too harsh, but it was truly disheartening to find this really engaging story completely mired by uninteresting game mechanics and iffy visuals. The worst part was that there were moments where I’d start to zone out while the characters were having these really intense conversations. I think Adios would be infinitely better if it were a short film or animated feature, because being a game doesn’t really enhance the story in any way, and in most cases detracts from an otherwise excellent experience.

But all of these issues with the gameplay were never enough to stop me from seeing Adios through to the end, and I’m happy I pushed forward. The ending of the game and the events directly leading into it were particularly gut-wrenching and left me feeling a bit teary-eyed when it was all over. Of course it wont affect everyone the same way it did me, but that should be a result of the story not resonating with them, not the uninspired and boring gameplay they have to endure.

Despite all of my criticisms, I do think Adios is worth experiencing. I don’t know that I’d suggest you run out and pay $20 bucks for an hour long story, but if you have the desire and ability, I say go for it. Otherwise, I’d say you should wait for a sale to play Adios, but either way, you should play Adios at some point.

Blog: Poor Planning – 03/24/21

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Over the past month or two, I’ve purchased a handful of video games that I’ve been dying to play for one reason or another. Often these are games that I just never had the time to get around to when they released but decided with this lull in the release calendar (at least in my eyes), I could finally see what all the fuss was about. The problem is, despite how much I enjoyed any single game that I purchased, I eventually bounced off of each of them and returned to doing nothing instead.

It started with me buying the “limited run” of Nintendo’s Super Mario 3D All Stars, a collection of classic 3D Mario games that has two really good 3D Mario games, and Super Mario Sunshine, a bad game included within. I started playing through Super Mario 64 and was having a blast. Aside from the camera control being shitty and some of the movement stuff not being as tight as I remember, Super Mario 64 is still one hell of a game.

*The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening – Nintendo*

Then I fell away from it when my copy of Luigi’s Mansion 3 showed up. Sorry “classic” 3D Mario games, but now it’s Luigi’s turn to shine… for a couple of levels before I dropped off of it. I don’t know why I bounced off of it so soon considering I was really enjoying the game itself. There’s way more dialogue and stuff that stops you from actually playing the game in Luigi’s Mansion 3 that I could’ve done without, but I still really had a good time with it and would like to see it through to its conclusion.

But how could I keep playing Luigi’s Mansion 3 when Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury just got released? Not only do I feel like I have to prioritize it because it came out this calendar year and it might be relevant to write something about it, but it also has one of my favorite 3D Mario games of all time inside of it along with this new open-world Mario game too. Sorry Luigi, but your brother won again. And to be fair, I annihilated the Bowser’s Fury portion of the package. Meanwhile, my partner and I are slowly working our way through 3D World itself, but I was also playing through 3D World on my own. But alas, that save file is just going to build up a thick film of digital dust from now on because I’ve finally decided to pull the trigger on a game I’ve desperately wanted to try for a while now.

That’s right, fuck off Mario, because Link is here in The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening remake, and boy does it look pretty. Also, and this is something I’ll probably have to go into at some other point in time, but I’ve never really played many Zelda games, especially a vast majority of the top-down ones. It’s a big hole in my gaming portfolio, something that I looked to fix with trying this adorable looking remake. And hot damn is it good. Well, minus the poor performance on the Switch. But outside of that, I’m having a really good time with it and… it’s been 3 weeks since I’ve touched it.

Well I need to figure something out soon because New Pokemon Snap, yes, it’s really called that, comes out at the end of April and I am very much interested in playing it. But there is a fear that comes along with desire, something you might have picked up on while reading this blog. I don’t know if it’s something about playing on a handheld that just doesn’t provide me with a lot of motivation to play through the entirety of a game or if there’s something else going on, but the idea of dropping another 60 bucks on something I’ll play 4 hours of doesn’t seem like the best choice for me. I think I have to make myself earn the right to buy a new game by forcing myself to play through something I already own. That definitely isn’t going to lead to me just hating video games altogether or anything, so I won’t even worry about it.

