Is Outriders Open World?

I remember in the long, long ago, the only games you could really call “open-world” were large-scale RPGs like Final Fantasy. These days, if your game doesn’t have a hundred football fields worth of living wilderness to explore, it ain’t worth writing home about. Or, I suppose in the case of Outriders, less “living wilderness” and more “grimy places full of mean grimy dudes.” Though, that does beg a pertinent question: is Outriders open word?

Outriders is a looter-shooter in a similar vein to Destiny or Warframe. Much like those games, it utilizes a hub structure where you can bum around and prepare, while all the action bits are located within self-contained instances of particular areas. While you can certainly traipse through these locales at your own pace, you’re not going to find anything there beyond what the game wants you to find, that being either chests full of loot or the aforementioned mean grimy dudes. You’re not gonna find any optional collectibles or mini-games or anything like that. 

Is Outriders Open World?

So, taking the modern definition of an “open world” game into account, the answer to the previous question would be no. No, Outriders is not an open world game. Every one of the game’s missions creates a specific instance of a particular map area designed explicitly for the completion of that mission. These map areas are fairly linear, mostly keeping you on track toward completion of the mission you’re there for. 

However, while Outriders isn’t an open world game in the traditional sense, there are a couple of open world elements. For instance, some mission instances do have sidequests you can complete for fun and profit, and there are occasional hidden chests full of helpful loot. Hidden loot is all practical items and such; it’s not like the feathers in Assassin’s Creed 2 where they’re just they’re for the sake of collecting. So while there aren’t miles and miles of open fields for you to journey through, there is about as much side content as you’d find in an open world game. You just won’t have to walk as far to get to it.