I'm stoked for Rebel Galaxy Outlaw. By wearing its Wing Commander: Privateer and Cowboy Bebop influences on its sleeve, Outlaw is going to make me (easily) ignore all the complaints about the Epic Games Store and hand over all my hard-earned cash.
This is a long, three-hour stream from one of the developers. I'm picking my way through it now. After playing a little music from the game—the soundtrack is about 400 tracks long, clocking in at about 24 hours' worth of music—the dev puts on a Hello Kitty hat, takes his first sip of whiskey, and fires up the animated intro. The intro is dope. It's animated by Titmouse (it's a type of bird, you guys). This animation studio has done work for the Venture Bros., Metalocalypse, Big Mouth on Netflix, and a bunch of other stuff.
You get to at least glimpse the sweet Coyote fighter craft you fly in the intro. But you lose that pretty quickly and have it replaced with a literal garbage truck of a ship. You can customize your ship—even this trash hauler—from missile racks to the hula guy on your dashboard. A lot of business in Outlaw is conducted in bars, naturally. You can pick up skuttlebutt from the bartender, play arcades, and chat with shady patrons.
The in-game animation has that waxed-over look that I don't care for, but whatever. I love the vaguely claymation look of the ships, stations, and the rocks in outer space in general. The art style exists somewhere between Privateer, especially when you see the ship HUDs, and Mystery Science Theater 3000. Greasy-looking explosions, too; very nice.
Whoa, the dev just talked about something called an Auto Pursuit Trigger. "It's basically a flight assist that gets ships on the screen." It doesn't guarantee you a shot. It doesn't put your firing reticle directly on the enemy. But it does vaguely autopilot your ship around in a sphere so that you don't get lost in the middle of a dogfight. Basically so you can stare out of the cockpit more than you stare at the little radar screen. This Auto Pursuit Trigger should eliminate, to a degree, those circling battles that made some old school space shooters a bit tedious. Don't worry, you can turn it off if you want. It's only there in the name of fun, so if spinning in circles is more fun for you, enjoy.
Rebel Galaxy Outlaw is still chilling with a "Coming Soon" banner on the Epic Games Store. No hard date yet. But I'm willing to wait as long as I need to for this awesome-looking, awesome-playing space western.