Blog: St. Drizzt’s Day – 03/17/21

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Well it’s Saint Patrick’s Day already, which means it’s time to go out to the pub with the lads and knock back a couple of brews and eat your body weight in bar nachos. Oh wait, it’s a pandemic still, don’t do that. I can’t say I’ve ever really celebrated St. Patrick’s day in any real capacity at any point in my life, and this year doesn’t seem like the best time to start. So instead I’ll just sit here and talk about an upcoming game that has nothing to do with Ireland or even the color green at all. We’re talking about the upcoming cooperative action game, Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance.

If you haven’t heard about it yet, Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance looks to be a 4 player cooperative action game in the vein of something like Vermintide 2. The way that Vermintide 2 was structured had you and your friends in this hub world where you could craft new items, level up your character, and check on your challenge progress, before you all embarked on a mission to kill a bunch of rat-folks with knives and gather the precious XP inside their bodies. Mind you, this is all me speculating, but it sure seems like Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance is going to handle things in a very similar way.

I’m going off of Polygon.com’s hands on experience with Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance, and they specifically call out how the game itself is geared towards co-op play, with difficulties scaling based on how many players are involved. The article mentions the core loop of the game appears to be about replaying levels on harder difficulties, gathering loot, and leveling up each character class according to whichever skill tree you choose to follow. How much variance there will actually be between different skill trees remains to be seen.

Personally, I would’ve liked the ability to just create a character instead of choosing existing ones, because that’s kind of the whole draw of a Dungeon’s & Dragons product in my eyes. To me that just seems kind of antithetical to what the biggest TTRPG is all about, but even if I can’t create my own character I’m sure it’ll be fine. It also makes sense when you consider that the PS2 era Dark Alliance games also only let you play as pre-made characters, so there is some precedent there.

The only real hangup I have with this early showing of Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance, is that I never really got that into Vermintide 2 or games like it, but I really do enjoy Dungeons & Dragons, so that might be enough to keep me interested. Either way, Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance is coming out for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC and the next generation consoles as well on June 22nd for the extremely attractive price of $40.

Blog: 3 Years Strong – 03/10/21

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Almost three years ago to the day I launched this silly little blog, unaware that it would go on for as long as it has. When I launched the blog itself, it was mostly a way to just get some consistent content up on the main page to supplement the glut of videos we made. Oh how hard the pendulum has swung in the other direction however, with several different features and articles existing in stark contrast to the zero amount of videos we make. While having to write something every week for the past 3 years might sound like a burden, it’s actually been exactly what I needed to keep me going creatively.

The blog really has been this cathartic hobby of mine that I sometimes wish I didn’t have to do. You might say, “but you don’t have to do it,” to which I’d reply, “If I don’t do this I’ll die.” Maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but at this point I really can’t imagine not writing a blog post every week. It’s become such a staple of my routine and such an important hobby of mine that even when I’m at my laziest and don’t feel like doing it, I know that I’d hate myself if I skipped a week.

I’ve gone through long stretches of time where my motivation to do anything creative was basically nonexistent, but having the self-imposed dead-line and sense of necessity with the blog has always kept me from just spiraling out of control. Especially during the pandemic it’s been incredibly easy to lose track of the days and time in general, but having that weekly goal where I have to write something has kept me from just losing weeks of my life to nothingness.

The blog is very special to me, but even I can see that I’ve kind of reduced its relevance thanks to other features I’ve introduced on this site. Talking about a game on a blog might seem like a wasted opportunity for a Gut Check, or talking about D&D should probably be confined to a The Master of Disaster feature. It’s become increasingly difficult to delineate what makes for a blog versus one of those features, but that just means the blog gets to be about wider topics that aren’t just about video games and TTRPGs or whatever.

The important thing to remember is that I love doing all of this, not just the blog but The Bonus World in general. The blog has been the most enduring creative thing I’ve ever done, easily outlasting any other written feature and probably and video thing in my past, and I don’t see it ending anytime soon. I truly appreciate your continued support and engagement with the blog and The Bonus World at large, and I hope you continue to enjoy it as time goes on. Thank you.

