Outcast - A New Beginning

Already finished it on XBox and I had a beautiful time with this title. Likable set of characters meet a beautifully crafted world, you can explore with on foot or while flying. And if you are up for dialogues and humor, playing around with multi-linguistic on a species-expanding level, you'll have a great time as well. It also offers open-world typical challenges, which are fun too, combined with a decent soundtrack, I like to listen to while not in-game as well.

Dude the protagonist never shuts up and it's just cutscene after cutscene, why are cutscenes even locked to 30fps in a 2024 release in the first place?? A total slog to play.

There are many things that can be and have been criticized about this game - but it's simply just great fun to play. Not much to find while exploring? True - but using the glider is great fun and the views are beautiful and absolutely worth it. Combat repetitive? No more than in other games. Story? Not mindblowing, but alright; towards the end it might get slightly confusing for people who don't know the (very old) first game. Dialogues? Many of them are unnecessary annoying babble, which is a shame, because skipping all the dialogues will also make you miss the occasional gem. But every time I found something I thought wasn't so perfect I also immediately thought, "yes, [i]but it's so much [b]fun[/b] to play!![/i]" Which, in my opinion, is the whole point of playing a game. So yes: recommend!

Outcast – A New Beginning hat mich genau an der Stelle abgeholt, an der ein gutes Science-Fantasy-Abenteuer für mich funktionieren muss: bei der Welt. Adelpha fühlt sich nicht einfach wie eine weitere offene Map an, sondern wie ein fremder, lebendiger Ort, den man Stück für Stück kennenlernt. Die Landschaften, die Dörfer, die Farben, die Talan, die Natur und dieser leicht märchenhafte, fast verträumte Ton ergeben zusammen eine richtig schöne Ingame-Atmosphäre. Man merkt dem Spiel an, dass es nicht nur „Content“ auf eine Karte werfen will, sondern eine Welt erschaffen möchte, in der man gerne bleibt. Besonders stark finde ich, wie angenehm entschleunigt sich vieles anfühlt. Natürlich gibt es Kämpfe, Basen, Erkundung, Aufgaben und Action, aber dazwischen hat das Spiel immer wieder diese ruhigen Momente, in denen man einfach durch Adelpha gleitet, die Umgebung genießt und sich ein bisschen wie ein Besucher auf einem fremden Planeten fühlt. Das Jetpack trägt enorm dazu bei: Die Fortbewegung macht Spaß, fühlt sich frei an und sorgt dafür, dass die Welt nicht nur Kulisse ist, sondern wirklich erkundet werden will. Ein ganz großes Lob geht an den Soundtrack. Die Musik passt für mich hervorragend zur Stimmung des Spiels. Sie klingt abenteuerlich, geheimnisvoll, manchmal episch, manchmal sanft und unterstreicht diese besondere Outcast-Atmosphäre perfekt. Gerade beim Erkunden entfaltet der Soundtrack richtig Wirkung und hebt viele Szenen spürbar an. Das ist keine Musik, die nur im Hintergrund dudelt, sondern ein wichtiger Teil des Gesamterlebnisses. Auch die deutsche Synchro hat mich positiv überrascht. Die Stimmen passen gut zur Welt und zu den Figuren, die Dialoge wirken angenehm lebendig und geben dem Spiel im Deutschen sehr viel Charme. Gerade bei einem Spiel, das so stark über Atmosphäre, Kultur und Begegnungen funktioniert, ist eine gute Lokalisierung enorm wichtig – und hier trägt die deutsche Fassung wirklich dazu bei, dass man sich noch besser in Adelpha hineinziehen lassen kann. Klar, wer ein komplett glattpoliertes AAA-Open-World-Spiel erwartet, könnte an manchen Stellen kleinere Ecken und Kanten bemerken. Für mich fallen diese aber kaum ins Gewicht, weil Outcast – A New Beginning etwas hat, das vielen großen Produktionen fehlt: Charakter. Es hat Herz, eine eigene Identität und diese besondere Mischung aus Abenteuer, Nostalgie, Humor, Fremdartigkeit und Wohlfühl-Science-Fantasy. Für mich ist Outcast – A New Beginning eine sehr gelungene Rückkehr nach Adelpha. Kein seelenloses Open-World-Produkt von der Stange, sondern ein atmosphärisches Abenteuer mit wunderschöner Welt, starkem Soundtrack, guter deutscher Synchro und einem ganz eigenen Charme. Wer sich auf die Welt einlässt und Freude an Erkundung, Stimmung und klassischem Science-Fantasy-Abenteuer hat, bekommt hier ein wirklich schönes Spielerlebnis. Klare Empfehlung.

