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The Outrider
In General
The Outrider
Voiced by: Andrew Shaver (male, English), Mylène Dinh-Robic (female, English), Mateusz Łasowski (male, Polish), Monika Węgiel (female, Polish)
The player character and one of the Outriders: a group of elite explorers and soldiers tasked with being the first wave of settlers on Enoch. Their job was to carve out a safe space for the rest of the colonists before they could be roused from suspended animation. Unfortunately, the horribly botched colonization effort left all other Outriders dead, and their reputation tarnished. Empowered by the Anomaly, you represent the last hope for humanity.- Anti-Hero: They execute (not simply kill) quite a lot of antagonistic people who are injured, unarmed, or not immediately violent, under circumstances which are emotionally understandable but legally questionable.
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: They're referred to as "Boss" by their teammates, and are ostensibly in charge of the group. The Outrider is also by far the best fighter.
- Berserk Button: People trying to kill them. This would normally be far too reasonable an irritation to qualify for this trope, but they really do take it oddly personally for a lifelong soldier with Resurrective Immortality who's presently on a Death World in the middle of a Forever War. It's especially notable considering every other sort of injury and indignity they shrug off with a weary sigh.
- Bring It: After discovering they are one of the Altered, they pull the pipe out of their chest, straighten up, and basically say, "Okay, then. It's ON."
- Color Motif: Each of the classes have different colors. Technomancer is green, Pyromancer is red, Trickster is blue, Devastator is yellow.
- Deadpan Snarker: Their reactions to cataclysms, murders and war crimes have to be seen to be believed after they get accustomed to what kind of hell they woke up to. No shock, no anger, just snark.(Bond One-Liner to a hitman who shot the shopkeeper) "He was about to show me the good stuff."
(the next line after killing the hitman mentioned above) "One fucked up day."
(after witnessing an ECA soldier shoot an unarmed Exile in the back and throw a grenade into a hole where more Exiles were trapped) "Fuck. Seriously?"
(after witnessing the soldier mentioned above getting Killed Mid-Sentence) "Why do I even bother?"
(after Bailey gains Altered abilities and immediatly turns on the team) "Really?" - Empowered Badass Normal: The Outrider was an extremely competent soldier before getting their powers.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Even that only 31 years passed while they were in cryo-sleep, the Outrider is still confused by what became of Enoch and the colonization attempts.
- A God I Am Not: One of the very few Altered who still considers themselves to be human, or at the very least not a god. They even extend this mentality to any other Altered they come across, at least trying to talk them down before pumping them full of lead.
- Healing Factor: A rare for the genre example where the player's ability to rapidly heal from injury is not Gameplay and Story Segregation. Not only is one of their first actions as an Altered pulling a piece of rebar out from their chest, a conversation suggests slitting their throat in their sleep will not kill them, and a sidequest has them brute forcing their way through a rigged game of Russian Roulette - that is to say, shooting themselves in the head, getting up, and handing the gun back.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Their name can be whatever you want, since they have no canon name. They're only referred to as "Outrider" by most people or "boss" by their allies.
- Ignored Expert: They (and the rest of the Outriders) advocated to call off or at least delay the colonization efforts on Enoch after it became clear that something was deeply wrong with the planet. Charles Maxwell refused to heed their warnings and went on ahead with the landings, and everything went to hell.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The Outrider has an attitude that can best be summed up as "110% done with this shit" with everything they encounter, from lying assholes to hordes of mutants to entire armies out for their blood. But when they realize they're standing next to an armed nuke, they freak out until they can get it disarmed, because this is something they can't outrun, outfight, or survive.
- Pro Human Trans Human: In spite of being given reality-bending powers by the Anomaly, they still fight to protect what's left of humanity. The few Altered they encounter that consider themselves gods often get a harsh rebuttal from the Outrider.
- Purely Aesthetic Gender: The game makes no narrative or gameplay distinction between a male and female Outrider. All that changes is the Outrider's appearance and voice. Some dialogue however tends to refer to the player Outrider as male, but by and large the game enforces Gender-Inclusive Writing.
- Resurrective Immortality: While there are certain upper limits to the amount of punishment any Altered can take, their Healing Factor lets them revive from even lethal wounds. The Outrider exploits this several times over the course of the story.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Worldslayer has them go on a one-Altered crusade against the Insurgents after Ereshkigal kills Shira Gutmann.
- Sole Survivor: Last of the Outriders, with Jakub having quit in disillusionment and the rest dead because of the Caravel's explosion and later, the Anomaly and general attrition.
- Street Urchin: They mention they were one back in the closing days of Earth. They admit they were one of the lucky ones who made it past age twenty.
- Survivor's Guilt: The Outrider repeatedly says they didn't deserve their seat on the Flores, earning it only because the Caravel's explosion wiped out the "real" Outriders, requiring the recruitment of Tanner and glorified thugs like the Outrider. Towards the end of the game they even lament the realization that if the roles were reversed, they would have probably ended up part of Monroy's army.
Outrider Classes
Trickster
Close Range. Hit & Run. Spacetime.
Bend the laws of space & time to appear out of nowhere, assassinate your enemies, and return to safety in the blink of an eye. As the Trickster, enemies killed in close range both heals and grants a portion of shield.
- Close-Range Combatant: Alongside the Devastator, they're one of the game's two 'brawler' classes, designed to rush into a group of enemies, annihilate them with shotguns, assault weapons, and anomaly powers, and then sprint or teleport to their next set of victims, relying on shields and debuffs to mitigate the extreme damage coming their way.
- Deflector Shields: Can generate a personal Shield through the use of various abilities and item mods, which can make them much sturdier.
- Fighter, Mage, Thief: The Thief of a trio formed with the Devastator and Pyromancer. Tricksters perform best by sneaking up on enemies to hit them with massive bursts of damage and debuffs, before pulling back.
- Laser Blade: The Temporal Blade and Venator's Knife skills let Tricksters attack with energy blades that also slows down enemies on contact.
- Lightning Bruiser: They may be focused on mobility and firepower, but that doesn't mean the average Trickster is a Glass Cannon or Fragile Speedster. Since they're meant to take on enemies at extreme close range, they need to be able to soak up/mitigate an impressive amount of incoming damage, and they're the second tankiest class in the game after Devastators.
- No, I Am Behind You: One of the abilities Tricksters have, Hunt the Prey, lets them teleport right behind an enemy's back. It's particularly useful for rapidly eliminating snipers or dodging large monsters' devastating charge attacks.
- Teleportation: Tricksters can teleport around in a variety of ways, with Hunt the Prey letting them appear behind enemies, or Borrowed Time having them put down a beacon that they will return to when the skill is triggered again.
- Time Master: What a Trickster-class Outrider becomes. They fight at close range and heal from killing enemies at a short distance as well as gain a protective shield. Trickster's second skill, Slow Trap, lets them put down a bubble in which every enemy, including enemy projectiles, is slowed down. Then there's Borrowed Time, which allows the Trickster to "rewind" themselves to a previously placed anchor, similar to Overwatch's Tracer.
- Time Stands Still: Enemies hit by Trickster debuffs wind up temporarily slowing to a crawl, exposing them to more damamge.
Pyromancer
Medium Range. Conjurer. Fire.
