Incursion Red River's Outskirts Update Has Me Coming Back

The bloke on the ledge took cover. Not a shuffle, and not a mannequin who’d forgotten his legs. Cover. He got up there, tucked in, and then he was my problem. I was close enough to a wall that my own gun had jammed up into my face, and I’d stopped to examine a candlestick, which says plenty about my professionalism on a new map.

The handler, who’s got a lot more to say in this update, waited until I was already in trouble and then frightened the life out of me. I told her to shut up. I’ve died on Outskirts more than once. I’ve never had more fun in this game.

Update #4 isn’t everyone’s yet. Games Of Tomorrow have the release on 4 November, creator access from 29 October, and a public playtest already live. I’ve been on Outskirts. The AI is the closest thing to real players I’ve played while it’s still AI, the loot is finally worth stopping for, and the map is lovely. Airdrops and convoys are still a sketch.

Here’s what landed, what held up on the raid, and where I’d love it to go.

The AI, or: he took cover and I took it personally

The July notes are the AI pass aimed at this update. Bots go out in numbers the system can cope with, they share sightings, and a split squad pulls a sensible group rather than the whole island. Dead friends leave a mark on the nav mesh, so the living ones start avoiding the spot, and a pile of bodies makes that spot worse. Search got a rework, and so did the animations and the movement. Their own post on 3 July called it AI overhaul progress for the next big drop. Light detection stayed off the showcase, and a full crowd sim was still research, so neither of those counts as part of the drop yet.

What I met was simpler, and better. He took cover. They also open fire from a long way off now, which is a nasty little courtesy. I’d forgotten the enemy multiplier was sitting on one, so I bumped it to two, and a bloke came after us straight away. I used to play this on three. I don’t fancy three tonight. On two I’m struggling, and the struggle is the good kind. I can’t predict them. That’s the compliment.

It’s still AI. Nothing else I’ve played gets this close while the opponents are still bots. For a PvE game, the whole job is that tension, plus a slider for how much you hate yourself. Two is the slider. The ledge was the plan.

Where I’d love it to go: let the three factions shoot at each other, not only at me. The map already seats them in different bits of the island. A fight I can hear before I join it would make the hotzone feel like one, and it would give the AI something to do when I’m still examining candlesticks.

Loot, or: I examined a candlestick and meant it

Loot in a container no longer appears the moment you look. You search it, and the search takes longer when the thing is rarer or bigger. They showed that on 30 June, and the July notes add loot volumes, so a spot can be medical, or food, or simply richer than the shed next door. Night raids pay better, by those same notes. Loose kit near your feet turns up in a vicinity list, so the jungle eats fewer magazines. Food and drink are in too, and nothing here is a hunger bar to babysit. Each one buffs stamina or health for a while, and you can leave it if the space is better spent on bullets. They even allowed themselves a cold beer in Vietnam.

On the raid, the boxes had started paying out. I say that as a man who has opened a lot of sad ones in this game. Medical kits, the ones I was calling an IFAC and an MFAC out loud, a helmet, an AUG I decided I wanted, cash, cigarettes, and a bag that got stupid. I turned down fish sauce. Everyone’s got a line. The candlestick was the tell. I stopped, I looked at it, and I was pleased. Looting is fun now. Exciting, even, which is a ridiculous sentence, and also accurate.

New guns are on camera for this drop as well. The 1 October notes name the MK47, an American AK-pattern rifle in 7.62x39, and the M14 in 7.62x51 as a lower tier DMR for the UICS. On their own feed, a belt-fed KAC LAMG in 5.56 and a KelTec RFB bullpup are both tagged for the update. None of those got built on the night. The AUG was enough executive decision for one man.

Where I’d love it to go: keep the good medical kits rare enough that a full bag is still a choice on the walk out. The search already drags its feet for the rare stuff, and night already pays better. I want that little gasp, the one I had over a kit with letters on it, to survive the tenth raid.

Outskirts, or: a lovely map I barely saw

Outskirts sits on the southern shoreline of the Red River Delta, and this is the first map built here as a multi-faction hotzone. The IGC hold the airfield. The UICS hold the main boulevard. The VLF are fragmented through the jungle between. They wanted it more modern, closer to a town than to another clearing, and the July notes call it the most realistic map so far, with real businesses and their Vietnamese advisors as the reference.

The named places are the docks, a smuggling strip the UICS are watching, with close corners and long sightlines under the apartments. A UICS training outpost works as a makeshift shoothouse. A bike shop in the industrial zone is tight and full of mechanical loot. A gravel and concrete plant is open ground, the sort of cover you have to think about.