The Master of Disaster: Alternative Thinking – 19

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One of the best things about tabletop role-playing games is just how much versatility a player has in any given situation. Any good GM should be able to accommodate any reasonable request from their players, but the real fun come in when a player completely sideswipes you with some genuine shenanigans. Having to adjust and improvise on-the-fly is an absolute thrill that really tests my abilities to honor the request of the player while adhering to the rules and story. It’s a tough thing to develop, but it’s a necessary skill to have when running a game.

During one of my first ever games I ran, the first thing that a player of mine did was just say they were doing something, which in this case was taking a pouch of gold off of an NPC. My first reaction was to prompt them for a sleight of hand check which seemed pretty reasonable in my mind, but then they clarified and said “no, I’m just taking it.” They made it clear that there was no intent for being sneaky or surreptitious at all, they just literally wanted to take a thing that belonged to another character without any resistance. Knowing what I know now, I shouldn’t have relented and instead made them roll a contested strength check or just tell them that wasn’t going to fly without a check, but when you’re starting out you just want to please everyone and let them run free.

Don’t do that. While it may seem counterintuitive to tell your players they can’t do something, sometimes you need to remind them that TTRPGs, while a great forum for wild improvisation, are by and large very rules-heavy games. It isn’t about just saying “no” to your players, rather you need to refocus their energy so they can work within the guard rails of whatever system you’re playing. Saying “no” repeatedly to a player might result in them just checking out entirely or feeling as if they’re being picked on, so usually I try to encourage my players to try a different tactic or work with them to accomplish whatever ridiculous thing they’re trying to do.

Because I play with my friends, there’s a built in level of respect between all of us. They know that I’m trying to give them as much flexibility as I can without completely throwing out the rule book, and I know that they’re going to respect me when I tell them that there’s going to be a couple of extra steps required in the insane shit they’re trying to pull off. I ultimately want their characters to succeed in whatever they’re doing, but that doesn’t mean I have to make it easy on them and let them dictate what rules are and aren’t enforced.

There are plenty of ways that you can help work with your players to accomplish their goals, but for my money I’ve found that just asking my players if they have any abilities that would aid them in their wild requests is something I’ve found not only reinforces the rules of the game, but makes sure they’re paying attention to their character’s unique abilities. But lets say you wanted to be fun for once in your life and just let the players have a good time, well that’s when luck checks, high dice checks and even some deus ex machina can help you loosen up.

Honestly, that’s kind of the secret. If the players want to do a near impossible thing, let them try it and set the DC at 30 and give them disadvantage if you have to. They’ll probably fail miserably if they actually try which could lead to even more hilarious situations. Or maybe they’ll succeed, which might ruin an encounter, but it’ll be a moment they talk about forever. In my experience, I’ve never been so happy to get fucked over by the dice thanks to a rogue natural 20, because the players eat that shit up.

Allowing your players to try something rather than just shutting them down is something that I truly believe you have to do in order to foster a positive gaming environment. If you don’t let your players have fun, they’ll eventually stop caring and stop playing, but if you let them get away with anything then you’ll probably want to stop playing. Having been on both sides of that divide I can attest to how difficult striking that balance can be, but I assure you that striving for that balance is well worth the effort.

Blog: Please Make This – 03/03/21

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They say there’s a product for everything, right? If that’s the case, then where the hell is the asynchronous Dungeons & Dragons game that I’ve been imagining in my head for the past few years? Surely I can’t be expected to go out and develop a video game on my own, so I’ll do the only thing I know how to do decently and write an article complaining about it. So let’s talk about the D&D game that should exist by now, but miraculously doesn’t.

Without any real understanding as to how video games are made or what market trends look like, I feel like there’s a massive gap in the market for a video game to capitalize on the ever expanding tabletop role playing game market that’s desperately looking to be filled. I guess this all stems from my frustration with virtual tabletop (VTT) programs like Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds. Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely thankful that these services exist, but some of them can be an absolute hassle to use reliably. Sometimes everything works without any issue, but other times you’re plagued with connectivity issues, or some compendium sharing option is acting weirdly because there are 4 ways to enable the same setting but you didn’t choose the right one. Hell, certain VTTs can’t even be bothered to put a fucking pause button on their music players. Add in the player frustration of having character sheets not updating properly, or certain spells just not working within the confines of the VTT itself, and you’ve got a situation where every session feels like a roll of the dice.