Cover foes in flames, incinerate entire squads and heal your own wounds as enemies fall to your inferno. As the Pyromancer, health will be recovered whenever enemies marked by your skills are killed.- Fighter, Mage, Thief: The Mage of the trio formed with the Devastator and Trickster. Pyromancers have an offense-oriented set of skills that either cause direct damage, damage over time, or immobilization that will expose enemies to more damage. As a result, Pyromancers can rely wholly rely on their skills if necessary.
- Hand Blast: The F.A.S.E.R. Beam fires a lance of fire from the Outrider's cupped hands. Slow but highly destructive.
- Playing with Fire: What a Pyromancer-class Outrider becomes. They fight at medium range and heal from killing enemies affected by their abilities. Their Elemental Punch that sets people on fire, Flame Wave and Thermal Bomb deals damage over time and makes the target explode if killed before the skill expires, and the list goes on.
- Taken for Granite: Aside from burning enemies, the second most common status ailment the Pyromancer inflicts is "Ash," which coats enemies in hardened soot and freezes them to the spot. It wears off quickly (even more quickly than the Freeze status ailment) but it's often enough to keep an enemy in your sights long enough to blow them away. One modification for Thermal Bomb inflicts Ash on all enemies close to the one about to explode so they can't escape it, and a class skill covers enemies in Ash if a Burn status ailment wears off.
- Why Am I Ticking?: Thermal Bomb, one of the first powers of the Pyromancer, sets one enemy on fire and if they die while under this power's effects, they explode with considerable force.
Devastator
Close Range. Tank. Stand Your Ground.
Take point and defend your allies. Ground and foes alike will tremble as you pass. As the Devastator, health will be recovered from slain enemies that stood too close.
- Attack Reflector: The Reflect Bullets skill allows you to stop bullets with a telekinetic shield, and send them back at the enemies.
- Close-Range Combatant: What a Devastator-class Outrider become, they have both high damage offensive attacks as well as a variety of defensive options. They fight at close range and heal from killing enemies at arm's length. One of their abilities allows them to leap into the air and pick their targets to crash down on. Another ability allows them to form a shield that can absorb and reflect incoming bullets back at the enemy. Their class tree contains multiple nodes that enhance close-range weapons and let them heavily specialize into the Short-Range Shotgun in particular.
- Damage Over Time: The most common status ailment associated with the Devastator is "Bleed," probably because all the shrapnel thrown out by them using their earthen powers. Most of the skill modifications on armor have something to do with adding bleed damage to skills that don't already have it, even purely defensive skills like Golem.
- Dishing Out Dirt: The Devastator class is heavily earth-themed, allowing you to perform a Shockwave Stomp in two different ways (with a Ground Punch, Earthquake, and an even more damaging Ground Pound called Gravity Leap) and encase yourself in a stone armor called the Golem. Then, there's the Gravity Master skill called Infinite Mass that summons a massive boulder that pulls the enemies in.
- Elemental Armor: The Devastator class can summon stone Instant Armor for themselves with the Golem skill to reduce damage for several seconds.
- Fighter, Mage, Thief: The fighter of the trio formed with the Pyromancer and Trickster. Devastators are expected to attract aggro and deal heavy damage as well as being able to resist damage. With the right class skills selected they are also one of the only classes that can naturally regenerate health up to maximum without harming enemies, so they aren't wholly dependent on destroying enemies up close for recovery like the Trickster.
- Gravity Master: The powers they have that don't revolve around Dishing Out Dirt are basically covered by this; they may even be connected since earth is heavy. Hurling yourself through the air like a meteor, blocking bullets with a force field and making a tiny singularity are nothing to sneeze at.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: The Impale power skewers the enemies on stone spikes popping out of the ground, holding them in place and granting health regeneration to all players in the team.
- In a Single Bound: The Gravity Leap skill, which lets the player rise up and then dive-bomb an area of their choosing. Any enemy not immediately turned to paste by this skill will be staggered and within striking distance for you to destroy at close range.
- Lightning Bruiser: The Devastator is not your typical Stone Wall tank, which is quite obvious considering the name. Unlike the general idea of a tank role, the Devastator is based on having a lot of brute strength and heavy weight which gives him very high damage attacks. This does not mean he is a Mighty Glacier either, as he has impressive mobility and can quickly reach any enemy with his ability called Gravity Leap.
Technomancer
Long range. Support. Gadgets.
Manipulate the Anomaly to animate constructs and bend them to your will, aiding allies and killing enemies from afar. As the Technomancer, part of the damage you deal is converted into player health.- Abnormal Ammo: Technomancer turrets can be set to spew ice and/or toxins.
- An Ice Person: The Technomancer class relies on freezing enemies: either with an Elemental Punch, a Cryo Turret that fires freezing projectiles or a Frost Nova that freezes everything around the player.
- Combat Medic: With the Fixing Wave ability, the Technomancer is the only class that can outright heal other teammates. Several other skill mods allow the Technomancer to heal and buff their party, including one that causes turrets to release a burst of healing whenever they expire or are destroyed.
- Combo Platter Powers: They have the most diverse abilities of any of the four classes, including poison, ice, and weapon-based Summon Magic.
- Demolitions Expert: The Technomancer has three skills marked Ordnance, which include proximity mines, a spray of miniature rockets, and a bazooka.
- Gatling Good: The Tools of Destruction skill allows Technomancers to summon a three-barreled minigun for limited use.
- Life Drain: Their heal skills are the most straightforward, outright converting damage into self-healing.
- Magitek: As the name suggests, they're mostly about using the Anomaly to enhance their existing weapons and create new ones, from simple grenades to a huge, devastating minigun.
- Mighty Glacier: Summoning a minigun with Tools of Destruction turns you into this - you can't dodge, use cover, or move any faster than a leisurely walk, but you get massive firepower and equally massive skill leech, letting you rip apart even the biggest, meanest enemies while near-instantly healing everything they throw at you. It's not very effective against enemies in cover, though, which is why you can summon a bazooka (which has much less ammo but doesn't hinder your mobility) instead.
- Poisonous Person: Another part of the Technomancer's bag of tricks. Not only is there a passive skill node that adds poison-based damage over time to their melee attack, but also a turret that hoses enemies down with toxic goo and a skill that enhances one magazine's worth of ammo with poison.
- Summon Magic: Roughly half of their abilities are based around summoning weapons of varying complexity and autonomy, including turrets, grenades, and micro-missile launchers.
- Technopath: It's in the name. To clarify, their specific form of technopathy mainly focuses on magically building and enhancing weapons, with or without their poison and ice abilities.
- The Turret Master: The Technomancer's specialty, as their main damage comes from various turrets they can drop that attack independently, lay down suppressing fire on enemies and draw aggro, allowing players to snipe at them.
- Walking Armory: What a Technomancer-class Outrider becomes. They fight at long range and heal from dealing out exorbitant damage to enemies. One of their abilities deploys a turret seemingly flash-manufactured from a small capsule that fires blasts of cryo energy that can freeze enemies in a layer of ice. Another ability creates an artillery launcher that fires mortars in a straight line.
Main Characters
The Team that accompanies The Outrider on their journey to find the source of the mysterious signal. It initially starts out as just The Outrider and Jakub, but the crew steadily grows over the course of the game. Jakub Dabrowski
Jakub Dąbrowski
Voiced by: Dmitry Chepovetsky (English), Mirosław Zbrojewicz (Polish)
A Fellow Outrider who was part of the first attempt to colonize Enoch. He was on the ground when everything went to hell but he managed to survive. Following the Time Skip, he quit being an Outrider after seeing all the others attempt to leave the Valley and get killed by the Storm. He instead plies his trade as a mechanic for the remnant of the ECA that controls Rift Town. He drives the truck, letting you move from zone to zone.
