Humans and the Talan have a rocky past, to the point that it’s probably for the best if the two races separate for good. In the initialOutcastfrom 1999, Cutter Slade’s four-person crew got separated on their arrival to the extradimensional planet Adelpha, scattered in time. One of the groups that were sent to the past led the Talan’s warrior clan to domination, requiring Cutter to lead the uprising against it and restore balance to the world. Leaving the planet behind as the only surviving member of his group, Cutter returned home from Adelpha’s dimension and that was the end of it, until it wasn’t any more. Now the humans have returned, draining the resources of Adelpha thanks to their sci-fi techno-supremacy and Cutter has been summoned to save the world from his people a second time. It would probably help if his memory wasn’t in fragments.
Back to Adelpha after all these years
Outcast - A New Beginningis the long-awaited sequel to a game that was years ahead of its time. Coming out two years beforeGrand Theft Auto IIIblew the doors off open-world gaming, it became a cult classic even though, like so many games that pioneer a new genre, it had more than its share of rough edges that needed a decade or two of refinement to get right. Nowadays open world is not only standard but practically expected, so it’s long past timeOutcastgot a second chance.Outcast - A New Beginningmay have its own rough edges, but it feels like the sequel the original game’s fans deserve.
The game opens in a grey void with Cutter not sure of where he is or, in fact, how he got there. It also doesn’t help that his memory is gone, aside from some basic information plus bits and fragments that slowly filter back. A little exploration dumps him in the heart of Adelpha, in the ruins of an old temple, and it doesn’t take long to learn that invaders have come to take anything of value from the planet. Worse, the invaders are human like him, and the commander is torturing and killing the native Talan in an attempt to extract information from them. A meeting with the twin spiritual leader (singular despite there being two) gives Cutter two ways to save Adelpha: knock out all the invader bases and arrange a worldwide mating festival. This is more than enough to keep anyone busy, and Cutter will need to run the length and breadth of the continent of Ganzaar to complete his quests.
While much ofOutcastis your standard third-person action shooter, a huge part is more adventure-y in that you’ll need to talk to the Talans. A lot. There’s a huge amount of well-written and decently-acted dialogue in the game, with a radial conversation wheel to choose which topic to cover next. The villages are packed with Talans but only a few have more than a few basic things to say, although those with unique dialogue tend to have a lot of it. The conversation tree is divided up into two sections, with the primary one being for quest-related chatter and the secondary being for world-building. It’s a convenient way to keep things moving, letting you dive as deep into the world of Adelpha as you’d want, helped in no small part by each character being distinct from the others.
As the game progresses and the quests pile up, though, the conversation tree’s branches get thoroughly tangled. It’s not unusual for Cutter to start talking about a subject knowing something that he won’t be told until exploring a different topic entirely, and this works the other way around with sometimes asking after information for quests that have already been solved. One particular conversation ended up attempting to start two mini-games at once, with the first one kicking off for all of a second before the other one took over. Jarring in a different way, sometimes the faces just forget to move at all, which stands in contrast to how expressive they normally are. For a game that has as many quests and conversations asOutcastdoes, the order of dialogue is a major issue that’s in desperate need of patching.
Running around Adelpha, though, things tend to flow more smoothly. Cutter starts off with a pistol and energy shield, soon finds a rifle and gets a major mobility boost with a combo jetpack and wingsuit. While initially unimpressive it doesn’t take long for the upgrades to start pouring in, powered by multiple types of currency. Green and red crystals called helidium power the pistol and rifle, respectively, while white helidium is a valuable ore used for high-end combat upgrades. Blue helidium buys jetpack/wingsuit upgrades, and nano cells are used for combat skills and gun upgrades. It sounds like a lot but the currencies increase at a steady pace while out in the world and it doesn’t take too long for combat and exploration to really open up.
Two guns, dozens of configurations
The major feature of the guns is that they’re modular, with the pistol able to hold four modifiers while the rifle gets six. It takes a bit to buy all the slots, of course, but the first few are cheap enough that the guns are soon packing a nice punch. Multi-shot gun that leaves sticky bombs on whatever it hits? Machine-gun fire with a head-shot damage booster? Sure, why not, and it only gets more options from there. Rapid-fire slow-moving electro-balls that zap anything within range topped off with a damage booster quickly eats up the helidium ammo, but there’s no denying how effective it is at crowd control. Meanwhile the jetpack slowly evolves from a simple jump-booster to a proper flying wingsuit while also acting as a ground-level glide that moves along at a much zippier speed than walking, and the shield gets increased defensive options plus new ways to use it as an offensive melee bashing weapon. The enemies are more than capable of dealing large amounts of damage, but Cutter has highly flexible tools to give it back.
With a few good upgrades under his belt Cutter is much more prepared to explore Adelpha, and while the Talans really could use his help, there’s no time limit to prevent exploring for a few side-missions. These come in four varieties: Gork eruptions, outposts, Orym trails and essence shrines. Gork eruptions are small areas of corruption crawling with hostile wildlife, and you’ll need to kill it all to make the core vulnerable. Outposts come in two versions, shielded for the plot-essential ones and unshielded for those you may attack any time. They’ve all got chests with a nice payout inside, usually nano cells but sometimes new gun modules as well, but are also heavily guarded by the best robo-soldiers the World Federal Army can put in the field. Finally, the Orym trails and essence shrines are parkour challenges that put all of Cutter’s movement abilities to the test, and the map will let you know in advance if he doesn’t have the upgrades to complete them. More side-missions would have been better and helped them not feel repetitive, but it’s still almost impossible to resist clearing each newly-discovered spot off the map.
The heart of the game, though, is the planet of Adelpha, withOutcastputting in a huge amount of work to make it feel like an alien world. The Talans use a lot of their own language in their conversations, with the glossary being available with the touch of a button to define highlighted terms in the text, but between context cues and the words being used frequently, it’s easy to get a handle on the dialogue. Daoka is the word for the quick-travel portals, Okastok is the mating festival, reversion is how Talans think of death and a few dozen more help with making them a different culture, but the writing also makes sure each one has their own personality. It’s a little bit broad strokes in that the jerk mayor is always a jerk, or the smart son of a brewer is always smart and a little resentful of being railroaded into the family business, but overall it works to make the Talans feel like a diverse race of people who don’t happen to be human. All of them have some kind of problem, though, and Cutter is here to fix as much of it as possible.
Closing Comments:
Outcast - A New Beginningis an excellent sequel with a lot of great gameplay elements that go a long way to make up for its need for further polish. Bugs are common, from an outpost with the robots stuck in the floor to breakable helidium crystals floating several feet above the ground they should be poking out of, and the conversation trees are in desperate need of re-ordering. Despite this, though, it’s almost impossible to resist seeing what the next villager is up to and their relation to the rest of the world, following the dialogue and fishing out quests as an excuse to see and do more. The world is also beautifully designed, with each village having its own architecture and style while the world map is covered in points of interest and different biomes, providing gorgeous views from just about any spot in the landscape. Combat is also great fun, especially when stumbling on a particularly effective gun combination or figuring out how the latest upgrade fits into the flow of the next hostile encounter. It took over twenty-four years for Cutter Slade to return to Adelpha, but the wait has paid off with an epic adventure on an alien world.
Outcast - A New Beginning
Version Reviewed: PC
