The sudden appearance of Outcast – A New Beginning proves that we deserve older titles to have a return.
The current gaming market is being overflooded with new IPs or remakes of the old titles that used to play for many hours. Big companies always miss the point with the new AAA titles by employing schemes that obviously get a heavy backlash and then turn into a snowball of a mess- cough the latest Justice League game cough- and cannot be stopped until things die down. And in remasters, companies can just dump their resources of filling an old game with an HD texture pack, just to let them cash in some quick buck- I’d also give the example of Tomb Raider on that one, but it seems like the matters will eventually get fixed.
When I initially got into Outcast – A New Beginning and played through the first few hours, it didn’t catch my attention, but as it turns out, it is a sequel to the 1999 hit, open-world action game Outcast 1.1 by Appeal. Digging up a bit more, I found that I already knew this game, played it back in the day, and then everything clicked.
Realizing the team behind the same game almost 20 years later, bringing a sequel on a different level dropped, gave me quite a shock. Looking back at the original Outcast title and then seeing A New Beginning really made me quite happy because it made me realize not all seem to have been lost to time after all.
Let me briefly talk about the debut release of the Outcast series. It is a 3D open-world adventure game with set quests and FPS elements. The game takes place on a distant planet of Adelpha, which we enter by jumping between dimensions. After Earth discovers Adelpha, they start to research it, but the equipment gets broken, and we have to do some escort missions to take engineers and scientists to equipment for them to fix it. As you can guess, we will see some trouble and, at the same time, help the inhabitants of Adelpha. Oh, by the way, you are considered a prophet to the local towns of Adelpha, and there is that as well.
Outcast – A New Beginning also follows this storyline with a twist; this time, we are putting a stop to the Earth’s intention to dry Adelpha out of its resources. What makes this game quite addicting and great to follow is both the mix of great narration and the return of familiar faces. Shortly, Outcast – A New Beginning provides the same experience with amped-up graphics, a tight storyline, and actually fun-to-play interactions between world elements and your enemies. To be brutally honest, Outcast – A New Beginning easily convinced me to keep playing after gathering enough information to give my criticism about it.
The story starts with Cutter Slade being thrown into another world, previously mentioned as Adelpha. He has no idea how and when he got there, but it seems like he has a vague idea of what that place is. Despite being alienated, he finds himself in a battle with an imperialist force trying to delete a small town beneath the forest. Lehaz, the town’s protector, finds him on top of the town; when she hears Slade speak English, she considers it an ancient language, and he must be a prophet. Also, the fingers of humans play a big role for some reason. The first hour is just Slade getting mocked for having five fingers, which I found quite entertaining.
After Lehaz asks us to talk with Almayel, the true messenger of the Yods—the Gods in Adelpha—we are tasked with finding Almayel, but we have a lot to go through first, like getting close to the locals and helping them out. The first town we visit, Emea, has a Shamaz—the world Shaman in a different way, I guess—who can speak English and says he could take us to the town and find a way to get Cutter Slade back home.
As with any other plot, things get a bit more than just a returning home mission, and Cutter Slade turns out to be a prophet indeed, as he speaks the language of God and provides a message to Almayel. I figured out that maybe you could have problems following the story of Outcast 1.1, but Outcast – A New Beginning of storytelling and plot building is so smooth; every bit of quest and tidbit you receive by talking to locals or important Talans makes it worth your time.
Now, it gets a bit different; Almayel turns out to be two sisters acting as one, and they never have a conflict between themselves as they bring the true message of the Yods. They are always unified and never talk over each other, but once Slade mentions extinction, both Alma and Yel suggest two different solutions for extinction.
I thought it was rather clever to say that the story is becoming more of a mess for the main character and the future of a race. Then, we are given two main quests: protect and procreate. Handling these two quests will eventually get Adelpha to thrive again rather than being a slave to invaders- and help Cutter go back to his home, of course.