I barely saw it. Warehouse compound, a construction yard, apartments, a house. That’s the tour, and it’s already a good size. The house interior is doing the work. The rooms feel like someone left in a hurry, not like a box with a loot node in it, and I reckon a lot of interiors got that same pass. On the ground the factions felt nothing like three copies of the same lad in a different hat. One evening’s read, not a manual.

A lovely addition. Beautifully put together. I called it a nice map while I was still lost, which is usually when a map tells on itself. A lot of it’s still unwalked.

Where I’d love it to go: the boulevard changes between raids. The three factions are already planted. If I come back and the apartments have a different flag on them, I’ll stay for the postcard and for the fight.

Airdrops, or: green smoke and a small crowd

Airdrops can happen in a raid now. The observer calls them before the crate arrives. AI turn up to guard it, the crate doesn’t wait forever, and inside the valuable stuff there’s another crate a mission wants you to walk to the in-raid trader. Extra rewards if you do. That’s the 26 October version.

I clocked mine off green smoke, which may be me being a detective and may be the game being kind. There was one bloke up on it. Then the rest turned up in the same spot, bunched, like they’d shared a taxi. Fun. Genuinely. And thin. Few enemies, all agreeing to stand together, and then it was over. I want a standoff. I want reinforcements. The idea is already the most “something is happening on this map” the game has had. It just doesn’t have enough happening yet.

Where I’d love it to go: a second wave. The crate already vanishes if you dawdle, and it’s already guarded. Send more of them, from more than one direction, and the jog towards the smoke becomes the raid instead of a scrap in a car park.

Convoys, or: I blew it up and came home with a story

Convoys roll across the map with infantry alongside. You can shoot the column the old fashioned way, or you can bring a laser rangefinder and call an airstrike, and the observer talks you through it. If the escorts spot you, the convoy stops, they break off and hunt, then they regroup and carry on. Kill the lead truck and the rest of the column has a traffic problem. On Delta, at night, there’s a special one. The Merchant and his guards escort the most valuable shipments themselves. He’s the IGC’s logistics boss, and the October notes give him an RGR gas grenade for area denial. That’s the shipment they actually bother to call valuable.

The notes don’t list a reward for blowing a convoy up. They hang the value on the shipment, and they hang the big one on that night run on Delta. My convoy was dull. Blow it up, kill a couple of blokes, and that’s it. No loot. I may have missed the shipment. What I can say, plainly, is that the wreck didn’t pay me, and the notes never promised it would.

Where I’d love it to go: put that shipment in the trucks you’ve just stopped, and let the escorts keep coming. The regroup is already written. I met a column that ended when the lead truck did, and a column that ends that quickly isn’t a column. It’s a speed bump with extra steps.

The trader, the meds, and the woman who won’t be quiet

Every map gets its own in-raid trader, in a set spot. They’re there so you can buy the boring bits for hideout upgrades and repairs, and sometimes they’ve got a rarer upgrade or faction loot, so you’re meant to bring cash. Next to them is a secure container. Pay the fee, stash the one thing you’d cry about, and it’s in your inbox after the raid even if you don’t make it out. Five new story missions come with the same drop, three main and two side, and they send you to Outskirts and past it.

I found mine. He was a long walk away, which is either good design or a personal attack, and I didn’t get as far as spending anything. The secure container is the bit I’m going to abuse the first time I’m carrying something I like, because I already know what I do with a bag full of medical kits. I get greedy, and then I get shot.

Bleeds come in two speeds now. A light one drips. A hard hit in the wrong place turns it into a heavy one, and that one doesn’t drip. Fractures are new. Break an arm or a leg and you can’t sprint, painkillers get you moving for a bit, and only a splint actually fixes the bone. I didn’t have the meds I needed. I had painkillers, and I had opinions. An interaction isn’t a progress bar any more either. You see your hands do the thing, and so does anyone you’re with, and those seconds feel longer when you’re stood in the open like a lemon.

Jane Perry’s new lines cover a first visit, the start of a raid, a convoy and an airdrop. In the raid, the lady wouldn’t leave me alone. She scared the life out of me over a bag I was trying to sort, and I told her to shut up, and I stand by it. There’s also a low-ready stance in this update, with an option that drops you into it after you’ve been idle. The tuck I actually clocked was the wall. Get close to something and the gun jimmies up into your face. I liked it. Odd thing to like while you’re being shot. I’ll take it.

