It's really, really hard to figure out what Outriders is in its first few hours. A slow, lost world-style opening introduces you to the planet Enoch, humanity's second chance after environmental collapse claims Earth, but after a devastating natural disaster you find yourself flung forward in time, imbued with superpowers, and plunged into a brutal civil war.
Yep, humanity flew itself halfway across the universe to start from scratch and managed to devolve into a Mad Max-like dystopia in less than a century. While the last remaining enclaves of humanity duke it out for resources, it's up to you and an expanding camp of allies to trek across Enoch and uncover the cause of the natural disaster that sent the colonisation effort spiralling out of control in the first place.
I wasn't expecting the main story to keep my attention for very long, but Outriders had me hooked for the duration of its 15-hour campaign. Your group's search for answers across the war-torn surface of Enoch is packed with misery and suffering, both within your roaming camp and in the places you visit. Moments of levity keep it all from becoming overbearingly gloomy, and the humour is generally very well measured, rarely straying into edgelord territory.
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