There are around seven different regions to discover in Adelpha, and the area you are given to explore is quite a big one since it is an open world and Slade has a lot of ways in terms of traveling; you are free to just go wherever you want after finding out your main quests. Starting from Emea, different subplots and quests open for Slade to help the land’s natives. Each town has its own story to follow, and that is what makes Adelpha a true, living nation.
Quickly, before throwing into the gameplay aspects, I really want to mention the quality of the world around Cutter; it is a massive improvement over the first and remastered versions of Outcast. The scenes are amazing, and different regions of Adelpha showcase their variety of different faunas and climates effortlessly.
The gameplay is rather different than the first game; instead of controlling Slade through a first-person viewpoint, the game has turned into a third-person one, though it does not feel uneasy to have it changed. Our first hour or two is spent getting our gear while going through outposts of invaders, such as a shield, rocket-powered chest plate, and a pistol, of course. The extra bit of tech and upgrading them will eventually come later during your gameplay, so you can expect to find unique mechanics to spice your combat up with the upgrades you purchased.
Mentioning combat, I found the combat between you and the enemies you encountered to be rather fluid as you do not feel stressed with the tools you have to dodge, block, and attack back. It is easy to set up a proper combo with your arsenal and gives the best feeling when executed correctly.
Wildlife will try to bother you in pathways between cities, but in outposts and bases, it’s best to take over those places with a plan and a pattern. If you are feeling very, very bothered to not have the hassle through the game, developers provided an extra easy mode for you to enjoy through the story instead- which I found to be rather odd. I guess that is what gamers want nowadays.
I have to talk about Cutter Slade’s personality at some point because it gave me a little spark in my brain to start a few things. As I mentioned earlier, this game was the product of the last year of the millennia, therefore some of the aspects of it feel way off from what you would expect from today’s standards.
In a world where every developer was rushing to get customizable characters from both genders or employing a femme-fatale right away, Outcast – A New Beginning employed a male character lost in time and his mind. Although his conflicts and flashbacks bothered him, he desperately wanted to save everything for himself and his environment, like the stock male characters from the games from the 90s.
The comparison between Cutter Slade and, say, Duke Nukem is not far off; they are both witty characters working towards their ultimate goal, and they do want to joke around a lot, which made me remember how those characteristics of a video game protagonist went. Nowadays, depressed, hopeless, and somewhat uninteresting male models are portrayed in video games, and developers want to shift more into more passive characteristics while employing their protagonists.
Even then, the new Cutter Slade feels a bit off compared to the first one, as Outcast 1.1 had a grimmer and harsher, yet still finds a way to make humor of the situation type of Slade. So the developers, Appeal, still had to dumb down the original personality of Cutter Slade to at least match today’s interest in character building.
In my opinion, Slade is a likable character with many traits we all share; despite all the sarcasm and irony toward Talans, he is still someone who wants to help people along the way. One thing that kept me entertained was his reflection on Talan incidents and his take on the matter. He usually tries to approach Talan’s problems by giving an example of his own, but it falls quite short as nobody ever understands him. It’s pretty ironic how we find aliens to be, you know, aliens, but once we are in their land, we turn into aliens instead.
Cutter Slade’s relationship with Talans is a bit complex, too. It’s almost as if they do not like him being there since most of them are under the influence of invaders. Once you get to know the people of the seven towns and complete their quests, they will become more used to your visits and act more friendly. The sense of progression and relationship with the native people are well laid out, and providing a secure place helps you in the end.
Now, the characters and natives aside, let’s talk about the gameplay. As mentioned before, Outcast – A New Beginning is an open-world third-person shooter and exploration game. I mean an open world as you are never restrained from going on top of a tree or riding your jetpack over the sea. It reminds me of when Todd Howard said, “Do you see that mountain over there? You can climb it.” However, instead of being a 10-pixel wide polygon from afar, Outcast – A New Beginning makes you feel tiny in the Adelpha with huge mountains, trees, and paths to traverse.
