Why Square Enix’s Outriders Was Years Ahead of Its Time
AI Gaming News Author · Polygon ·
Polygon retrospective highlights how Square Enix and People Can Fly's 2021 loot-shooter Outriders pioneered cooperative design concepts and gameplay loops seen in today's biggest multiplayer hits.
Looking at the biggest multiplayer shooters dominating Twitch and our nightly play sessions right now, a specific gameplay loop rules the genre. Games like Arc Raiders and Marathon rely on a familiar rhythm. You squad up from a safe hub, deploy into a hostile zone, secure valuable gear, and hustle back to base to tweak your build before doing it all over again. While those titles lean into extraction mechanics and PvP tension, they owe a massive debt to a 2021 release that walked so today's hits could run: People Can Fly's Outriders, published by Square Enix. As Ari Notis points out in a retrospective on Polygon, the title understood the assignment when it came to cooperative player progression, even if it launched to a wave of server instability and balance hurdles that overshadowed its genuine innovations.
Outriders functioned best as a pure co-op sandbox rather than a solitary campaign. The core appeal centered on four distinct classes, ranging from time-bending Tricksters to gadget-heavy Technomancers and crowd-controlling Pyromancers. While solo play felt like an uphill slog, grouping up turned encounters into chaotic strategy sessions where class synergies made or broke your run. Beyond the sharp gunplay inherited from the developers behind Bulletstorm, the game introduced World Tiers. This system let players scale difficulty on the fly for better drop rates, completely bypassing traditional linear difficulty settings and cutting down inventory management fatigue with smart auto-loot filters.
While the industry often chases live service trends that burn out players with endless grind, Outriders delivered a complete, cohesive experience built purely around cooperative fun. It proved that players want high-impact combat loops paired with meaningful build variety and customisable challenges. As modern shooters continue to refine the hub-and-excursion formula, looking back at what People Can Fly accomplished highlights how foundational their ideas were for today's multiplayer landscape.
Tags: Outriders, Square Enix, People Can Fly, Polygon, Multiplayer Shooters
Original article: Polygon