- The Alcoholic: Prefers to while away the hours drinking heavily.
- Badass Driver: Drives deeper into the storm in the demo's prologue in order to rescue the protagonist and is said at the demo's end to be their designated driver. The "Journey and Structure" featurette reveals that the protagonist is supposed to go deep into the Anomaly, having Jakub drive them there.
- The Fatalist: Before the Time Skip, Jakub was a fairly negative fellow, believing deep down Humans Are Bastards. The Forever War just deepened his nihilism, and believes that it doesn't matter who wins the war, that humanity is fucked either way because they're all trapped in the Valley by the Storm.
- Foreign Cuss Word: Uses the Polish 'kurwa' like a punctuation mark sometimes.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Charges into a pack of Ferals to get them off Channa, then chooses to save her rather than avoid an attack.
- Hollywood Tone-Deaf: The "Journey and Structure" featurette ends with a clip of him beatboxing over the radio - badly, but not really that grating. The featurette's narrator acts appalled upon hearing it.
- Liquid Courage: The one time he's forced into a fight, he empties a hip flask immediately before.
- If I Had a Nickel...: Angrily remarks "If I had a fucking nickel!" after the Outrider tells him they have to go to yet another even-more-of-a-deathtrap-than-usual place on Enoch when they have to go to the Forest.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Ran through by Yagak's spear.
- Parental Substitute: He's the closest thing Channa had to father and he loves her, but both admit he was pretty bad at it which is why she's not fond of him.
- Parents as People: His grim outlook and generally testy demeanor didn't make him a great Parental Substitute for Channa (his alcoholism probably wasn't helpful either), as they'll both admit, but he clearly cares for her life and pays for it with his own.
- Sole Survivor: Semi-averted. Until the player character is woken from cryosleep, he was the only remaining Outrider left operating on Enoch, the rest having died upon landing or at some point during the 31 year time skip. He's therefore understandably very happy to see his friend again upon their reunion. He, and one other Outrider, were also the only survivors of the Caravel incident.
- Took a Level in Cynic: And how! He already wasn't the most optimistic guy in the world before the Storm hit, and the 31 years that have transpired in the meantime have done nothing to boost his optimism levels.
- Undying Loyalty: Shira's diary, found in Rift Town, reveals that when she almost surrendered to The Mutiny, Jakub was the one to fight off the plotters, restoring her resolve.
Dr. Abraham Zahedi
Dr. Abraham Zahedi
Voiced By: Matthew Kabwe
The last scientist in the ECA. He's devoted his life to studying the Anomaly, and to trying to decipher the mysterious signal. He came to Enoch as a young child along with his father, one of the scientists who discovered Enoch. He also serves as the guy who upgrades and modifies The Outrider's gear.- Angst? What Angst?: Discussed In Universe. An optional line of dialogue mentions that he and his friends would go to school, hang out, and play video games even though they all knew that Earth was doomed and that it was extremely likely that none of them were going to live to see adulthood.
- Black and Nerdy: He's black and a scientist eager to unravel the mysteries of the Anomaly and the Signal.
- For Science!: As one of the last scientists of his entire species who's still alive, he sees experimentation and discovery for its own sake as not only a driving passion but a moral imperative. Generally, this involves asking the Outrider to go to the most mysterious and deadly parts of a mysterious Death World and poke around to see what happens. Since he's a Nice Guy who pays well and punctually, our protagonist generally tolerates this with only some mild grumbling.
- I Gave My Word: He promises to provide medical aid to an injured Insurgent in return for information. He had every intention of following through on his promise, but it didn't work out.
- Nice Guy: Very friendly to everyone he comes across.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: His insistence on keeping his word to an Insurgent soldier, allows the latter to fatally shoot Jane.
- Non-Action Guy: His main asset is his intelligence. He wouldn't last a minute in the trenches and he knows it.
- Ultimate Blacksmith: Pretty much. He can help The Outrider modify any weapon, even the ridiculously exotic Legendary Weapons.
Jane
Jane
Voiced by: Amber Goldfarb
A young sniper for the ECA, she is Zahedi's protector and joins the Outrider on their mission to find the Signal.- Cold Sniper: Downplayed. She has no guilt over leaving the Outrider to die in order to save Zahedi and the Outrider admits they would have done the same.
- Death by Pragmatism: Is about to kill an Insurgent because he knows their mission, however, Zahedi insists that they keep his word and let the man live since Zahedi bartered saving the man's life in return for him telling the protagonists where a truck containing an important case was taken. Obviously due to this talk, the Insurgent produces a revolver and shoots Jane in the throat.
- Decoy Protagonist: A cool sniper who appears very early on and is one of the starting members of the Team, you would have every reason to think she'd be a main character.
- Forgotten Fallen Friend:While she is not mentioned for most of the game after being killed, Zahedi at the very ending mentions he wishes Jane could have been there.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: She has only two appearances before she is unceremoniously killed in the First City, which ironically is the first area the Team visits outside of the starting zone.
Bailey
Bailey
Voiced By: Catherine Bérubé
Grand Marshal Corrigan's Right-Hand Woman. She clawed her way up through the ranks to achieve her rank and is extremely unhappy at being assigned to the Expedition by Corrigan. She flat-out hates Channa, believing half of her visions to be "bullshit," and because of how Corrigan "get[s] a hard-on for magic mutants." She serves as a vendor on your camp after she joins up.- An Arm and a Leg: Downplayed - her limbs are all still there at a glance but after a rock chunk from a Pax structure she lifted up with her Altered power fell on her, she is unable to use her legs and must get around in a wheelchair.
- The Atoner: Shows hints of this towards the finale of the game after being confined to a wheelchair. She begins to buy in to the hope of a better world that the Outrider is trying to make a reality and nearly sacrifices herself alongside Channa to allow Dr. Zahedi to call down the Flores' pods (though they're all saved at the last minute by a Big Damn Heroes moment from Tiago). In the endgame, she's proud to have contributed to changing the world with the Outrider's team, and shows regret for her earlier attempts to sabotage the mission.
- Berserk Button: Channa is pretty much a walking, talking, living, breathing Berserk Button for Bailey. She absolutely hates Channa, and isn't at all shy about her feelings.
- Character Tics: Frequently seen with downcast eyes, especially in one-on-one conversations with the Outrider where eye contact would be expected.
- Drunk with Power: After briefly becoming Altered, she tries to kill The Outrider and the rest of the Expedition, forcing you to fight her.
- Good Feels Good: After blowing her chance to become an Enochian apex predator and getting herself paralysed through her own foolish aggression, she makes a deliberate effort to become a helpful, supportive member of the team. While she's clearly trying to put a brave face on a difficult situation, she seems much happier and more at peace with herself than she used to be.
- Eyes Always Averted: Bailey seemingly dislikes eye contact — when conversing with the Outrider, she spends most of the time looking away from them.
- Fantastic Racism: While others worship, fear, or at the least respect Altered and others with paranormal abilities, Bailey hates them all and spares no opportunity to call them 'freaks'. Even when Bailey herself becomes Altered briefly, she still calls the Outrider a freak.
- Glass Cannon: As a boss. She has fairly low health, but her attacks hit very hard.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: It does not take much to set her off.
