Outcast – A New Beginning Review

Outcast - A New Beginning is an open-world shooter developed by Appeal Studios and published by THQ Nordic. This is the sequel to Outcast, a game released back in 1999. That’s right, it’s a sequel over 20 years in the making. Now, I’ve never even known this series ever existed so I’m going in completely blind. So let’s check out Adelpha and see what the locals have to offer.

A whole new world.

You play as… Commander Cutter Slade (Seriously? Ah, whatever, it’s from the 90’s and it’s better than Stick Brightling), a soldier from another dimension now trapped in the world of Adelpha without some of his memories. Apparently, he has been chosen as the Ulukaï (hero) sent by the Yods (Gods) to save the Talan race from extinction, and he'll do just that as long as it buys him a ticket home to see his daughter. And the people he’s fighting? Well, the invading force of the World Defense Force… which he was a part of. Oh no. The story gives a lot of Avatar vibes, from the invading humans and the magical alien people who just want to protect their homes. You can see some plot twists a mile away, and there are so many different terms thrown at you that it becomes a little grating. It has problems, but overall it’s fine for the story it's trying to tell. I do like the fact that Adelpha has its own language and use of words though. You can always have access to the glossary when talking to people if you need clarification, and there is a ton of world-building here to show that this is a living, breathing world with history and depth.

Speaking of the world, it is really pretty. The various villages and biomes you travel through all have stories to tell, from mostly peaceful treetops of Emea to the completely bombed university of Prokriana. And you can learn more through verbal means by interacting with the Talans, which makes it feel like I’m playing Mass Effect, where Commander Shepard will ask about a topic, and they’ll answer with a long, oddly detailed explanation. They even have the dialogue wheel. There is so much talking in this game that, as someone who actively seeks out every piece of dialogue, I decided to limit that, or else I would be in conversations for hours. And that’s not counting all the repeated instances of Slade making comments about almost every single thing.

Cutter Slade. Father, Soldier, Smartass.

But enough about that, let’s get into the gameplay. The main tools you’ll be using for the game are your shield, your jetpack, and your guns. Your shield is rather self-explanatory: it can guard attacks and is even used as a melee weapon. But the fun begins when you get your jetpack. At first, all it does is allow you to double jump and dodge, but by investing in the skill tree it becomes a great mobility tool out in the open world or during an assault. You can fly long distances, do complex mid-air manoeuvres, and complete various movement challenges. I recommend unlocking Jetsprint and Glide as soon as possible. Jetsprint not only makes you go faster, but it also lets you fly above the water and allows you to automatically follow roads, and Glide gives you much more freedom.

As much as I would love to just fly around, Adelpha is not peaceful at all, even without the invaders going around enslaving and murdering the Talans, so let's talk weapons. You have two guns: a pistol platform and a rifle platform. Why call it “platforms”? Because you can equip modules to your weapons and turn them into anything you want. Turn a humble pistol into a bullet-spewing hose of death, have a shotgun with homing explosive bullets, or slap on healing bullets that track marked enemies and reduce ammo consumption to allow you to focus on something else while your gun does all the killing for you. With 30 modules to play with, you have the ability to adapt to any situation at any given time and play how you want to… when you find and craft them. They are spread out all over the open world, either in bases or you have to get someone to craft certain modules for you. The scavenger hunt is real. I love gun modding in games, and I’ve been slowly but surely trying to unlock all the parts, but you will need a guide to get everything. It'll be worth it though: any configuration of your guns are fun to use and you’re allowed to create some serious combinations that can carry you through the rest of the game, although I did encounter a glitch where shooting at the dog-like enemies with homing bullets causes them to swirl around them without doing damage. Hopefully, that’s part of the Day One patch.

Ah yes, the most fearsome of bosses... drills.

This is all cool, but they’re worthless without a goal to complete, so it’s time for some quests, and by Yods there are a lot you can take at a time. There are so many quests that require you to travel from village to village, taking care of one thing so you can do another, doing favours for various people around the world so that everything doesn’t blow up and you get cool stuff. I had so many ongoing main quests that I sort of lost track of it all, and guess what? For completionists, you need to collect more than you need on fetch quests to bring out the full potential of your reward. You don’t really feel like a hero with an awesome jetpack and highly-moddable guns, but an errand boy… with an awesome jetpack and highly-moddable guns. A lot of quests are pretty cool, but there is so much that feels like busy work. At least travelling around the world is fun to do if you decide to mix it up and not use fast travel.

Onto the side stuff, there’s a lot you want to do if you want to make Slade into a serious powerhouse: Complete platforming challenges to make your jetpack better and increase your max HP, take out bases to collect the resources needed to improve your combat abilities and weapons, collect plants and other junk for crafting and selling, and whole lot more. The optional challenges are pretty fun, although I did notice you could cheese a few of them. Some platforming challenges required certain skills like the Shield Dash, but with enough energy, maybe a different skill, and abuse of the terrain, you can easily beat quite a few you technically aren’t ready for.

Your guns are like LEGO here, so go wild.

Onto technical performance. With an AMD Ryzen 7 3800X 8-Core Processor and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, I barely met the minimum requirements to play the game and I ran into some performance issues while my settings were put on Low. Decent length loading times and pop-in were expected, but I didn’t expect times when my game would go down to seven FPS in certain areas and for my game to freeze for several minutes until suddenly resuming. This happened on early play sessions, but as time went on, it got much better. However, I ran into some really annoying glitches, such as the aforementioned tracking bullets not working, invincible enemies, missing map markers, the summonable Galenta not coming until I reloaded the game, and people speaking but not moving their lips. Now, be aware that I was playing a pre-release version, and there is a Day One patch that should make things better, but I wanted to bring this up just in case.

I love Adelpha. So let's make sure it's not turned into a parking lot.

That being said, I really like my time with Outcast – A New Beginning. It’s a fun open-world adventure with fun movement mechanics, good gunplay, and a world you can really dive into if you’re all for it. The story can be predictable and a little cliché, but it does what it does well. It has some really annoying issues, but they can be overlooked for a nice adventure in a beautiful world worth protecting.

Outcast – A New Beginning is available on PlayStation 5, Steam, and Xbox Series X|S.