What if there was something else that actually worked consistently, was accessible, easily available and didn’t require too much heavy lifting from either GM or player? There are a lot of books, software and services that all claim to cut down on the prep time for a session or streamline the experience in some way, but they don’t necessarily scratch my particular itch. The two main angles of approach for this concept revolve around using phones and tablets for the players and GM respectively, or something involving a console and smartphones to achieve something similar.

I know there are ways to accomplish this right now, but in my mind I just picture my friends gathered around the TV while I flip through maps, distribute art handouts, and engage in combat with them from the comfort and privacy of my tablet without any additional software or hardware. The GM could have an app that streams to a Roku or Chromecast that only displays what the GM wants the players to see while simultaneously giving them a fully feature VTT to use on their tablet or phone. You could even accomplish a similar thing with a console and some smart phones too.

An existing alternative to this currently exists in the form of games that have campaign creator modes in them, but as a GM, I haven’t really found one that worked for me. Also, if a game like Baldur’s Gate III implements this kind of mode at some point in the future, it’s still a $60 buy in from all of my players which seems like a really hard sell especially when the VTT that we use is free for them. The way to combat that would be for a game like Divinity: Original Sin II to offer a free demo download that’s only used for playing custom campaigns that someone who owns the full product is running, but I guess the mentality is that if someone like D&D enough to play a custom campaign created inside of a video game, they probably want to buy the game anyway. That logic makes sense, but as someone who enjoys D&D way more than playing CRPGs, I can say that people like us do exist.

I would love to see a game or piece of software to come out and genuinely offer the D&D experience, not just in terms of the rules but the communal aspect of it. We’ve seen the popularity of D&D and TTRPGs in general explode over the past few years, and I can’t believe that there isn’t a more accessible option for people to get a game going that doesn’t involve one person doing an endless amount of prep. I’m sure there are like 40 different projects on Kickstarter that are trying to make good on this vision in some fashion, so hopefully one of them gets funded and actually does the damn thing. I guess what I really want is an easy way to set up a D&D session without a lot of hassle for people who have a passing interest in TTRPGs in general. Sure I’d love for my dream application to also be the optimal platform for running a long term campaign, but I’ll take what I can get at this point.

Imagine if once we all get the chance to see people in person and interact with each other again, that I could just have a bunch of people come and sit in front of my TV where they can manage their characters on screen via their cellphone while I throw goblins at them on my iPad. That seems like a no-brainer of an idea to me, but once again, I don’t know what it takes to make a game. But I bet the Jackbox folks could totally make this thing and make it well and now it’s all that I can think about.

Gut Check: Outriders Demo

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Recently a demo for the upcoming Square Enix game, Outriders, was released to the public in what I can only assume was to get people like myself to finally stop asking, “what the hell is Outriders?” Seriously, I had no idea what this game was or when it was announced or who was making it, but ads for started cropping up everywhere so I figured I’d just try the demo and seek out the answer for myself.

Outriders is a cooperative third person shooter with different classes, skill trees and a heavy focus on getting loot. The immediate comparison one could draw from that description would be to liken it to Destiny, but that would be unfair to Destiny. Sure they’re both loot focused shooters that have big skill trees within various classes, and yes, Outriders also uses that stupid cursor-based menu system that’s infuriating for anyone using a controller, but a lot of games share at least some of those elements these days. My understanding as someone who doesn’t play it is that people enjoy Destiny for a multitude of reasons, chief among them being that it feels really good to shoot stuff in that game. Outriders however, isn’t particularly fun to play. It isn’t bad, but mechanically it’s completely unremarkable.

The biggest issue with the Outriders demo is that its intro and tutorial sequence are so abysmal that it’s quite honestly amazing that I managed to get through it at all. The demo starts off with an incredibly generic and tired story that’s repelling in almost every way. Earth is dead so they launched a bunch of military types and scientists into space in order to colonize what they initially believe to be a vacant planet, but in a shocking twist, it isn’t.