- Jerkass: She's Corrigan's rabid attack dog, and has the 24/7 abrasiveness of someone who is much more interested in being feared than liked. She consciously discards this attitude after her paralysis and Jakub's death. She's still a bit rude, but not nearly as bad as she was before.
- Only One Name: Her last name is never revealed. A journal entry about Bailey notes that many young people like her, who were born on Enoch and grew up during the civil war, don't have or use a family name, because they never knew their parents.
- Pet the Dog: Her actions at Jakub's funeral signal the start of a radical departure from her previous hyper-aggressive Jerkass Social Darwinist attitude. She rolls up in the wheelchair he made for her, (awkwardly) praises its engineering, and takes her turn to toss a handful of soil on his grave.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: She barely tolerates having to work with The Outrider and the rest of the expedition at the best of times.
- Token Evil Teammate: She's easily the most antagonistic of the Expedition. She only comes along because she was ordered to, and often clashes with The Outrider. Luckily, Asskicking Leads to Leadership is in full effect and she's no match for The Outrider even after she's briefly Altered.
- Took a Level in Kindness: After she gets paralyzed, she mellows out considerably. She stays loyal to the Outrider and their party, and even attempts to comfort a distraught Channa on several occasions.
Channa
Channa Takeuchi
Voiced by: Lina Roessler
The first child born on Enoch, Channa is a young woman with the gift of precognition. Serving the Marshal of Trench Town, Corrigan, she escapes after giving him a false prophecy. Takes over driving the truck from Jacob after his death.- Can't Kill You, Still Need You: After Bailey temporarily becomes Altered and is nearly killed while fighting The Outrider, Channa stops The latter from killing her. She claims that she did this because Bailey is there with them in her apparent vision of their successful mission. Turns out to be right, if only because without Bailey she probably wouldn't have been able to protect Zahedi from the Ferals.
- Early-Bird Cameo: She shows up in the Outrider's vision when they gain their powers in the beginning of Chapter 1.
- Luke, I Might Be Your Father: Jakub treats her like a surrogate daughter, because he assumes he might be her father. He's not (her mother was pregnant before Jakub had even met her), but it's a lie the Outrider believes in the moment.
- Waif Prophet: She has visions... and no control over them. She thinks they're of the future, but they could just as well be of the past - it's unclear. Her confidence in reading them varies.
- Wrench Wench: She's actually pretty good at maintaining the Outrider's truck. Jakub taught her well in that regard, at least, one of Channa's best memories of him was helping her fix what might be the same truck.
Tiago de la Luz (Act 2 Spoilers)
Tiago de la Luz
Voiced by: Kwasi Songui
A member of the Forest Enclave that the Expedition encounters after they enter the Forest and crash the truck. He's being kept in a cage in the center of the village. He knows a lot more about Enoch than most people and claims to have seen things that even he doesn't believe. In the post-game, acts as a vendor for legendary items.- Big Damn Heroes: After he becomes disillusioned with the Outrider's quest and sets out into the desert to die, he suddenly returns, ramming the Outrider's truck into the wreck of the Caravel, rescuing Bailey, Channa, and Zahedi from the collapsing bridge and attacking Ferals.
- The Big Guy: Easily the largest member of the expedition.
- Gentle Giant: Huge and ripped, with either ritualistic or combat scarring all over his arms (and presumably chest) but also very kind and gentle.
- Nice Guy: He's very friendly and easygoing.
- Vision Quest: Went on one in the past after drinking the sap of a particular tree. He claims that it connected him to the core of Enoch and granted him knowledge of the planet, and made all of the extremely hostile wildlife leave him alone.
- Walking Spoiler: It's impossible to talk about him without revealing the existence of the Forest Enclave.
August (Massive Act 2 & 3 Spoilers)
"August"
Voiced by: Avaah Blackwell
A member of the native population of Enoch. They met Tiago while the latter was out exploring. While they were slow to trust Tiago at first, he eventually won them over. Unfortunately, after Nathan Scurlock found out about them, he kidnapped August and subjected them to some kind of experiment. They seem to have some kind of connection to the Anomaly, even able to control it to a limited extent.- Aliens Speaking English: Downplayed, both because humans are technically the aliens in this situation, and because their grasp of English is extremely rudimentary at best.
- Ambiguous Gender: The Outrider asks Tiago if August is a "he" or a "she." Tiago replies that he has no idea. Even the in-game encyclopedia refers to August with gender-neutral pronouns. Generally, Tiago refers to August as "he" while the Outrider refers to them as "she". When the Outrider meets Atuma, the last Pax, who was close to Agsst, they only speak briefly about Agsst and don't use pronouns at all.
- Does Not Like Guns: Refuses to grab a gun under any circumstances. Until they become a Feral.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Rather than let Tiago be mauled by wildlife, they willingly mutate themselves into a Feral to fight them off. Unfortunately, because they can't control themselves in their new form, the other members of the expedition are forced to put August down before they kill Tiago themself.
- Last of Their Kind: Downplayed. They're the last Pax that we know of, but there's never any explicit confirmation that there are no Pax left after they die.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Everyone calls them "August" because their real name, Agsst, is very difficult to pronounce in human language.
- The Unpronounceable: Their real name is very hard to pronounce in earth languages (it's kinda like Agsst), so everyone calls them "August."
- Super-Empowering: When Bailey tries to kill them, they slash Bailey's arm with a shard of a crystal that they're carrying around. This ends up briefly granting Bailey Altered Powers. But the powers fade after only a few minutes.
- Walking Spoiler: Their very existence reveals that there is intelligent life on Enoch.
Enoch Colonization Authority
The Enoch Colonization Authority (ECA) is a government organization set up to ensure the colonization of Enoch as a new home for the remnants of humanity. Following the failure to colonize Enoch, the remnants of the ECA find themselves entangled in a bloody, violent war with the Exiles, a group of insurgents looking to overthrow them and take what little resources they have left. Shira Gutmann
Shira Gutmann
Voiced by: Pascale Bussières (English), Klementyna Umer (Polish)
Part of the ECA's engineering team. She was part of the group that first set foot on Enoch after arrival. She also advocated for the colonization efforts to be aborted after The Anomaly began. She's the one who put the injured player into cryosleep. Following the 31-year Time Skip, she's now the Grand Marshall of the ECA, and is the highest-ranking member of the command structure. She's doing her best to win the war against the Exiles, but she lacks any means to contend with the Altered that have allied themselves with the latter.
- Break the Cutie: The horrors of the war and survival on Enoch turned her from an idealistic scientist into a hardened military commander.
- Badass Israeli: Born and raised in Tel Aviv, just before the Middle East became uninhabitable.
- Eyepatch of Power: Sports one after the Time Skip.
- It's All My Fault: She blames herself for letting Maxwell bring down the colonists.
- Took a Level in Cynic: The 31 years since landing on Enoch have not been kind to her. A page from her personal journal has her mention that, had she known what waking up all the colonists would lead to, she absolutely would have chosen to kill them all.
- Tragic Keepsake: Held onto a photograph of herself and the Outrider, taken just before everything went to shit.
