This epic Outriders trailer is the nail in Anthem's coffin

We know about very few next-gen games outside of Halo Infinite, Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2, and Godfall, but Square Enix has added another exciting game to the pile with the debut trailer for Outriders, a hardcore action RPG that feels like a mashup of Destiny, Anthem, and Gears of War.

Square Enix first teased Outriders, a three-player sci-fi shooter from Bulletstorm and Gears of War: Judgment developer People Can Fly, at E3 2019. On Tuesday, we got another look at the game thanks to an intense new trailer.

Even though Outriders has been slightly delayed with its release date shifted from summer 2020 to holiday 2020, Square Enix confirmed that the sci-fi shooter will be launching on PS5 and Xbox Series X in addition to PC, PS4, and Xbox One. Its first trailer is bombastic and intense. The game seems poised to achieve what Anthem never could — and on next-gen consoles no less.

In the trailer, a female voice narrates humanity's desperate struggle for survival on an alien planet called Enoch, but after some kind of mysterious, seemingly malevolent magical force "consumed" humanity rather than save it, everything changes. Creepy enemies and intense combat abound in the trailer.

Game Director Bartek Kmita promises in a press release that Outriders will provide "countless hours of gameplay" and that it has "has grown from an idea of the game we always wanted to make to the most ambitious project People Can Fly has ever undertaken." Outriders has been in development for four years, which explains why it'll be released so soon even though we've barely heard anything about it.

The trailer does seemingly contain brief glimpse of actual gameplay, with a full reveal to follow soon after. On February 13, People Can Fly and Square Enix will be hosting a livesteam to show off gameplay for the first time. Kmita will be present alongside Lead Writer Joshua Rubin and host Mailk Forte.

In the meantime, you can check out the new trailer here:

While Outriders seems to be going in a darker direction, as a self-prescribed RPG shooter with a lot of interesting powers, Outriders evokes BioWare and EA's Anthem many ways beyond plot and overall style. Anthem was marred with development problems from the start, so it never reached its full potential and post-launch support has been dreadful.

Outriders might feel like the perfect antidote for those disappointed in Anthem.

In a February blog post, Anthem game director Casey Hudson revealed BioWare's plans "to reinvent the core gameplay loop with clear goals, motivating challenges and progression with meaningful rewards – while preserving the fun of flying and fighting in a vast science-fantasy setting." With awesome next-gen sci-fi titles like Outriders on the horizon, however, it feels more and more like too little too late unless Anthem can deliver an overhaul akin to Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn.

I never got into Anthem, especially after the poor reception it received, but Outriders is now my most anticipated next-gen title. If Outriders can come out of the gate swinging, People Can Fly and Square Enix's new shooter could be one of the first major next-gen multiplayer games, just like once Destiny was early in PlayStation 4's heyday.

Outriders is coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X during holiday 2020.