You get down there and are forced to interact with the blandest and most uninteresting characters in existence, like no nonsense space cowboy guy who is a father figure to your character, or the science lady who is so smart she doesn’t get obvious (yet bad) jokes, and you’ve even got an evil British (I think?) guy who is at odds with the mission for some reason. And you have to talk to each of them for way too long in order to progress to the next bad story beat, with the game even having the guts to offer you additional dialogue options so you can get to know more about them, something I wholeheartedly suggest you do not engage with.

In my eyes, Outriders commits the cardinal sin of making you watch an extended cut-scene, then dumping you into a “gameplay” section where you walk to another point where another cut-scene will start, over and over again. It’s like 30 straight minutes of you walking from cut-scene to cut-scene and it’s absolutely miserable.

But then the game tries to be interesting by changing everything up on you.

Within that first 30 minutes of tutorial hell, the game basically plays out an entire bad video game story from start to finish. Spoliers for a demo, I guess? Basically the British guy is in charge of making sure colonists can land on the planet safely, something your character and their team are there to confirm. Some wild magic murder storm comes through and starts icing everyone on your team, something which space cowboy uses as a justifiable reason for these colonists to not land here. British guy says no and that it’s too late to halt the landing procedure, the two of them get into a shouting match which ends with space cowboy dad getting shot by the British guy. A firefight ensues in which you end up getting mortally wounded, something which science lady responds to by putting you back into the cryogenic sleep pod you initially emerged from to buy time for the medics to come and help you. That never happens, but you’re apparently cured anyway when you emerge from the pod 31 years later.

That’s right, Outriders does a big fucking time skip that honestly turned me around on the game a little bit. You’re then introduced to the world as it is now where the colonists landed and had to carve out a meager existence similar to what they had on Earth. Now it’s all this dystopian, post-apocalyptic looking world with different factions all vying for control of the little resources that are available. You get immediately captured by a bad group of nasty boys and are sentenced to death in “No Man’s Land.” Oh by the way, all this time, I’ve maybe played the game for about 5 of the 30 minutes of intro that led up to this point. This all ends with your character dying out in “No Man’s Land.” The lights start to fade and your character drops to their knees, desperately trying to grasp at another life-sustaining breath that will never come.

And then a menu pops up and asks you which class you want to choose.

That’s right, nearly 40 minutes since starting this demo I finally got the option to pick a class. Classes seem fairly basic with you basically choosing between a sniper class, a balanced class, a shotgun class, and I guess some sort of glass cannon styled close up class that’s all about getting in and out quickly, all of which have magic powers associated with them. I went with the balanced class and the fire magic that came with it. That particular magic power allowed me to cast a wall of fire emanating from me in a line igniting enemies, with the added bonus of regaining some health for killing any enemy that was actively impacted by my magic.

I played through a lengthy shooter sequence where I learned that the cover mechanics both aren’t necessary for success, nor do they work reliably at all. Sometimes I would be mashing the “get into cover” button only for me to just stand in front of a stack of boxes while getting lit up by gunfire like an idiot. That sequence ended with me arriving at what I’m assuming is the first hub area where I’m sure vendors and stuff will all be hanging out eventually, and that’s where I called it.

It took so damn long for anything remotely interesting to happen in Outriders that I’m certain this demo is ultimately going to do a disservice to what might be a decent game. Something I learned later on through reading and watching some coverage about Outriders, was that it isn’t a live service game like Destiny or The Division. Apparently Outriders has a full story that eventually ends, which considering I don’t really want a live service game in my life right now, actually sounds appealing. It’s also a cooperative game that ostensibly, if I enjoyed Outriders a little more, I might trick my friends into buying and suffering through it with me.

Just from the little bit of this demo that I’ve played, I really don’t think I enjoy what Outriders is doing. I might put some more time into the demo just to see what the game is like after the bloated tutorial nightmare, but I don’t know if that’ll actually happen. All I can say for certain is that if you are going to play the demo, you can skip cut-scenes and dialogue pretty easily which will save you a lot of grief.