This post contains major spoilers of the Outriders story/campaign.
I've just finished up the story of Outriders and oh boy, that was a show. The story of this game just gets better and better all the way to the end. Those who read my first impressions might remember that I wasn't all that impressed by the story at that point. While I'm still not that impressed by the first few chapters the second half of the game really delivers.
I wanna take some time to summarize and analyze the story. The story had me feeling all kinds of stuff. There's sadness, happiness, anger and depression involved. There's also a lot of disappointment, not at the story but at the characters and their actions.
Summarizing the story
I'm gonna be splitting the story up into four parts. The prequel, the human war, the jungle and the desert. The prequel and human war was by far the worst part of the story in my opinion. In the jungle we see a major plot twist and the story starts to get really interesting. Everything that happens in the desert is just awesome. I was on edge and curious about what would happen next all the time.
Prequel
The game starts out with us arriving on Enoch, humanities new home planet. Through dialogue and snippets of lore we learn that earth has been destroyed by war and we had to leave it behind. 500.000 humans left earth on the space ship S. M. Flores to arrive on Enoch 83 years later.
During the prologue we take our first steps on the planet. Our mission is to find some drop-pods sent down by the Flores to do some readings. If these readings turn out good we can give the green light for human colonization to commence. After securing one out of two signals and readings some asshole corporate guy gives the green light for colonization. That's not protocol.
Colonization starts while we go to check out the other signal and reading. We arrive to find out that the signal isn't active at all and that the signal is coming from another place and has been playing since before the pod was sent down. That should be impossible seeing as we're the first humans to ever arrive here. A mystery is uncovered.
While we're here some electrical storm later known as "the anomaly" takes place. It takes out all electrical equipment and rips people to shreds. Not only that but a black fungus infects our people and starts killing them. This means Enoch isn't safe after all and we have to stop the colonization. We arrive back at base to find that it has already started and can't be stopped. Humanity is headed for certain doom within hours of arriving at their salvation.
As we're infected they try to kill us. We fight back, kill most of them and get injured. We had back to the landing site and get put in cryo-stasis. The prequel ends here.
Human war
We awaken 30 years later to find that the world of Enoch has indeed been colonized. Of course, humans hasn't learned shit and are at all out war with each other. There's two factions warring over their differences and I don't know what. Boring shit I can't be bothered to care about. I won't go in detail on what this is about as it's honestly not at all important.
We end up trapped in another anomaly but instead of being ripped to shreds we're empowered by it. We become "altered" as they call it. This basically means that we're pretty much invincible now and we have superpowers.
We arrive at a human settlement to meet certain members of the crew we landed with. Only that they're old now. No one's happy to see no one but nonetheless we start doing work for one of them who is now a faction leader. Lots of boring shit happens and eventually we start pursuing the strange signal mentioned in the prequel. With it we can contact the Flores which is still in orbit and have it send down much needed resources. We go to rescue a scientist, Dr. Zahedi, who can help us locate the signal and we travel to the jungle. The jungle is where we got infected with the black fungus and humans don't go there. It's the final frontier.
The jungle
This part of the story is short but it's important. We arrive to find out that the signal isn't coming from the jungle, but beyond the jungle. We have an accident and parts of the crew get infected with the black fungus. Luckily we encounter people living here, deserters of the war who has also discovered a cure for the fungus.
We end up discovering that the cure is made out of the bone marrow of humans. Of course we end up killing them all. In the process we discover something very interesting. The jungle people has an alien prisoner. A native of the planet Enoch. An alien. The story just went from boring human war to a big mystery.
We take this alien, named August, and let him guide us through the jungle. We eventually arrive at some ruins made by his people. We end up learning more about August and his people. For instance they have, or had, the ability to control the anomaly storms. They are also an innocent people who barely knows about the concept of violence. But why are all the ruins abandoned and why is August the only one we can find?
The ruins eventually lead us to a huge wall and gate which August opens for us to reveal a giant desert beyond.
The desert
In the desert the mystery really gains some traction. Not far in we are ambushed by some feral looking aliens wielding human weaponry. That's weird. Even further in we encounter human technology. Vehicles, tanks, outposts and what not. All abandoned and in ruins. Humans has never been this far out so how is this possible?
Soon thereafter we learn that these humans are not from out colony. They're someone else. We also learn that they have made contact with the natives and decided to name them the Pax. All through the desert we encounter the aforementioned feral aliens.
At some more ruins we find a place of great energy that August taps into and is turned into one of the feral aliens and we have to kill her or him. We learn that the ferals are the Pax which is a huge plot point.
As we trudge through the desert we learn more about the fate of the humans and the Pax. The humans who arrived here were at first curious and kind to the Pax. They then thought that the Pax were making the anomaly storms and sending them at the humans when in fact they were controlling and keeping the storms in check. The humans then, of course, brought the entire Pax population into slavery. They round them up in labor camps and starts killing them off.
We eventyally learn that the Pax willingly turned themselves into the feral aliens to defend themselves. Being a people and race of absolute peace and tranquility they turned to the anomaly storm, the only thing they knew to help them. A race of peace and quiet now turned feral killing machine. All because humans had to go around being humans.
We learn that the humans who arrived here are part of the humans who got left behind on earth. They managed to build an engine that took their space ship to Enoch much faster than what the Flores did. The signal we've been hearing is coming from their ship and acts as a distress signal sent out after being overrun by the ferals.
We get this information from the leader of these humans who has survived alone inside the ship for years. We kill him and are assaulted by the ferals. We defeat them and their leader and the game ends with drop-pods falling form the sky. Drop-pods containing all the resources humanity needs to thrive on this new world.
Short analysis
The summary ended up being way longer that I had anticipated. There is of course a lot of details left out, like important characters and lesser details. They are however not important to understand the overarching narrative. Play the game if you want the full story!
As I've mentioned the story starts out rather slow but picks up towards the end. The prologue and the human war stuff is really boring. Like, we traveled through space from Earth being destroyed by wars only to go to war again? And like, why make a game about a human war on another planet? I guess it gets the point through about humans just being a plain shitty race. We go to war over anything no matter where we are. Even on the bring of extinction humans will find something to war over.
Once we get to the jungle things get interesting however. Just a shame that's almost halfway into the game so I've already lost interest for a bit. With the introduction of August I got really invested and needed to know more. Of course there's more human shittyness going on here. Humans are killing each other and the only alien humans has ever encountered has been imprisoned just because they don't understand him.
The story really accelerated from this point on. I've started to forget the boring start and instead I've started to appreciate it. I'm starting to understand that the whole moral of the story behind this game is to highlight how shitty the human race is. Little did I know it was only the beginning.
As we learned about the enslavement of the Pax I was starting to get really angry. I was literally raging inside as I uncovered this. A peaceful alien race that never meant any harm to anyone enslaved and nearly eradicated because humans had to come around. Literally forced into becoming the polar opposite of what they are out of the desperation to survive. And again, human action lead to human downfall. It's satisfying but infuriating at the same time.
I ended up really liking the story in the end. It has some great plot twists and some good moral points. The overarching mystery is really great to. I just wish there was more of a mystery from the beginning.
It's time to end this monster of a post. I didn't think I would get this invested in in but here we are almost 1800 words later. I guess the moral of the story just really got me. I'll leave you with a song fitting of the theme.