- Wide-Eyed Idealist: Was one at the beginning of the game. When it became clear that the Anomaly was going to stop the settlers from producing food and medicine, she advocated against pulling the plug on the colonists still in Cryosleep, believing that everything would be okay if they rationed their supplies carefully. This, however, assumes two things to be true: One, that they actually did have enough supplies to go around. And Two, that all of the colonists would be willing to put up with the constant near-starvation and horrible living conditions. Neither of these things turned out to be true.Jakub: We were waking up thousands of people every day when we barely had enough to feed ourselves, and tried to fit half a million people into a city built to house 50,000.
- You Are in Command Now: Became the Grand Marshal only because there was nobody left above her in the ECA hierarchy.
Jack Tanner
Jack Tanner
Voiced by: Tim Post (English), Marek Karpowicz (Polish)
The leader of an elite mercenary group back on Earth. The ECA approached him to lead the Outriders on Enoch. He accepted after some hesitation and put together his team.- Badass Longcoat: Wears a leather duster and was the leader of an elite team of mercenaries.
- Boom, Headshot!: How he dies in the prologue, courtesy of a sidearm shot by Maxwell.
- Cowboy: Certainly embodies the aesthetic. Between his ten-gallon hat and leather duster, not to mention his job essentially boils down to being a frontiersman.
- Father to His Men: He is very protective of the Outriders, and is Properly Paranoid about the ECA.
- Military Moonshiner: Strongly implied by a comment the Outrider makes to his grandson, complimenting the strength of the alcohol he makes.
- Retirony: A variant. He mentions his daughter still in cyro is pregnant and it's clear he's looking forward to being a grandpa. Needless to see he never gets the chance.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Dies in the prologue of the game.
Charles Maxwell
Charles Maxwell
Voiced by: James Loye
A Sergeant Major of the ECA and Shira's superior officer. A former politician who gained a high-ranking post in the ECA and was one of the first to set foot on Enoch.- Establishing Character Moment: His first appearance has him yelling at Shira for attempting to follow proper procedures, telling her "We're not on Earth anymore, Shira. There are no 'procedures!'" Considering "procedure" means the Outriders and himself are stuck on Enoch with no way back to the Flores, it's understandable that he doesn't care for it.
- Evil Brit: Tries to kill the Outriders so that he can pin the blame for the botched colonization on them.
- Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Wears a pair of high-tech glasses, and tries to kill off the Outriders, and puts the lives of all 500,000 remaining humans in jeopardy just so he can get credit for leading the colonization effort, in spite of the dangers on Enoch.
- Glory Hound: He wants the credit for officially planting humanity's flag on Enoch, demanding all Outrider reports go to him directly and refusing to heed their requests to delay or even cancel the landings.
- It's All About Me: Goes out of his way to discredit Outriders and get all the credit for colonizing the planet. In his lunacy, he not only refuses to quarantine and give medical aid the infected Starkstedt as per Tanner's request, but murders Tanner and orders his mooks to kill the Outrider survivors.
- Karma Houdini: He might not have survived the Enoch landing, but that still seems like a fairly small price to pay compared to his actions causing the remnants of humanity to be desperately struggling and fighting each other for the next three decades and the Outriders taking the fall for the mess out of landing the Flores' human cargo on Enoch. You didn't even get to kill him - he unintentionally died from the truck the Outrider was holding him against exploding suddenly.
- Never My Fault: He blames the Outriders for triggering the first Anomaly storm during their survey mission, and for bringing back a harmful fungal pathogen with them, even though exploring and assessing the dangers on Enoch is literally their job!
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: Refuses to heed the Outriders' advice about delaying the landing after the anomaly storm presents itself in favour of going forward with the landing on schedule. His choices end up costing humanity the entire colonization effort on Enoch and causes the remnants to descend into three decades of hellish war and barbarism.
- Sanity Slippage: According to the in-game lore, he "cracked under the pressure" of having so much riding on him and his decisions, which might explain some of the more... rash decisions that he makes. Later, the Outrider learns that there was no way to return to the Flores for the initial expedition, meaning it was a death sentence for him unless the colonization was given the go-ahead. So he comes across as saner for ordering it, but no less of a selfish asshole for doing so.
- Small Role, Big Impact. He has almost no screen time and only a couple dozen lines of dialogue, but his decision to not postpone or call off the Colonization efforts on Enoch is exactly what kickstarts the plot of the game.
- Starter Villain: The first antagonist the Outrider faces, setting the rest of the plot in motion.
- Warm-Up Boss: Is more of a miniboss or an Elite Mook, but he has more health than the standard troopers that accompany him.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Gets killed off in the Prologue..
Seth
Lord Seth
Voiced by: Marcel Jeannin (English), Artur Dziurman (Polish)
One of the few Altered allied with the ECA, although "allied'' is being generous. He first encounters the Outrider after they're dumped in No-Man's Land and initially is going to kill them, thinking that they're just another Exiled Altered... until he sees that they're an Outrider.- A God Am I: Like many Altered, he believes himself to be a god. He considers himself a benevolent god, but unfortunately there are bigger threats than a minor Forever War.
- Aloof Ally: Calling him an "ally" is a bit of a stretch. He's perfectly willing to help out the ECA when their goals align, but he otherwise won't lift a finger to help them no matter how much they ask. He claims that it's because there is a bigger threat named Moloch that threatens everyone. He therefore leaves saving the remaining sane colonists to the Outrider.
- Hunter of His Own Kind: He's hunting down and killing Exiled Altered for some reason - presumably because they're all super-powered psychopaths. He explicitly refers to the act as "hunting" in his dialogue.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Maybe. Despite considering himself above helping mere humans, Seth is very insistent that the Outrider do so, despite the Outrider being an Altered as well. He is also, by his own admission, fighting against something he believes will bring a far worse fate for humanity than even the current war. He seems to want to see humanity saved, at the least. He even mentions in the letter he leaves for the Outrider that even if he rejected his humanity, the Outrider doesn't have to make that same choice.
- Mind over Matter: His powers, from what we see of them, seem to involve telekinesis and some form of telepathy. He seems to be powerful enough to instantly immobilize the Outrider with a single gesture on two seperate occasions, albeit both times while the Outrider has only been familiar with their power for a couple of hours.
- Power Echoes: He's an extremely powerful Altered, and his voice has a deep echo to it when he speaks. This echo seems to be an effect of his preferred method of communication, which is some sort of telepathy. When speaking to the Outrider at the Solar Tower Seth speaks verbally and has a more normal sounding voice.
- Shrouded in Myth: His power is almost entirely told, not shown. Sure, he has some telekinetic abilities that he uses on you. But then, he is completely obliterated, with a crater around him, by Moloch. Everyone who learns about this drops a brick.
- Sink or Swim Mentor: Stands around and watches the Outrider fight Gauss without lifting a hand to help, then provides advice and information after the Outrider succeeds.
- Wild Card: He has his own mysterious goals and agenda, none of which he feels the need to divulge to anyone. The only times he helps the ECA is when doing so furthers his own agenda.
- The World's Expert (on Getting Killed): Lord Seth is introduced as a force to be reckoned with and talks a big game, but when push comes to shove he gets owned remarkably easily. We don't see what - if any - kind of fight he put up; when you catch up with him, he's holding a half-melted gun and has been seared to a wall. The Outrider steps close, gets a vision of the final moments, and that's that.
General Enemy Types
Aside from the native wildlife of Enoch such as Perforo or Strix, enemies from all factions fall into a fairly narrow set of shared archetypes. These are those archetypes. Riflemen
Riflemen
The standard assault rifle-wielding Mooks. What they lack in individual power they make up for in numbers, and they'll use grenades to try to flush you out of cover.
