Last month, developer People Can Fly announced that work on a game codenamed Gemini was being suspended over issues with the publisher regarding payment and communication. The publisher was believed to be Square Enix, and fans speculated that the project in question was a sequel to Outriders, a surprisingly good 2021 loot shooter. According to new reporting, Gemini was indeed Outriders 2 and the recording of motion capture for the game’s sci-fi story was underway when it was canned.
News first came by way of TheThumbWars which reported that the sequel was “nearly finished” before it was put on ice over disputes with Square Enix. A report from Insider Gaming corroborated that Gemini is Outriders 2, but reported, based on development materials it reviewed, that People Can Fly was still in the middle of recording motion capture for the third-person shooter. According to TheThumbWars, the project’s developers didn’t really know about the publisher’s issues until it was being shelved.
The first Outriders was a grim shooter about settlers on an alien planet who develop mysterious mutations and go to war with one another. It was a bit like Borderlands through the lens of Heart of Darkness, with third-person combat that revolved around gear drops and magic powers. It had the whiff of a live-service grind which repelled some players at launch and left others feeling like its endgame was a bit light on repayable content, but it offered a decent multiplayer story campaign elevated by some of the most fun I’ve had with third-person shooting in a long time.
It was the type of AA-going-on-AAA franchise that deserved a second shot to see how it could grow and where the developers might take the formula next, especially if it was free of having to disguise itself as a live-service shooter to convince a publisher to greenlight it in the heyday of Destiny 2. It’s unclear if there’s still an outside chance Outriders 2 could eventually see the light of day under a new publisher, but that seems unlikely. Square Enix is currently in the midst of a three-year plan to double down on its biggest franchises and pull back from riskier outside bets. The first Outrdiers reportedly didn’t turn a profit in its first year.
After multiple rounds of layoffs, People Can Fly is currently doing co-development support on Gears of War: E-Day and is working with Krafton and Sony on other new games as well. I just wish one of them was Outriders 2.
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