Outriders gets an animated trailer as the devs react to the demo's popularity

Outriders has dropped a lore trailer telling the story behind the RPG shooter, and the devs spoke to PlayStation blog about the wildly successful demo. If you, like others, played the Outriders demo when it launched on February 25, you probably enjoyed the combat and surprisingly funny dialogue but weren't sure what the hell was going on, story-wise. The lore trailer will certainly help make the story more clear, but we'll break it down for you just in case.

In 2048, Earth called for the best and brightest to help restart civilization across the galaxy - but all those shining examples of humanity got blown up. So, a few years later, Earth decided to try it again with society's grifters, outcast, and bastards. When they arrive at the faraway planet, however, the planet fights back, killing most of the people there. Except, of course, the bastards, who turn into the Altered. That's who you're playing as, a bastard turned weapon. 

People Can Fly's Bartek Kmita describes the success of the demo, which has over two million downloads at the time of writing, as "a real rollercoaster of emotions." "I was excited that so many people wanted to play as soon as the demo was live, but this was followed by a brief panic-moment when servers were not scaling fast enough," Kmita explains. The team reportedly learned a lot from the demo, and are focusing on fixing things like motion blur and camera-shake. 

Last week, an Outriders demo update addressed the loot pool, removing Epic items from shops and vendor lists, and removing Legendary items from chests. "In the end, we decided that since we are ultimately a game built around a really engaging loot-loop, we should support the farming methods based on that with some additional encouragement to also complete the side-quests," Kmita says.

Since Outriders demo progress carries over, many players spent the demo time grinding for loot and working on their character builds. But Kmita promises "the real fun is yet to come" since each class will have four more skills and new tier one mods, offering higher levels of customization. 

Outriders debuts on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, and PC this April 1. 

Check out what we thought during last year's Outriders hands-on preview

Alyssa Mercante

Alyssa Mercante is an editor and features writer at GamesRadar based out of Brooklyn, NY. Prior to entering the industry, she got her Masters's degree in Modern and Contemporary Literature at Newcastle University with a dissertation focusing on contemporary indie games. She spends most of her time playing competitive shooters and in-depth RPGs and was recently on a PAX Panel about the best bars in video games. In her spare time Alyssa rescues cats, practices her Italian, and plays soccer.