If you do not want to hike or throw yourself in a possible danger, you can always use teleporters in the wild, so there is no need to worry about casually running or floating everywhere. In order to open inactive teleporters, you need to find a Daoka core in nearby bases and activate the inactive Daokas- teleporters in Adelpha- so you can travel to the town or a specific place. Grabbing the Daoka core from the bases isn’t easy, as you will face a lot of enemies- which brings me to the combat system in Outcast – A New Beginning.
Your started weapon, a laser pistol, will help you during your fights; by finding some weapon boxes, you can find additional parts to add to your weapons. Such as faster cooldown, bullet spread, stunning bullets, and more. These new unlocks apply not only to one weapon, though; newly unlocked parts can be applied to any weapon, giving different playstyles depending on your choice. Also, let me clarify that there is no reload for the weapons; they have endless clips, but you have to watch out for not overheating them.
Chest plates with jets also come in handy during combat, as well as the shield for protecting yourself from enemy bullets. Using a quick tap of the shield sometimes broke my flow during combat, so I used simple dashes with the chest plate to avoid getting hit by enemies. Jumping and floating with the chest plate also gives a unique combat, as you can drift in the air while shooting at targets from above. It is great to have many options for approaching the combat; it doesn’t feel like a hyperactive shooter with bullet sponge enemies, like in any modern shooter game out there.
There is one other thing that Outcast – A New Beginning has the grasp quite right, and it is the quest system. Just with the click of one button on the map, you can easily see the quests on the selected cities. There is always a story to unveil in the cities, and the quest map showcases which part has to happen in order to continue with the story. Sometimes, it could be another quest in another city or simply clearing a base from the baddies. Some of the missions can be quite tedious to actually finish, but most of them last around 5 to 10 minutes, so it doesn’t feel stretched out all the time.
During conversations between Talans and Cutter, there is this little notification and a button shows up, basically named “Glossary”. Pressing the Shift key would show me what certain words in the alien language meant, which was quite a great option. Considering Cutter Slade gets to speak the native language after being blessed by the Yods, it is important to know some of the terminology given to us.
Birds, beer, places, other Talans, and places do not have the exact translation, and they are highlighted in the subtitles with colors. By pressing that key, a box shows up and explains what that word means in actual English. Don’t worry, just because Cutter Slade started speaking fluently in an alien language doesn’t mean the game sets the spoken language to something else, we still can hear everything in English.
While I consider the game a solid achievement and a continuation of the Outcast franchise, I also came across some problems. These are not too over the top when it comes to the flow of the game, and I believe these can be sorted out very quickly by having patches and updates. So far, the only real issue I have come across is the broken placement of the enemies.
Bases and outposts are structures that have pathing for the enemies, and they follow these paths to reach Cutter Slade. Still, for some odd reason, random enemies would spawn in walls or underground, making the places impossible to capture. However, simply leaving and visiting the said buildings can respawn enemies, so it is a temporary fix for the issue.
I am not too sure about the optimization. The game looks absolutely pretty and has a very nice FPS output despite its ever-so-busy entity-filled map, but it would occasionally slow down on towns or places that have enormous entities like buildings or trees. Still not convinced that Outcast – A New Beginning might be an unoptimized title, however, this issue’s fix is also tied to updates being shipped in the future.
Outcast – A New Beginning came as a surprise as one of the releases for 2024. Although Appeal hinted at the sequel at certain points, it never caught my attention until now, of course. The graphics, lore, and story are pretty much settled in the Adelpha universe, and fluent gameplay pushes you to learn more about the story of natives and Cutter himself.
Yeah, maybe the charming past of the 90s is mirrored less in Outcast – A New Beginning, but that doesn’t exactly mean you won’t reminisce by jumping and trying out how it plays. It’s definitely worth checking out if you are into action titles with settings of an alien world- and somehow being a sequel to a game almost 25 years old.
