The Freest Open World Yet
HIGH My enormous flying friend.
LOW A glitch that kept me from unlocking all of the weapon mods.
WTF Wait, I could have unlocked these fast travel points whenever I wanted?
I worry sometimes that I’m too forgiving of games that allow players to use a jetpack early on. I mean, it’s the year 2024 and I’m still thinking about Dark Void — that has to border on being a personality disorder, doesn’t it?
Beyond the freedom that a jetpack offers when exploring a game’s world, what I respond to is the confidence it suggests on the part of the developers. Handing someone a jetpack right at the start tells players that they’re so proud of the world they’ve built that they want the player to be free to interact with it however they want. The devs behind Outcast: A New Beginning follow suit.
Picking up twenty years after the last game left off, Outcast hero Cutter Slade returns to the planet Adelpha, which is just a quick interdimensional hop from the future-earth where he hails from. The developers assume that anyone who enjoyed the original from twenty-five-ish years ago will be a little fuzzy on the plot, so Cutter is given a case of magical amnesia which allows him to reacquaint himself (and by extension, the player) with the ins and outs of how the world operates. Not that they’re given a lot of time to ease into things, though — Adelpha is being invaded by drones and robots that are stripping the planet of its resources. Cutter quickly identifies the invaders as human-built, which is an uncomfortable fact that’s bound to cause big problems down the line.
The story is solidly packed with interesting characters and a fascinating culture to explore, but Outcast’s focus is on allowing the player to take in the gorgeous world at their own pace.
There is a degree to which Adelpha looks like the most generic representation of ‘open world’ imaginable, and if a player expects a specific terrain type, Outcast is definitely going to include it. The genius here is just how dense the world is, and it’s impossible to jog for more than a minute without stumbling across something worth exploring. That could be anything from a jetpack-parkour obstacle course, an enemy observation base to be raided, groups of deadly mutant animals to be put down and more. Again, this is all perfectly standard open-world design with varied activity types, but it never feels like contrivance or wasted time.
As one might guess from the start of this review, the traversal mechanics are vital to the experience. The player almost immediately gets a backpack offering dodge attacks and a double-jump. Then they’re dropped into a jungle full of trees that stretch to the sky, and a common first instinct will be to see how high they can climb. Outcast rewards this instinct, secreting valuable resources away at the top of basically every tall thing in the world. Soon after they’ll get the ability to boost along the ground, and then to turn the jetpack into a wingsuit for traversing long distances — all within the first hour or two.
Related to traversal, the first major questline is brilliantly constructed in that it asks the player to grab resources from most of the planet’s major settlements, and in each new location they’ll meet people with concerns. Should they prioritize finishing that first questline, though, they’ll be rewarded with one of Outcast‘s best features — I won’t spoil it here, but it functions as a method of zooming around the map so enjoyable that it makes the ample fast-travel options all but irrelevant.
The story’s solid and the world is one of the most thrilling to explore in recent memory, but these things wouldn’t matter much if the combat wasn’t up to snuff. Fortunately, the developers do a great job here was well, offering a huge amount of variety in how players take on foes.
Cutter has two weapons at his disposal, a rifle and a pistol, which seems paltry until the player starts unlocking weapon modules — there are over twenty different add-ons that massively change how the weapons perform. Either gun can be transformed into an automatic weapon, sniper rifle or shotgun depending on the player’s tastes. Support mods can make weapons cool down faster or use less ammo, and there are even exotic options that fire sticky mines or lock on to robots. It takes a little mixing and matching to find the exact combination that fits a given situation’s needs, but there’s no denying the huge amount of variety Outcast offers. Beyond guns, Outcast allows for surprisingly improvisational combat, with decent melee options and the ability to hover and dodge mid-air, giving them a chance to rain fire down on enemies from above.
While it’s smaller than players might expect from an open-world action/adventure game — I wrapped everything up in just over 20 hours — I wouldn’t call that a weakness on Outcast’s part. The world is just big enough that exploring all of it feels like an accomplishment, rather than a chore. There’s enough variety in quest objectives that it never feels like the player is asked to do the same mission over and over again. The developers didn’t even take the easy way out and drop in a levelling system to stretch out the runtime with grinding, and there are just two currencies — kill robots to get nanites that improve guns and combat skills, or complete missions to earn jetpack upgrades — and it’s never more complicated than that.
In the end, Outcast doesn’t want to get in the way of the player having a good time. From the moment I first climbed to the top of a ridiculously enormous tree with my starting double-jump before plummeting to the bottom only to discover that there’s no fall damage, it was clear that Outcast is an experience designed to enjoyed, first and foremost.
Rating: 8.5 out of 10
Disclosures: This game is developed by Appeal Studios and published by THQ Nordic. It is currently available on PC, PS5 and XBS/X. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the XBX. Approximately 25 hours of play was devoted to the singleplayer mode, and the game was completed twice.
Parents: This game was rated T by the ESRB, and contains Violence, Drug Reference, Language. The language isn’t particularly rough and the violence is bloodless, so the rating seems fair. But the ‘drug reference’ seems a little weak. There’s a storyline about a group of people forced to mine who only survive by getting high constantly, and their drugs are manufactured by a character who spends the entire game high on hallucinogens. Seems like ‘Use of Drugs’ might have been the better descriptor.
Colorblind Modes: Colorblind modes are available.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All dialogue is subtitled, but incidental sounds like gunfire and enemy alerts are not, so be sure to keep an eye on the minimap, which helpfully tracks threats for the player. Subtitles can be resized. The game is fully accessible.
Remappable Controls: Yes, the game’s controls are remappable.
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