@chucktowski: That's a good callout actually. I'm also playing the female version of the character and I think she's been passable at worst and charming at best. Maybe the male performance is way worse? There are a couple of other characters with weird pauses between lines or other odd delivery quirks (camp leader in the snow area comes to mind), but I'm also only ~9 hours in at level 14 or so, so it very well could drive right off a cliff in general.
@humanity: I think there's some aspect of expectation here for me, as I went in expecting the gameplay to be mindless fun and everything else to be ignorable, thus allowing the other stuff to more pleasantly surprise me. I've found it to be more or less tonally consistent, though things like side quests sticking around after the npc giving you the quest gets smoked are bizarre and jarring. I do agree with Jeff about it feeling weirdly dated though.
I find it wild how strongly Jeff hates the writing/dialogue/VA in Outriders. Coming off the demo, those were kind of the main points that sold me on it since the combat is so predictable and straightforward (but still feels good). It hits me as a less-abrasive Bulletstorm vibe with a bit of new Wolfenstein mixed in. It ain't Nier or The Last of Us or whatever you want to point to as excellent examples of those aspects in games, but I think it's well done for what they're going for.
Seriously! I played this demo back during the Steam demo week thing and wishlisted it because it seemed like it had legs, but good lord it's totally consumed my playtime over the last week. I had this same reaction to CrossCode, where a game just comes out of nowhere and every aspect of it feels well-considered and expertly crafted and super deep. It's so good!
I_speel_my_dreenk's comments