Outriders Campaign Length: How Long is the Game?

Outriders may be a looter shooter, but it's built around a pretty traditional campaign. Here's what we know about how many hours you can expect to get from this game:

If you suddenly find yourself very excited about Outriders, you’re not alone. While the game’s demo proved to be much more engaging than many people suspected it would be, it’s really the fact that 2021 has gotten off to such a slow start that has made the prospect of diving into this title that much more appealing than it may otherwise be.

In case you don’t know, Outriders is a new looter shooter from developer People Can Fly: the same studio responsible for brilliant shooters like Bulletstorm and the Painkiller games. Much like those titles, Outriders features a chaotic style of shooter gameplay that emphasizes quick movements, outlandish weapons, and waves of enemies.

Unlike the studio’s most notable previous efforts, Outriders utilizes a “looter” gameplay style similar to what we’ve seen in games like Destiny and Anthem. That means that the title emphasizes classes, character builds, squads, and, of course, looting the best weapons and gear possible. Unlike those games, though, Outriders is actually more of a traditional experience built around a campaign rather than modern live-service concepts designed to encourage you to play online for months to come. That campaign is going to be the game’s biggest content draw, so here’s what you need to know about it:

How Long is Outriders Campaign?

In a rare move, Square Enix and People Can Fly actually posted an estimate of Outrider‘s campaign length on the title’s FAQ page. Here’s what the teams have to say:

Ad – content continues below

“Focusing on just the main campaign by itself on a single class will take around 25-30 hours, but it will take 2-3 times that long if you play all the side quests, post-campaign, and additional content in Outriders. We’ve made sure that there’s no right or wrong way to play the game and that you’ll always have a great experience. If you just want to complete the main campaign, you’ll experience the full story and have a great time with this game. But if you want to spend more time in the world of Outriders, getting the best items and taking on the hardest challenges in the game, it can keep you busy for exponentially longer.”

Outriders director Bartosz Kmita expanded on that estimate a bit by saying that he believes it will take players about 40 hours to complete the game’s campaign and side quests. However, he admits that’s a rough estimate and that he hopes players will eventually be able to spend even more time with the game than that.

Based on the figures that are available, though, and our own experiences with these kinds of games, we’d say you should expect somewhere between 15-40 hours of curated single-player content depending on your own pace and how much of the game you really want to see.

Does Outriders Have a Multiplayer Mode?

Outriders does include a multiplayer mode, but it’s limited to cooperative play at this time. You and two other players will be able to form a party of three and take on the game’s campaign, side quests, and other available activities. You’ll even be able to form cross-platform parties thanks to the title’s expansive cross-play features which allow players on any platform to play with anyone else.

Outriders will not feature any competitive multiplayer modes at launch, and the Outriders team hasn’t indicated that they are interested in adding competitive multiplayer modes at any point in the near future. Still, there’s always a chance they’ll expand the game’s multiplayer offerings.

Does Outriders Include Endgame Content?

Outriders‘ endgame largely consists of special missions known as Expeditions. There are 15 total Expeditions in the game, and you’ll unlock them once you’ve completed the game’s campaign.

Ad – content continues below

What is an Expedition? Based on what we know so far, they sound like especially challenging missions that will likely be structurally similar to many of the quests seen in the game’s campaign. While People Can Fly emphasizes the “brutal” difficulty of these expeditions, they also note that completing each Expedition rewards you and your squad with some of the best gear in the game as well as other unique perks and modifiers.

Interestingly, the quality of your Expeditions loot will be partially determined by how quickly you can complete these bonus assignments. That feature should offer quite a bit of additional replay value, but we’re waiting to see how substantial this part of the game really is.

For more information on Outriders‘ Expeditions, be sure to check out this explainer video:

Will Outriders Be Updated With Live Service Content?

At this time, Square Enix and People Can Fly have not revealed any plans to continuously update Outriders with live service style updates seen in games like Fortnite, Destiny, and Marvel’s Avengers. That means you shouldn’t expect a constant series of updates designed to offer fresh content and cosmetic upgrades.

However, that doesn’t mean that Outriders won’t be updated at some point. While there are no formal plans in place at this time, it makes sense that the game will receive the usual array of patches and eventual DLC updates. It’s just that the game is bucking modern trends a bit by largely focusing on the “out of the box” content.

Ad – content continues below