- Faceless Goons: They all wear masks to cover their faces.
- More Dakka: They wield assault rifles and fire full auto. The damage adds up quickly if ignored.
- Zerg Rush: Alone or in small groups, the threat they pose to the player is virtually nonexistent. however, they always attack in large groups and are reinforced by tougher units.
Cutthroats
Common melee troops, first encountered amongst the Exiles. Their main strength is their speed and toughness.
- Dual Wielding: They're armed with massive dual blades.
- Flash Step: Later-game variants gain the ability to flash-sidestep.
- Lightning Bruiser: They're very fast and often try to flank you.
- Zerg Rush: They always come in groups of four or more.
Marksmen
Marksmen
Sniper Mooks that stay at range and pick off their foes from a distance. They're pretty harmless at close range, but they're lethal if your focus is on the close-range enemies that they reinforce. Later variants gain the ability to call down fire support or use other indirect fire weapons to flush you out of cover.
- Cold Sniper: They're merciless and will not hesitate to kill you as soon as they get a clean shot on you.
- Crosshair Aware: They can be identified by the Laser Sight that comes attached to their guns. This not only warns you that you're about to be shot by them but also allows you to pinpoint their location.
- Death from Above: Spotters are like Marksmen, save for the added ability to call down mortar barrages on stationary players. If there's more than one, expect one to try to flush you out of cover with mortars so the other can shoot you. Hunters can summon a barrage of anomaly javelins for a similar effect.
- Knockback: Getting hit by their sniper rounds can push you back a short distance and briefly stuns you.
Breachers
Breachers
Heavily-armored, shotgun-wielding Mooks that seek to close the distance between you and them and shoot you with their shotguns. They're harmless at close range, but deadly up close. They also drop a grenade on death.
- Deflector Shields: Late-game variants gain the ability to create defensive shields, drastically increasing their (already fairly high) durability.
- Heavily Armored Mook: They wear heavy armor and can soak up considerably more damage than their allies.
- Mighty Glacier: Tough to take down and capable of putting out some serious damage. They're also slow as molasses.
- Shotguns Are Just Better: Their weapon of choice. On higher world tiers they can take you out in just two or three shots.
Captains
Captains
Enemies that were granted powers by the Anomaly, but not to the extent of a "true" Altered. They often appear alongside squads of lesser enemies and make for priority targets due to their powers.
- Auto-Revive: One of the powers they can have, Phoenix Aura, gives all enemies a short-duration but highly annoying buff that makes them explosively revive if killed. All of them, including other Captains.
- Combo Platter Powers: Any given Captain has maybe one or two special powers, picked more or less at random, sometimes themed to the encounter. For example, a pair of minibosses at one point are a fire/ice duo. Otherwise it's pretty random; some attack directly, some empower their bullets, some buff their allies.
- Elite Mooks: They serve this purpose, posing a much higher threat than standard enemies.
The Exiles
A faction of humans, referred to as Exiles by themselves and as Insurgents by the ECA, who were exiled by the ECA for being criminals or causing trouble. They banded together for survival and began making raids on the ECA to steal supplies. While they initially posed little-to-no threat, the emergence of Altered on their side quickly shifted the balance of power. Since then, they've dragged the ECA into a violent, bloody war of attrition to steal what little resources are left for themselves.Characters
Captain Reiner
Captain Reiner
A cruel, sadistic commander of the Exiles. He's one of the first enemies that The Outrider encounters after waking up from their 31-year long stint in cryosleep. While he's not a "true" Altered, he was still given powers by the Anomaly and as such holds a high position within the Exiles.
- Bad Boss: His soldiers consider driving out into an Anomaly storm to drop you off in the middle of it a less risky proposition than displeasing him.
- Off with His Head!: How he'd dealt with in the sidequest concerning him.
- Sadist: Loves to torture and execute prisoners. His preferred method is to dump them into No-Man's land and let the Anomaly storms tear them apart.
- Starter Villain: Tosses you out into the storm and plays no further part in the plot, unless you decide to hunt him down.
- Villains Want Mercy: After being beaten by The Outrider, he begs to be spared, even trying to convince the Outrider that the Exiles are actually the good guys in the conflict and are only fighting against "fascists". Given that only an hour ago the Outrider witnessed Reiner and the Exiles torture and kill unarmed prisoners for sport and even rob and kill their own wounded, it doesn't work.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: If you don't do the sidequest concerning him, he vanishes from the game after he dumps you in no-Man's Land and leaves you for dead.
Gauss
Gauss
The first "true" Altered that The Outrider fights. Gauss has captured the Solar Tower that once supplied the Rift Town with electricity and now serves as a lookout/checkpont. Gauss wields electrical powers and serves as the first major Boss Battle of the game.
- Battle Strip: Takes off his hooded cape when he starts the fight with The Outrider.
- Body Horror: He has bony spikes jutting out of his arms and upper torso, and his rib cage and spine seem to have grown outside his body as well.
- Cursed with Awesome: He gained electric powers, but it left his mind completely fractured, leaving him more of a Manchild.
- Flat Character: Receives no character development or even characterization beyond being called an "electro-freak." He doesn't have any dialogue, either, and attacks you immediately after his dramatic menacing walk into the combat arena.
- In the Hood: Wears a hooded cape when you first encounter him.
- Psycho Electro: He doesn't just wield electrical powers, the road to his base is littered with hundreds of electrocuted corpses.
- Ride the Lightning: One of his tricks is a lightning-powered Flash Step.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: The only clothing he wears above the waist is a hooded cape, and even that goes once the fight with him starts.
Moloch
Moloch
Described by Lord Seth as insanely powerful and absolutely evil, Moloch is a powerful Pyromancer. Carries around a shriveled husk of a human on his back, theorized to be the actual Moloch, controlling the body like a puppet.
- Arc Villain: Moloch serves as the main villain of the game's first act, after which he disappears from the story.
- Disc-One Final Boss: He's the most powerful of the Exiles, but turns out to be just the first major obstacle the Outrider faces on their journey.
- Escaped from the Lab: He gained his powers as Alchemist's sixth research subject, murdered him and escaped long before the game's Time Skip.
- Karma Houdini: He survives his fight with the Outrider and is only seen during the credits, no worse for wear. Until he is killed in the repeatable "Frontlines" expedition.
- Playing with Fire: Control over fire is his main Altered ability.
- Riddle for the Ages: Who is the old man that Moloch carries on his back? Even after you kill him in the "Frontlines" Expedition, it's never answered.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: The flashback in the first sidequest involving Moloch reveals that the way he gained his powers drove him homicidally mad. Of course, being experimented on by an unhinged scientist will probably do that to you.
Ereshkigal (Worldslayer spoilers)
The Altered Commander of the Insurgents.
- Big Bad: As the leader of the Insurgents, she's this for Worldslayer.
- Casting a Shadow: Her shadow powers allow her to use Combat Tentacles and shield herself during the boss fight.
- Dark Is Evil: Her powers involve shadowy tendrils no other Altered have ever had, and she revels in violence.
- Evil Redhead: Her hair is red, and she commands an army that has committed numerous war crimes over 30 years.
- A God Am I: She believes herself to be chosen as a goddess by the Anomaly to lead humanity into a new world.
- Hero Killer: She kills Shira Gutmann during the Peace Summit, royally pissing off the Outrider and pushing them into a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
- Mascot Villain: She's the face of the Worldslayer DLC.
