Outcast: A New Beginning review

If you’re old enough to remember the original Outcast (or, indeed, if you played the remake a few years ago), you might be aware that it was one of the first truly open world games. It was released 25 years ago, when gaming was still very much finding its feet and when a lot of concepts that are outdated now were new and fresh and mostly broken. But with such a legacy attached, Outcast: A New Beginning comes with certain expectations lashed to its back that no amount of jetpacking can shake off.

One of those expectations is scale. The sequel to the 25-year-old progenitor of an entire genre now so commonplace that even Final bloody Fantasy is doing it is expected to be vast. And so Outcast: A New Beginning is vast. Box checked. Another is freedom. And Outcast: a New Beginning definitely has player freedom. It’s set on a huge, sprawling alien world with objectives scattered around that you can ostensibly do in any order you want. Tick. You might also expect a living world that reacts to your choices and actions, and evolves around you; one filled with colourful characters and NPCs you care about. Well, Outcast: A New Beginning kind of has that. Sort of.

The main glaring issue I have with it is that the world of Adelpha doesn’t feel like it really existed before the arrival of ridiculously-named protagonist Cutter Slade. Oh, there’s history spouted at us and ruins scattered about, but the former comes with so many bizarre alien words and terms that it feels like it’s being sprayed at you with a hosepipe, and the latter are just kind of there and no one really cares.

Regardless, Cutter Slade has been here before, as this game does follow the original chronologically. However, after helping the people of Adelpha, known as the Talan, in the previous game, Slade returned to Earth and his estranged wife and daughter, only to die some years thereafter and awaken back on Adelphi, confused but pretty nonplussed. Slade is far too generic to be considered unlikeable, but getting back to his daughter is his motivation and that’s at least relatable on a human level. That he regularly places it as a priority above saving an entire planet of people seems a little insensitive, but hey ho.

This time around, Slade finds Adelpha threatened by a technologically advanced alien race that turn out to be humans; his former employers, to be precise. Throwing his lot in with the natives, Slade is tasked with reactivating the Daokas, which are huge portals dotted around the land. Usually this entails storming an enemy base, shooting robots, and finding the device that activates the nearby portal. This then allows fast travel between them. Well, I say “fast travel” but the game often makes you sit through a little cutscene and flashback when you do, which is hardly expedient.

The shooting is decent, as Slade is armed with a modular pistol and rifle as well as an energy shield to block most incoming attacks. The weapon system is actually quite cool, as you unlock mod slots and slot mods that affect how the weapon fires, what it fires, even its appearance. For example you can fire proximity mines, or load it with concussive shots. You can make the pistol rapid fire, or increase its damage. Add this to unlockable abilities such as freezing time and the combat can be very enjoyable. Ammo, called Heledium, is dropped by enemies and mined from crystals, and also doubles as an upgrade resource. Slade isn’t the most fluid mover on the battlefield, but the aim assist is generous and he can weather a few shots before his ticket’s punched.

It’s the stuff in-between combat that I struggled to engage with. There’s a lot of talking, and the Talan often have the same faces and voices, and most of what they say is so overladen with nonsense in a made-up language that I just couldn’t stay focused on it. The open world is arguably too big, as well. Slade has a jetpack to boost-jump, hover along the ground, and glide without using up stamina or energy, which all help with getting around, but, well, there’s so much empty space.

The world looks pretty enough, and some quests and objectives make use of the verticality, such as luring giant bugs down from their nests for the sake of science, but there are times when you need to run or hover to an objective and it just takes forever, with very little to distract you. There are time-trial like missions, temples that require a little exploration, giant plants that corrupt the nearby alien wildlife, and optional bases, but there’s a lot of space in-between and, if I’m honest, none of these activities feel all that interesting. The fact you can apparently approach the story missions in whatever order you like doesn’t mean much when most settlements are so far from where you start, and you need to do certain things for upgrades or new tools, so such freedom feels wasted. I never wanted to go off and explore the world, because I was never interested in finding yet another chest with coloured currency in it, as weapon mods are mostly found in bases.

Outcast: A New Beginning is a pretty standard open world game, with few new ideas and little that doesn’t feel generic and straightforward. The weapon mod system is decent and there are some cool skills to unlock, while the jetpack steals the show both in and out of combat. But it’s hard to shake the feeling that we’ve done all this before. The story isn’t bad, but it’s very talky and the talking is often waffle, and Slade is so gruff and burly and done-with-all-this-shit that I struggled to invest in his plight or Adelphi’s. There’s fun to be had in the shooting and gliding, but Outcast: A New Beginning is simply stretched a little too thin.