Where I’d love it to go: the secure container fee should sting when the bag is already stupid with medical loot. The box is already next to the trader, and it already saves the one item you can’t bear to lose. I want that choice on a greedy raid, because that’s the raid I had, candlestick and all.

The bit where I’m fair

The AI, the map and the loot are why I’d boot this tonight. The two new events aren’t there yet.

Airdrops are a good idea with not enough people in them. Convoys are a good idea that, on the one I did, finished before they’d started. Blow it up, a couple of lads, no loot, next. If the Merchant’s night run on Delta is the one with the shipment, then the ordinary column needs a reason to exist that isn’t “we added trucks”. A fair reading of my own raid is that I missed something. A fair reading of the notes is that they never said the wreck was the prize.

Previous updates have felt like this at the start. Fun, big, and then the missions go samey and you’re done. I don’t know yet if this AI is enough to carry the game once the tasks start repeating themselves. I do know I barely walked the map, died a lot, and wanted another go. That’s a better first evening than I’ve had here in a long while. It doesn’t make the thin events thick.

Where I’d love it to go: treat the airdrop and the convoy as the same promise. Someone else is already busy on the map, and if you’re late, you’re late. Reinforcements on the smoke. A shipment you can actually rob. The systems are in. The intensity isn’t.

Still early access, and the door on 4 November

It’s still early access, and Steam still lists it as single-player and online co-op. No other players in the raid. That’s the version of extraction I want, and it’s why a sandbox this size matters. You, or you and a few mates, and an AI that’s finally willing to take a ledge.

There’s no full wipe. Their 27 October post says you keep your inventory, and only mission and safehouse progression reset. That’s the kindest way to ask people back. The 1 October notes also say the install has come down from roughly 80 GB to 38 GB, and that Intel XeSS was about to sit with the upscalers already in the game. I haven’t timed a download, so those numbers stay theirs. If you don’t own it, they’ve got it at 20% off until 8 November.

Five story missions, a new island, a trader in the raid, meds that ask you a question, and an AI that had me struggling on two when I used to play this on three. For a game that’s still in early access, that’s a lot of reasons to care what they do next. The public door is 4 November. I’ve already got my face pressed against the glass, candlestick in hand, handler telling me off.

The verdict

If you already own it, come back. That’s the easy yes. The map alone is worth the evening, and I barely scratched it. If you don’t own it, and you like PvE, and you want a fun sandbox, this is one of the best PvE extraction shooters going. There aren’t many. If you want a stranger with a grudge on a rooftop, you’re in the wrong queue, and the solo page will tell you that more politely than I just did. The longer buy argument, from before this update, is is Incursion Red River worth it in 2026. How it sits next to the other island is Incursion against Gray Zone Warfare.

The AI behaviour holds it up. Outskirts holds it up. Looting actually being fun now holds it up. Airdrops and convoys are cool ideas, and they need a lot more to them before they’re doing the same job as the rest of this drop. I’m excited about what this update adds, and I’m more excited about where it can go. The AI has finally got an opinion. The boxes have finally got something in them. The town looks like a town. Give the smoke a second wave, give the trucks a shipment I can steal, and let those three factions annoy each other when I’m not around. I’ll be there. Probably still telling the handler to shut up. Probably still getting the gun in my own face. It’s worth coming back for.

If you want the Outskirts run, the full video is at the top of this page. The earlier Quarry film, where I refused to leave and the AI took that personally, is I Played Incursion Red River Like Gray Zone Warfare And It Fought Back. That wander’s written up in I played Incursion like it was Gray Zone Warfare. Everything else lives on the Incursion Red River hub. And if you enjoyed this, subscribe to @willybgamer on YouTube for more not so serious gaming.

Sources (11)

• Games Of Tomorrow, Development Update #13, 26 October 2026 ↗
• Games Of Tomorrow, Development Update #12, 1 October 2026 ↗
• Games Of Tomorrow, Development Update #11, 3 July 2026 ↗
• Games Of Tomorrow, Development Update #10, 11 May 2026 ↗
• Incursion Red River on X, Update #4 playtest, 30 October 2026 ↗
• Incursion Red River on X, no full wipe, 27 October 2026 ↗
• Incursion Red River on X, 20% off until 8 November, 26 October 2026 ↗
• Incursion Red River on X, searching boxes and low-ready, 30 June 2026 ↗
• Incursion Red River on X, KAC LAMG, 25 September 2026 ↗
• Incursion Red River on X, KelTec RFB, 29 August 2026 ↗
• Incursion Red River on Steam ↗