Product Overview

Outriders is a drop-in-drop-out co-op shooter for 1-3 players, set in an original dark and desperate sci-fi universe. This brand new IP was developed by People Can Fly (the creators of Gears of War Judgement and Bulletstorm) and published by Square Enix External Studios.

Platforms

PC
XBox One
Xbox Series X
Xbox Series S
Playstation 4
Playstation 5
Google Stadia

Engine

Unreal Engine 4

Work Duration:

3 Years+

Release Date:

01.04.2021

Team Size:

200+

Role:

Level Designer

Work Overview

• Responsible for multiple levels from paper design stage

• Worked with AI & combat design on establishing creature combat foundations

• Feature owner for the living world design for the city HUBs in the game

• Collaborated with animators, writers, audio, and mocap to create ambient NPC stories

• Design feature owner for pre-combat enemy idles and
  interactions tool

• Handled planning & metrics for spawn animations for nearly all creatures and humanoid enemies in the game

• Worked on demo content for the first reveal at conventions and press events

• Assisted with the re-design of the games spawn systems, providing UI mock-ups and feature ideas

• Mentored & on-boarded new team members and organized teams across multiple time zones

Story Mission 01 - Rift Town

Rift Town is the first level following the prologue and both introduces players to the world of Outriders and the story campaigns Core Loop. It also featured as the games Demo ahead of it’s release in April 2021.
The Level was original conceived by Valentin Danilenko and shifted hands many times throughout the project to keep a fresh perspective and update the gameplay as the games development progressed. I was one of the many people who left their mark on the level during it’s lifetime.

My contributions included updating parts of the layout for improved framing and guidance, handling part of the background war effects, adding spawn doors to create a better combat intro for enemies as well as setting up the HUBs NPCs, their world states and their ambient voice overs.

Story Mission 03 - Eagle Peaks

Eagle Peaks is the third mission of Outriders Campaign and was originally conceived by Jarosław Eliasz-Skąpski. Most of the work done on the Level belongs to Sławomir Szynkowski but I had a small fire-fighting role in establishing creature combat on the path leading up to the games first major boss fight in this level.

As a major contribution I was also in charge of the Levels HUB, planning all the NPC Scenarios, scripting their shifting world states and setting up their voice overs as players progressed and revisited the HUB.

Story Mission 07 - The Quarry

The Quarry was the very first level I worked on after starting at PCF and to my delight the bunker gameplay of throwing the players into a tight, high-pressure combat encounter remains nearly unchanged to this day from the initial draft.

My work originally only involved the truck escort mission set inside the first half of the level, which was meant to be a short interlude before going to the actual Quarry. The second half was originally conceived by Hubert Switek and was part of a larger level that had to be cut due to production constraints.
The two pieces were later merged into the level we see today and I worked on it up until the Alpha, establishing the major parts of the layout and gameplay. As with nearly all main levels of Outriders, the sidequests were done by Outsource and the PCF Rzeszów Team, with the monster hunting quest being based on my original layout work for a unused combat arena.

I was extremely fortunate that this level was chosen to be showcased as part of the IGN First preview of Outriders.

Gameplay Videos

Story Mission 08 - Forest Enclave

The Forest Enclave was the second level I worked on and originally was conceived as a semi-open world roaming zone.
The entire layout was constructed around the Heart of the Wild challenge level at it's center, with passages that crossed above the challenge space, giving players a preview of the boss fights and treasures to obtain within. My intend was that players would have been able to access the challenge directly from inside the zone during the Campaign. However due to production constraints the level was reduced to a more linear approach and the challenge was moved to the Endgame.

Special thanks has to be given to Cesar Benavides, who level-swapped with my during the road to the Alpha for a few months, taking a fresh set of eyes to my design and doing a pass across the level to improve some of it’s areas.

I worked on the level establishing a majority of it’s layout and flow until the Alpha, with Victor Popa and Fraser Wakefield doing some more polishing and Layout changes towards the Beta, while I worked on the HUB together with Brad Plaxen. As with the Quarry, the sidequests were done by Outsource and the PCF Rzeszów Team, with some of the areas used for them based on my initial roaming zone layouts.

Story Mission 17 - The Caravel

The Caravel is Outriders final level and probably the most depressing one to work on during the project. The story of Outriders reflects some of the reality of Poland during both world wars and this level like no other contributes to this theme, featuring a death camp heavily inspired by Auschwitz.

Originally created by Cesar Benavides based on the narrative direction, I swapped levels with him during our road to the Alpha for a few months, both of us feeling we needed a fresh set of eyes on our respective works. Based on the Creative and Art direction provided I did a major layout update to the level, creating a 'road of death' leading to the ship and re-arranging some of the arenas and creating a new area featuring a ship engine incinerator and loading docks.

I eventually split the work with Panos Rriska, with myself focused mostly on the earlier parts, while he handled the later areas. After the Alpha I swapped off the level to assist with creature combat and taking a fire-fighting role, with Panos taking over and finishing the level out, including the addition of the fantastic opening Vista and adding new side content in the loading docks area, as well as polishing the arenas.

City HUBs

Much of my later work on the road to the Gold Master on Outriders involved the City HUBs located in Rift Town, Eagle Peaks, Guardhouse, Trench Town and the Forest Enclave. I worked on these in close collaboration with the narrative, animation and audio departments, heading up a fire team that mostly consisted of the newly created PCF New York studio at the time.

We were focused on creating all the ambient voice-overs, world states and npc scenarios as well as implementing them. Special thanks goes to Brad Plaxen, Andrew Skye and Michal Ostapowicz, as well as the talented animators, who all worked tirelessly with me to keep us on track and finish the HUBs in time.

Tools and Technology

For pretty much the entire existence of Outriders, PCFs Level Design department did not feature a decidated Tech LD team, so it fell to many of the more technical inclined members of the team to own different features, owning their designs, prototyping new functionality and then working with code to properly implement it into the engine as a new in-house tool.

Some of the features I owned and tech I implemented is showcased below in as much information as can be given.