- Off with His Head!: After her boss fight, the Outrider stomps her head into the ground as payback for everything the Insurgents have ever done. The camera lingers on her headless body to show she's not coming back.
- Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: She's named after a Sumerian goddess.
- The Social Darwinist: She wants the Anomaly to sweep across the entire planet, turning the chosen few into Altered and wiping out the rest of humanity.
Forest Enclave
Scurlock
Dr. Nathan Scurlock
Voiced by: Raphael Grosz-Harvey
A scientist and the leader of the Forest Enclave who has developed a cure that makes it possible to survive the toxins within the forest.- Affably Evil: Nathan is somewhat friendly and easy to get along with. He is also a mad scientist whose "cure" requires infecting his own people and unlucky visitors in the area with the black fungus, then harvesting their bone marrow. Cure is in quotes because it's temporary, which means a steady toll on the population.
- Faux Affably Evil: On the other hand, his experiments on August are brutal and completely inhumane, so his politeness might be a facade.
- Anti-Villain: He sincerely believes in trying to live independently from the ECA and away from the war, and that his actions are for the greater good of the Enclave.
- Birds of a Feather: Being a fellow scientist, he and Zahedi get along quite well. Doesn't stop him from trying to harvest Zahedi for his cure.
- Boom, Headshot!: The Outrider blows his brains out after learning of how the cure is made, as well as Scurlock trying to shoot them.
- Evil All Along: He comes across as a reasonable and easygoing guy, but is really a Mad Scientist who justifies his brutality by claiming it allows him and his followers to live away from the war.
- Evil Brit: Has a British accent.
- I Did What I Had to Do: He tries to justify the atrocities his cure requires on the grounds that it is simply the price to pay for living peacefully away from the Forever War.
- Human Resources: His black fungus "cure" (not really a cure since it only lasts around a day and has to be reinjected after that) is made from the spinal fluid of human beings infected from black fungus, which manages to trick the black fungus into treating the injected subject like the other animals that live in the forest for its duration.
- Lottery of Doom: How he maintains the Enclave's cure. Victims are chosen at random from new arrivals via an "induction" ceremony, although both he and Altered are exempt. Himself, because he's one of the two people who knows how to make it, and Altered presumably because their exposure to the fungus - or the Anomaly - means they're seemingly already immune to it.
- Mad Scientist: He developed a cure for the toxins within the forest, but the process requires that he harvest bone marrow from a human. He also performs brutal and violent experiments on August in his spare time.
- Spoiled by the Manual: It's possible to find a journal entry from him that has him express contempt for the desperate starving people feeling resentful and trying to break into his abode, regarding them as chaff while someone of his intelligence is far more vital to humanity. This rather foreshadows his later-obvious willingness to kill people to create his cure and hold himself above others by keeping his cure's specifics (almost) entirely private to keep himself out of the Lottery of Doom.
- Villainous Valor: Audio logs you can find in the First City indicate that every attempt to study the Black Fungus resulted in the scientists doing the studying being infected and dying, no matter what precautions they took, as the fungus was able to eventually penetrate any form of protective suit or containment. Scurlock was well aware that everyone before him who attempted to cure or even study the Black Fungus ended up killed by it, but that didn't deter him from spending years developing a cure.
- Walking Spoiler: It's impossible to discuss him without revealing the existence of the Forest Enclave or revealing his evil nature.
Kang Jung-Su
Kang Jung-Su
Voiced by: Andreas Apergis
The chief of security and second-in-command of the Forest Enclave, Kang leads the Deserters who are responsible for protecting the Enclave and maintaining Scurlock's rule as leader of the Enclave.- Arc Villain: He serves as the main antagonist of the game's second act.
- Avenging the Villain: He is furious over the Outrider killing Scurlock and taking away his own position of power, and is determined to take revenge.
- Bald of Evil: As he is completely bald, and a thoroughly unrepentantly evil asshole.
- The Dragon: To Scurlock.
- Dragon-in-Chief: While Scurlock is by no means a puppet, Kang is the real power in the Enclave as he runs its military, and could easily depose Scurlock anytime. He simply doesn't want to deal with Scurlock's responsibilities.
- Dragon Their Feet: He outlives Scurlock and spends the rest of his time in the game trying to avenge his former boss.
- Irrational Hatred: He hated the Outrider from the moment he met him.
- Jerkass: Even before he is revealed to be evil he is a massive asshole who hates the Outrider for no real reason.
- Karma Houdini: Even though he does lose his position of power, he is still alive by the end of the game and still in command of a large army of deserters.
- The Unfought: He's smart enough to know that he could never win in a direct fight with the Outrider and is content to simply send as much of his army as he can and hope it kills them.
- We Have Reserves: His entire strategy to deal with the Outrider is to throw as many of his men as he can at them, as he has plenty of soldiers at his disposal.
Other Characters and Entities
Warning: Every single entry below this line is a massive Walking Spoiler. All spoilers will be unmarked. Read ahead at your own peril The Wanderer
The Wanderer, AKA Nikolai Galyatkin
Voiced by: Andrew Shaver
A mysterious Altered encountered in the Forest, hesitant to use his powers and instead asking the Outrider to clear the way to several ancient obelisks.- The Atoner: In his third and final sidequest, he reveals who he is, trying to revert a Feral back into a Pax. This, as you find out later, comes after he deserted Monroy after participating in his atrocities.
- Death Seeker: Realizing how much Monroy went off the deep end, Galyatkin decided to wander off into the raging storm. Instead of dying, he gained superpowers.
- I Shall Return: After his final sidequest, he leaves and informs the Outrider that they will likely meet again.
Monroy
Captain Hernando Monroy
Voiced by: Vlasta Vrana
The Captain of the Caravel colony ship that was rebuilt and piloted to Enoch by the remnants of humanity left behind after the Flores launched. The Caravel was rebuilt with much more powerful engines than the Flores, allowing the Caravel to arrive several years earlier, using plans the ECA left behind. Upon meeting the Pax, Monroy grew fearful and envious of their ability to command the Anomaly and enslaved them to try and learn their secrets, eventually carrying out a campaign of genocide against them after they revolted.- Boom, Headshot!: How he's killed at the end of the game.
- The Captain: An evil version. He was the captain of the Caravel. and he engaged in the enslavement and eventual genocide of the Pax.
- Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: Once he realizes that you're real and not a hallucination, the first thing he does is complain about how long it took you to come and rescue him.
- Final Solution: When the Ferals began overrunning his forces, he decided to wipe out all the Pax, hostile or otherwise, just in case.
- Go Mad from the Isolation: He's been alone in the Caravel for going on 40 years at this point. When he first meets the Outrider's team on the bridge, he seems to believe they're just hallucinations.
- Greater-Scope Villain: He's the closest thing to a Big Bad we see in the story. Everything that happened on Enoch can be either directly or indirectly blamed on him.
- I Did What I Had to Do: His justification for his enslavement and genocide of the Pax. He claims that if he hadn't done it first, they would have done it to humanity. The evidence we find about the Pax doesn't support this conclusion at all.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Villain!: Enoch's storms were bad, but could be controlled and subdued by the Pax. Now, with most of the Pax dead and the vast majority of the survivors turned Feral, the anomaly storms will be running rampant - and by the sounds of things, will only get worse over time.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Seems clearly based on Hernando Monroy Cortez, the Spanish Conquistidor. At least, a revisionist, cartoonishly simplistic California High School level understanding of Cortez's role in history.
