Outcast – A New Beginning Review

Outcast is a game that many may not have heard of, but it is among one of the most influential games ever made. The game created by Appeal featured many of the mechanics that would go on to influence future open-world games, as well as a very unique atmosphere that actually made players feel like protagonist Cutter Slade, stranded on an alien planet desperately trying to find a way back home.

A long time has passed since late 1999, but fans of the game got the chance to return to Adelpha with the 1.1 version and then the Second Contact remake, which remastered the original visuals while leaving the gameplay almost untouched in its old-school glory. Those looking for a more modern take on the formula could only wait for the release of Outcast – A New Beginning, the first proper sequel to the adventure that contributed so much to the genre back in the day.

Sadly, the wait for this sequel was not really worth it. Not only Outcast – A New Beginning fails as a sequel to the original, as it doesn’t capture what made it so unique, but also as a modern open-world game, featuring the most by-the-books approach to the genre we have seen in recent years.

Outcast – A New Beginning stars Cutter Slade once again, the former U.S. Navy SEAL who managed to befriend the Talan people of the planet Adelpha and return to Earth, overcoming many challenges in the original game. Resurrected by the Yods god, the man returns to Adelpha to find the Talan, enslaved by a mysterious group of invaders, deprived of his memories. Attempting to unite the Talans under one purpose, Cutter Slade will slowly recover his memories, understand more of his role as the savior of a planet that has changed quite a bit in the past twenty years, and meet every challenge with his most effective weapon: his dry wits.

The story is most definitely among the game’s best features, as Cutter Slade’s journey through Adelpha is objectively interesting, and so is the culture of the different villages on the planet Adelpha. Unfortunately, the story fails to reach its full potential due to a mediocre delivery. Writing leaves something to be desired, as does voice acting and, most of all, cutscenes, which is baffling, as all these elements do the exact opposite of what they are supposed to do: immerse the player. Cutscenes are definitely the worst offenders in this regard. Every time one plays, the game fades to black briefly, only to show badly staged and acted sequences that run at 30 FPS, no matter the chosen framerate, with some evident visual glitches, and then fade back to black to lead the player back into the action. The lack of a seamless jump between cutscenes to actual gameplay hurts immersion a lot and, thus, the experience as a whole. Add in some of the most uninteresting characters we have seen in recent times and Slade’s humor getting a little grating after a few hours, and you get an experience that almost entices you to skip every cutscene and bit of dialogue to get to the gameplay.

Unfortunately, the Outcast – A New Beginning’s gameplay is just as flawed, if not even more. Doing away with the open-endedness of the original, the new entry in the series is a package of every open-world mechanic seen to date, presented in the dullest way possible. At a glance, the game definitely looks enticing enough: a big open-world map featuring multiple biomes, a complex quest system involving several Talan villages, traversal mechanics powered by a handy jetpack, third-person shooter combat with plenty of customization possibilities with the two guns, Rifle and Handgun, powered by different types of ammo and so on. Playing the game for a few hours, however, reveals the ugly truth about it.

While the first Outcast gave players almost complete freedom in tackling the main story, giving them little to no guidance, A New Beginning’s approach is completely different. It is an incredibly basic take on the Ubisoft open-world formula, featuring a scanning ability that reveals nearby items and points of interest, multiple markers on the main map that tell players where to go to find main quest and side quest objectives, and optional challenges, which include parkour and combat challenges, fast travel points that are unlocked after clearing outposts and so on. This isn’t a major problem by itself, as plenty of games have taken this formula and elevated it greatly, but Outcast – A New Beginning doesn’t attempt to spice it up whatsoever.

Exploring the open world, for example, is incredibly clunky. Movement is incredibly imprecise, whether on the ground or in the air, and the traversal mechanics powered by the jetpack, such as flying and gliding, are rendered almost superfluous by a flat world design that doesn’t seem to complement these mechanics at all. Sure, there’s some verticality and even some (annoying but blessedly short) platforming segments, but it feels like the open world was created first, and then the jetpack mechanics got added in later. It is a far cry from games such as Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, where the world has been designed around traversal abilities. With little to discover around the map, exploration in Outcast – A New Beginning is extremely unrewarding.

