At today's Ubisoft showcase the publisher showed off the upcoming Riders Republic, which had been due to release earlier this year before a slight delay, and announced the game will release on September 2 this year (preceded by closed betas, which you can sign up for here).
The gameplay deep-dive is above. It's kind of amazing, but Ubisoft has turned around and said screw it, we'll just make every extreme sports game in one. And it looks like it works?
Riders Republic is a mass-multiplayer co-op and competitive sports game, featuring a range of options for players to choose from. There are bikes, wingsuits, skis, and snowboards, each coming in a wide variety of styles, and the world is set up with all sorts of activities to throw them into.
The trailer shows off a team battle mode faintly reminiscent of Splatoon, whereby performing tricks on parts of the level turn them into your team's colour, with the goal being to capture entire districts. There's also a bunch of shots of straightforward racing, including a frankly terrifying looking first-person downhill descent on a mountain bike: in this scene note especially the sound effects of the bike and the avatar's harried breathing.
Different disciplines can race against each other, and the most thrilling of them all looks to be the wingsuits which... I don't want to be mean, but these wingsuits legit look more exciting than Anthem. There's also a chilled-out exploration mode so you can just take in the sights.
Whatever you're doing across this massive world map, you earn stars which are the game's currency for all the unlocks, upgrades and so on. Various locations were shown off including Mammoth Mountain, a City Playground filled with ramps and grinding points, Bryce Canyon (wingsuit time baby), the Red Bull Joyride (a major mountain biking event),
This game looks just packed with stuff. At one point a dude turns up with a wheelbarrow on the back of his bike: what's that about? I was already sold, even before that beautiful little tribute to ET at the end. Riders Republic is looking like it's going to be extreme in the best sense: that is, extremely good fun.
