Outcast: A New Beginning Review – An Alien Planet Worth Exploring

Outcast: A New Beginning is essentially the sequel to a game you likely have never played from 25 years ago. That said, this new Outcast is certainly worth your time, even if it’s a bit rough around the edges.

The original Outcast came out in 1999 and was ahead of its time in the technological department. The original used an early version of Voxel technology to build out its open world, alongside the usual blocky 3D characters that were appropriate for the time. And yet, the game had early implementations of lip-syncing and emotive faces with an impressive amount of voice acting.

That same level of ambition seems to have stayed with the game series and can be felt in A New Beginning. In both games, you play as Cutter Slade. Yes, I know, the name screams 90s action hero. Now, I was worried that the rough edges that his 90s counterpart had would also be present in this new sequel. I imagined a brash Duke Nukem, but what I got was a much more reserved, thoughtful, and even kind dude with a pleasingly dry wit.

It was refreshing to see an ex-Navy SEAL engage with an alien race and treat them as if they were human. It was a level of respect that I did not expect and that was really cool. Before I continue, it’s important to note that you don’t need to play the first game to fully enjoy this game. Outcast: A New Beginning does a great job of introducing you to the alien world of Adelpha and all of its colorful inhabitants.

These aliens live in villages on this lush green planet with their own unique and sometimes conflicting cultures. Every one of them is fully voice-acted and has lots of interesting things to say, which shows how good the game’s writing is. What’s really neat regarding the dialogue system is that Outcast features a dynamic glossary that updates in real-time, depending on the alien terms used in every conversation. The alien people of Adelpha constantly use alien terms, so having a dynamic reference like that on hand at all times is incredible.

As Cutter Slade, you’ll be exploring the large and gorgeous continent with multiple villages and towns, on top of many more points of interest. At first, you’ll start off with a simple vertical boosting jetpack, but as the hours fly by, your exploration abilities greatly expand. By 20 hours in, I was jumping off cliffs to glide over vast swaths of land, using my reserve boost to propel myself through the air and then transition to boosting on the ground at incredibly fast speeds.

That alone felt great when the world that Outcast puts you in is so wide and incredibly tall. Like, if the next Elder Scrolls title has half of this game’s geographical scope, I’ll be ecstatic. Mountains actually felt like mountains and that’s so wonderfully refreshing. However, while the world itself is suitably large and looks great, the empty areas between points of interest have little to engage with beyond enemy animal spawns and resources to collect.

Thankfully, the points of interest are more interesting than the spaces that separate them. You’ll be destroying large industrial bases, raiding small outposts, and doing a variety of agility-based challenges. Doing these will reward you with currency that you can use to boost your weapon’s capabilities, jetpack’s capabilities, and even health. In fact, every large green chest you open can reward you with weapon modules that you can mix and match on your two guns—a pistol and a rifle.

Mixing these wildly different modules essentially changes your guns into other guns. I used a healing, sniper, and first shot module on my pistol to turn it into a sniper rifle that does extra damage every time it shoots and regains HP every time I kill an enemy. Likewise, my rifle had rapid fire, extra damage, and would leave an AOE sticky bomb with every shot. The system is incredibly flexible and fun to experiment with. But what are fun weapons and a cool world without purpose and story?

Well, without going into spoilers, Cutter Slade finds himself on Adelpha against his will and is chosen early on to bring the region’s many villages together. This is all while repelling his fellow human invaders from ruining the lives of natives by stealing the planet’s natural resources for their own selfish gain. That’s all I’m going to say about the story and characters because it’s all worth experiencing for yourself.

All in all, there are parallels that can be made to James Cameron’s Avatar movies. Thankfully, Outcast’s story doesn’t rest on its laurels. What I will say about the story is how it progresses, because it can feel repetitive. Each village has a handful of quests that require multiple steps that usually devolve into talking to the right people, going to collect the right things, and killing the right enemies. You do this over and repeatedly, which is made worse when one quest requires you to complete another quest, which requires you to complete yet another quest.

These dry quest chains persist and can be a drag on an otherwise interesting story and memorable characters. To make matters worse, the build of the game I played had performance issues that would see my frames dropping from 80+ to less than 40 fairly regularly on modest settings. I also encountered a handful of audio bugs, cutscenes missing audio, and even a couple of crashes. Thankfully, the autosaves are generous and I never lost progress.

There will be a large day-one patch that is supposed to fix some of these issues, which I’m grateful for, because this game is something special.