Combat, much like traversal mechanics, is not very good. While there isn’t anything inherently wrong with it, its execution is extremely subpar. Shooting is not satisfying, even with the many customization options available for both guns, which determine properties and type of shot, due to enemies with too much health, lack of impact, and bad sounds. Enemy design is standard fare for an open-world game, with a combination of humanoid and alien enemies coming with their unique attack patterns, but any fight quickly turns into a frustrating, chaotic mess due to the lack of enemy indicators in the interface. With the abundance of flying enemies on Adelpha, this is a major problem, as Slade is often attacked from off-screen, with no way of knowing where the enemies are positioned outside of the minimap, which still doesn’t inform the player if an enemy is getting ready to attack. It’s a shame combat is marred by these many issues, as did game does feature a sort of solid foundation, with multiple special abilities, such as the ability to slow down time temporarily, and multiple skills that are learned via two straightforward skill trees for combat and jetpack using different currencies.

Quest design in Outcast – A New Beginning only exacerbates the traversal and combat issues, resulting in a package that isn’t very fun to play most of the time. The vast majority of quests are tedious fetch quests, and those that aren’t aren’t well thought out either. One of the early game quests, for example, requires Slade to transport an artifact fished out of a lake back to a village, which is done by essentially bumping into it. The physics of the artifact, needless to say, are not realistic at all, resulting in a gameplay sequence that more frustrating than fun. Same goes for some escort quests, to make another example, which are made terribly frustrating by their slow pace and some of the combat issues, like the lack of enemy indicators. Making matters even worse, regarding quests, is the horrible quest menu and how it groups quests belonging to the same line. While I can understand why it was made the way it was, giving players visual clues regarding how they are connected, it is really lacking in terms of usability.

Even visuals are not spared from multiple issues, though minor, compared to the gameplay ones. While the environments look gorgeous in stills, managing to accurately represent an alien world such as Adelpha with lush, colorful environments and different architectures, things feel a little different in motion due to some visual glitches, including vegetation and shadows pop-in some and lighting glitches that are visible even in some of the cutscenes, as mentioned earlier. Character models, on the other hand, are far from being the best we have seen to date. Although they are somewhat acceptable, they lack detail, and their mediocre animations, including facial animations, make them feel worse than they actually are.

While visual glitches and mediocre animations could be glossed over, technical issues cannot. As the game doesn’t feature cutting-edge visuals, one would expect that a powerful system wouldn’t have any trouble running it smoothly. On the machine used for the test (i7-13700F, RTX 4080, 32 GB RAM), the game averaged 121 FPS at 4K resolution, DLSS Quality, and max settings in the area around the very first village in both the DirectX 12 and 11 versions, but the experience wasn’t exactly smooth, due to frequent drops in the 60 FPS range in crowded areas. In addition, Outcast – A New Beginning is plagued by traversal stutters, which result in a choppy experience while exploring the world, with some seconds-long stutters. At least the game caches shaders on the first boot otherwise shader compilation stutters would have made the experience even worse.

Technical issues aside, which could be fixed after release, Outcast – A New Beginning’s main issue is how its uninspired by-the-books open-world design has been done better by pretty much every open-world game released in the past couple of years. If the developers had stuck with the approach of the original, Outcast – A New Beginning would have been a much better game, and it definitely would have been received well, as after games like Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring, the open-world crowd is ready for a game that doesn’t tell you where to go at all times. With all these issues, which inevitably impact what the game does acceptably, and with a full price tag, it’s impossible to recommend Outcast – A New Beginning to anyone at launch, as there are simply better ways to spend that money.

PC version tested. Review code provided by the publisher.

Outcast – A New Beginning

Outcast – A New Beginning

Outcast – A New Beginning is a missed opportunity, abandoning the unique elements of its predecessor for a conventional open-world design that doesn’t work well. With uninspired open-world exploration, clunky movement, lackluster combat, and mediocre quest design, it’s a hard sell for everyone but Cutter Slade’s biggest fans who wish to know how the character’s story continues, as there are far superior titles on the market that have executed similar concepts much more effectively.