There is an awkward line in it Outriders that certainly sounds like a reference to the failed January 6 uprising in Washington, DC. According to the game’s publisher, any connections you can make there are “purely coincidental.”
Developed by People Can Fly and published by Square Enix, the class-based looter shooter Outriders officially released last week for everything except the Switch. In the future – you will never believe this – ‘Earth [is] death ‘, ruined by war and famine and all that other apocalyptic turmoil that tends to serve as the backdrop in airport kiosk sci-fi novels. To preserve humanity, Earth’s governments are uniting and funding a colony ship that will transport thousands of survivors to a habitable planet, Enoch, about a dozen light years away.
You are cast as a titular outrider, a gun-slinging badass tasked with scouting Enoch before the rest of the settlers leave the ship’s safe confines. Within the first 30 minutes you have been betrayed, badly wounded, trapped in an energy storm, left behind supernatural powers and put in a cryogenic chamber. You wake up three decades later and you all think, “What the fuuuuu …” Basically, you find an old friend, Jakub, who takes a moment to recognize you, but also like, “What the fuuuuu …” And then you go on an adventure.
An early mission – ‘Reunion’, also playable in the game’s meaty free demo – features some banter between your character and Jakub, with the two reminiscent of the good old days of killing humans on Earth.
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You: “I get a lot of déjà vu here. Reminds me of that mission is Damascus, where we saved those diplomats. “
Jakub: I had to save your ass from that machete-wielding crowd.
You ha! More like the time I had to save your sorry ass from that redneck crowd that stormed DC “
You wouldn’t be wrong to think that this line is a reference to the failed coup attempt that was agitated through Republican political leadership. On January 6, thousands of supporters came accused twice President Donald Trump rushed to the Capitol with the apparent intent of undoing legitimate election results. Five people diedIn the weeks that followed, two officers died by suicide(Although authorities are currently looking for and arrest Civilians who stormed the Capitol have not faced any serious legal repercussions for Republican party leaders to date.)
When reached for comment by Kotaku, representatives from Square Enix and People Can Fly said: “We wrote and recorded the script for Outriders a few years ago and all aspects of it are completely fictional and related to the game’s backstory. All similarities to real-world events are pure coincidence. “
So there you have it.
Post-assumptions Outriders would refer to events from early 2021 were misplaced. The riot, to repeat, took place on January 6. The Outriders demo was made available on February 25th. Every facet of game production, let alone in a pandemic, is a painstaking process. The People Can Fly team is undoubtedly packed with talent, but given the complicated certifications that games must pass before they are released, making a change at the 11th hour is no mean feat.
But you can also take the obvious from the lore of the game. Outriders may not have the best dialogue (selected one-liner: “I thought this was the bathroom.” [kills dudes]), but that doesn’t mean there isn’t decent writing. It’s just that most of the good things – especially the world structure – exist on the fringes.
Dive into the Journal menu and you will learn that Outriders begins in 2159, the first year on Enoch. You will also learn that the journey to Enoch did not begin until the mid-2070’s. While your character is steeped in longevity and superpowers and all that jazz, such favors are the result of events that descended upon Enoch. There are no more than 40, which is a very generous estimate on my part. (Square, leave it Outriders skincare routine, please!) According to the timeline, it’s practically impossible that your outrider would have lived in 2021, let alone informed and tied down enough to survive a “redneck crowd.”
It’s nice to imagine the fictional Outriders contains a one-off phrase referring to an unhinged uprising that turned into tragedy, but the idea is apparently just a fantasy. This is a contrast to the real reality in which we live, where such things can happen without seemingly no effect on those who set them in motion.