- The Paranoiac: Wholeheartedly believed that the Pax would have eventually turned on humanity, so he struck first.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: He came to believe the peaceful Pax would eventually use their Anomaly-controlling powers against the human colonists on Enoch, so he first enslaved and then tried to eradicate them to prevent that. This caused the Pax to turn themselves Feral and fight back, wiping out all of the Caravel colonists except for Monroy himself.
- The Social Darwinist: The Flores picked the best and brightest, those who would give the colonization effort the best chance to succeed. Monroy's Caravel? The strongest, most ruthless, and those willing to pay him the most to get on. Everyone else got to stay behind to die. He also argues that, as a result of Enoch being turned into a Death World Hellscape, he helped make humanity "strong" be forcing them to adapt to the savage conditions.
- Tyrant Takes the Helm: After a majority of the Outriders are killed when the Caravel explodes in orbit and the remainder of them are sent off in the Flores, the saner remnants of humanity take shelter in a massive floating city. Unfortunately, the less-sane remnants of humanity - all those raiders and warlords who tried to force their way onto the Flores - are also still around. They pool their resources, invade the floating city, and cannibalize it for materials to repair the Caravel.
- The Unfought: Justified. He's a harmless old man by the time we find him. He can't walk without a cane and has no soldiers under his command.
- Ungrateful Bastard: First, he enslaved and murdered his harmless hosts, the Pax. Then, he dared to mouth off to the protagonist that the expedition from Flores came late. No wonder Channa lost it.
The Pax/Pakanah
The Pax/Pakanah
The native intelligent race on Enoch. A peaceful race who welcomed the Caravel with open arms upon their arrival, helping the humans aboard settle on Enoch. They had the ability to manipulate the Anomaly, safely channeling it to stop it from wreaking havoc. Unfortunately, The captain of the Caravel eventually grew paranoid about the powers they wielded and enslaved them, eventually wiping them out when they revolted.- Actual Pacifist: The Pax seem to be almost totally incapable of violence. To the point that they had to mutate themselves into crazed Ferals to be able to fight back against humanity.
- Alien Arts Are Appreciated: The Outrider's team find a lot to like in their art, their architecture... and even their alcohol. It's implied that even if their species is dead and gone, humanity will be happy to preserve and adapt what parts of their culture remain.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Worldslayer reveals that the Pax's society was once much more like humanity's, and in fact the Anomaly is the result of them exploiting their planet's natural resources, eventually leading to the collapse of their civilization (although, unlike humans, they stopped before they destroyed the entire world). The Pax seen in the present are the descendants of a splinter group that voluntarily regressed to a more primitive way of living, one more in tune with nature and the Anomaly.
- Meaningful Name: Pax is latin for "peace." From what little we learn about them, they were an extremely peaceful people, to the point that they had to mutate themselves into murderous Ferals to even have a chance at fighting back against Humanity.
- Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: They were a completely pacifistic people, and literally could not wrap their brains around the fact that they'd made first contact with a murderous, paranoid warlord-dictator. Eventually, they had to rewrite their entire personalities in a species-wide Taking You with Me moment in order to become creatures that could destroy Monroy and his empire.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: In the extreme. They welcomed alien settlers to their planet with open arms and were rewarded by being enslaved and eventually wiped out. August even tries to calm the storm at one point, only for Bailey to misinterpret this in much the same way as Monroy did.
- Poor Communication Kills: After Monroy saw their ability to wield the Anomaly, and the Anomaly began to fry their technology, he demanded an explanation. Because the Pax weren't able to adequately explain their abilities and the Anomaly to Monroe's satisfaction, he enslaved them and launched a campaign of extermination that forced the Pax to turn themselves into Ferals so they could fight back.
- Reality Warper: An entire race of reality warpers, able to do things such as change the weather, build giant stone monoliths, and force crop growth by willpower. They effectively have the same powers as the Altered — all of them — but dedicated to creative pursuits instead of destructive ones.
Ferals
The Ferals
The primary antagonists fought towards the end of the game's story. The Ferals are former pax who mutated themselves with the Anomaly to fight back against their enslavement at the hands of Monroe. Ferals are violent, crazed monsters who attack anything that comes into their territory with extreme prejudice. In spite of what their outward appearance and attitude, they're still intelligent, enough so that they can wield firearms with great proficiency and make use of tactics such as distractions and abmushes.- Always Chaotic Evil: Becoming a Feral seems to strip the Pax of any ability or desire to do anything other than fight anything that isn't another Feral. The Ferals have no society of their own, instead inhabiting the deserted ruins of their civilization. Even August, upon becoming a Feral, tries to kill Tiago almost immediately.
- Body Horror: The Feral transformation isn't pretty - it rips a Pax's flesh apart to accommodate more muscle mass, leaving them with great rents in their skin that reveal bones pushed apart by their new bulk.
- Reality Warper: Inherited from their original forms, except instead of the pacifistic creative powers that the Pax had, they are now dedicated to violent pursuits. Only the more powerful of the Ferals retain enough willpower to use these powers, however.
- Skeletons in the Coat Closet: A lot of their armor is made of bones.
- Tragic Monster: They were once members of a peaceful race who were forced to become monsters in a desperate attempt to survive.
- Unstoppable Rage: This is literally their entire personality. Aggression is so completely alien to the Pax psyche that they have to overwrite everything that they are to become combat-capable, leaving only murderous, indiscriminate fury. When August becomes a Feral to save Tiago, he ends up trying to beat him to death because killing is just what Ferals do.
- Was Once a Man: To be more specific, a Pax.
Yagak
Voiced by: Robert Montcalm
A leader of the Ferals that The Outrider encounters towards the end of the game, Yagak is a massive wrecking ball of rage empowered by his Pax-turned-Feral psychic energy. His control over the storms appears to be the source of much of the Flores problems; he will not stop until humanity is dead.- Arc Villain: He doesn't appear until the the game's third act and takes over as the main villain from there.
- Big Bad: In a sense. As the leader of the Ferals, he's the closest thing the Anomaly has to a guiding, malicious intelligence driving it to Kill All Humans, and the journey to the heart of the storm is a journey into the heart of his power that causes him to take an increasingly active role against the heroes. That said, he's really more of an angry ghost of injustices past, and the true source of everything that went wrong in the story is Monroy.
- Final Boss: Of the main story and the endgame content.
- Final Solution: Not surprisingly, his plan for humanity. By the Eye of the Storm his plan is to supercharge the anomaly and detonate it, wiping off all life from Enoch in the process.
- Flat Character: Played for tragedy and horror. He's a Pax turned into a walking apocalypse, his mind so thoroughly destroyed by the transformation that he doesn't even know who he's fighting anymore. He exists to wipe out anything even vaguely resembling his human oppressors, and that's it.
- Karma Houdini: Despite his actions, he survives the events of the main game.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: That being said, the Outrider does finally kill him during the postgame content.
- No Body Left Behind: He explodes at the end of Eye of the Storm, leaving nothing of him behind.
- Recurring Boss: Encountered three times during the game — once in the Feral village, then twice at the end outside of the wreck of the Caravel.
- Encountered one last time at the end of the postgame content, in the Eye of the Storm, where he is at the center of a continent spanning psychic storm.
- Thoroughly Mistaken Identity: Believes The Outrider is Monroy.
