Like all media products, games tend to change frequently during development, mutating with the creative visions of everyone involved. Few games go from inception to launch without leaving at least a few things on the cutting room floor. In the case of Outriders, one of those things was Familiars: creatures that players could bring along with them as pets.
Outriders developer People Can Fly have not mentioned anything about Familiars in their dev blogs, and we only know about them from a single post on ArtStation. The post is from People Can Fly concept artist Maciej Janaszek, and it shows multiple different creatures designed in 2018 which would have served as player-owned Familiars in the game. Some Familiars show cybernetic augmentations. It’s not hard to imagine what purpose they would have served in the game, as they all look quite vicious.
The idea was scrapped, and all we have left of it are those concept art images, and a few names like Sciathan and Perforo. If you are curious to see what Familiars could have looked like in Outriders, I highly recommend checking out Janaszek’s post. People Can Fly have not indicated that they intend to ever make pets a thing in Outriders, but it’s good to see that the game’s take on the feature would have been suitably alien and gnarly.
