Outcast: A New Beginning PC review – Let’s jet

The original Outcast has not held up well. Between the endless fetch questing, the complete lack of guidance, and the poor combat, it’s hard to go back to it today. That being said, it’s also ambitious, creative, and very immersive, offering a well-designed game world that rewards exploration and feels clever and lived-in. Outcast: A New Beginning is without a doubt a far better game than the original in terms of gameplay and general clarity of design. But instead of taking the core of the original game and modernising it, it trades it in for a lot of potboiler open-world elements that, while quite good on its own merits, seems like a bit of a misuse of the franchise.

While the original game had you walking around and talking to NPCs to figure your way around, all while giving you ample reason to look in every nook and cranny, Outcast: A New Beginning just drops you in a open world populated with repetitive side quests. These are indicated by map markers once you get close enough to them. It’s a far cry from the original. These side quests include fighting hordes of enemies to grab a single item that rewards you with some currency once turned in, chests with resources and mods stashed in enemy bases, and movement trials that give you a resource or health boost. There are a good amount of these, but not enough to last you the entire story most likely. This isn’t a bad thing, though, as the world is big but not too big.

It’s a very Ubisoft-style open world where you can easily just move around the map tackling these simple side activities. The movement trials are honestly pretty good too. The movement in general is really something, as the main character, the awfully named Cutter Slade (who is now less of an annoying macho 90s gaming cliché,) basically gets a jetpack that, okay, only really becomes a jetpack once you unlock enough upgrades. Granted, it’ll probably take 15 hours or so before you’re able to get to that point, but it’s easy to enjoy boosting quickly around the map and gliding through the air as you get to your destination. Even if the general world and its activities are overly familiar, most open world games don’t give you this many fun movement tools.

The lore is strong

So the general game structure in Outcast: A New Beginning is totally different from the first game. But it’s not all different. That game gave you two separate non-linear made quest lines to follow and so does this one. You’re meant to go to all the story quests in seven villages, as well as go and capture 10 enemy bases to get a resource. You can do these in whichever order you choose or randomly mix and match. The different villages all have their own storylines, plus completing each character rewards you with a new power. For instance, one just flat-out hands you a giant creature to ride that can either get you places faster or land on top of enemy ships to disable them. It’s awesome.

Granted, getting the resource from the bases is still fairly repetitive, but the village quests all have some very good storytelling and voice acting. It wasn’t unusual to find myself overly invested in what was happening. There are so many quests too and, while the fact-finding and investigation of the original game isn’t quite here, its DNA is still visible. You’re still going and talking to a bunch of NPCs and doing a lot of fetching, of course. It’s nothing ground-breaking, but the strong writing and well-designed villages definitely make a big difference compared to many other open world games. Village plots can also intersect like they did in the original, so you might have to go progress one village’s story to get through another’s. Cool stuff all around.

In regard to the combat, however, Outcast: A New Beginning is a giant improvement (for the most part.) Cutter has far less technical weapon variety, mainly focusing on a pistol and rifle that run off of the green and red helidium deposits found all over the game’s world of Adelpha. But you’ll find mods that massively change up guns, from giving them rapid-fire, shotgun properties, or making headshots do more damage. The guns don’t need to be reloaded and just overheat. Cutter also has a shield that blocks enemy fire and is used for melee attacks, plus a later upgrade allows him to knock enemies over by dodging into them with his shield up.

Gliding above it all

Cutter has two upgrade trees to go through, one for mobility and the other for combat. His abilities really do feel like they evolve over the course of the game, even if the enemy encounters are often too repetitive for their own good. You’ll mostly be fighting robots or wildlife, some of which returns from the first game. The lore here is just well-written in general, with the same alien words aided by a glossary. The general plot in this one is definitely more interesting than in the original. The writing is simply a lot better. Plus the graphics are honestly pretty terrific for a AA game, I think. The world is varied and colourful and the different biomes feel very different from one another.

I really enjoyed Outcast: A New Beginning, even if I wish it had been closer to its predecessor in terms of game design, as I think that beats a big open world any day. However, I can’t deny that the movement and combat are both very entertaining, along with the village quests that are compelling in their own right. It won’t blow away anyone who plays a lot of open world games and you can see the entire map fairly quickly, but this is still an adventure well worth embarking on.

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