Outcast – a new beginning is an adventure game. It is a soft reboot of the original Outcast game, set a few decades after that. The environment was changed quite a bit, the society is rebooted as a different one. But I liked this new approach. At 48+ hours it was much longer than I expected. The game has a large area to explore. In fact doubly so, as verticality is used to great extents, sometimes to very excessive scale. Even the starting village has a lot of vertical expanse, and a lot of locations will have (sometimes very large) vertical expanse. Jetpack jumps will be used a lot, even for just exploring around. To make this vertical segments less annoying, there will be bouncing mushrooms, that can propel great distances up, and act as fixed transports between various spots. Gliding will also have an important role in the game. A lot of optional puzzles will be based on it, but even some main story related segments will require it. The collecting of the pistils main story part was what pushed me away from full keyboard and mouse play. I first tried it with the keyboard, but that was very cumbersome. That precise gliding was much more easier with an analog input from a controller, compared to the digital nature of keypresses. In fact from then on, I played mostly with the controller, resorting to keyboard and mouse only for the fighting segments. But those fighting segments were awkward with the controller, so I had to use keyboard and mouse for efficient play. Ideally I would have been playing it with a Steam controller, but no such luck for me. You can freely save outside of combat – and outside of challenges. So if you make past some hard phases of a challenge, you cannot just save that and retry from that part, the save will be from before the start of the challenge. On the bright side, should you fail the challenge, or see that it goes wrong, you can restart it anytime almost instantaneously. The graphics of the game is surprisingly good. There are a lot of lavish locations, with various biomes. The starting zone is jungle like, with great trees, and later there will be a lot of variations. There were a lot of complaints about the stuttery graphics in the forums. Initially there might have been some stutters for me, but several hours into the game they largely disappeared, the gameplay was smooth for me. The voice acting of the game is excellent. And there is actually tons of it, much more than I expected. The protagonist is fully voice acted, with a lot of lines. And the natives are voice acted by skilled actors, conveying their out of common way attitude. Not only the voice acting is great, but the background music too. The original game was praised for its exceptional music, and that carried to the sequel. Honestly, I’m not sure whether the original music was reused, or similar tracks were composed for this game, but the quality is there. The game has a non linear approach to the story. You can try to solve the problems in one place, but eventually the quests will require you to visit other places first in order to progress. The story of the game is good for most of the game, feeling like an organic development. Then towards the end of the game there will be a time-skip, leading to a situation of radicalization of the natives. Their relation towards the protagonists shifts in a jarring way. The conclusion of the game feels disjointed. It feels as if you skipped an episode in a series, or more realistically a team running out of budget with the end events already finished, missing a linking up to that part. The very final climatic part will be literally deus ex machina. As you travel, there will be plenty of occasions for side activities. The most straightforward activity in the game will be just destroying enemy bases. Some of those is required for the story, but there are a lot of optional ones. You can unlock some weapon upgrades there, and generally just farm some talent tree related currencies. The enemies will respawn in them after a while, should you want to farm some more. The base size varies from small to some quite large, sprawling setups. Also several important base will have entirely unique setup, like a late one set on a volcano, or another one in the middle of the sea. Some late game bases are protected by a force field, and will be accessible only as the mains story progresses. A variation of the killing activity is the clearing of gork eruptions. You will have to defeat all the planet native animals related to the node, and collect the seed of corruption. These won’t respawn, but there will be a lot of them. Doing them is a great way to farm some animal related drops, which can be used to craft various potions. There are two variations of gliding challenges. One of them is merely to collect white seeds on an aerial path. The challenge is to not deviate too far from the path, as then the challenge will reset. For a very long time I thought that I have to go through some blue energy blobs too, but as I found out very late, they are not a requirement, only the white seeds has to be collected. Actually, you can solve most of them just with jumping and walking, without much need for gliding. The reward is some gliding related upgrade currency. The second variation is a time limited one. You will have to follow an energy orb, and most of the times gliding will be required. For simpler ones the time limit is generous, but harder ones have much less room for error. The reward is permanent health increase. The main quests are somewhat time gated. After gathering everything needed to proceed, there will be an undisclosed amount of delay before they progress on. When the quest progresses forward you will get a notification. In fact, the game will auto propose some quests periodically. You can safely ignore them, but a lot of times I just accepted them, and processed along. A lot of quests require gathering certain ingredients. There is a minimal required amount, gathering that much will allow the quest to progress. Your inventory can be upgraded. As far as I know, sellable items will stack indefinitely, but useable items, like crafting materials, ammo, potions will be limited. Eventually those limits can be increased. The two main skill trees are for your jetpack, and for your weapon skills. There is sorta a third skill three, consisting of weapon upgrades. Unlocking some key jetpack skills will be mandatory for progress, but there will be plenty of story related rewards to unlock those. Some weapon skills makes encounters much more easier. In special, once you manage to unlock tackle, dealing with smaller robotic enemies becomes much easier, and fun. It makes shield bash basically obsolete. Late in the game you can oneshot even the heavy robots (with a sufficiently charged up shot, that is). You will have access to a few extra skills, like one that freezes the enemies for a short time around you, but its recharge was so slow that I basically never used them. Through the storyline you will unlock an alternative weapon too. While infinite in ammo, after each type of shot there is a few minute recharge. The acid bee attack for example can take out even the large spider tank in a short amount of time. Soon enough you can travel freely to already unlocked teleport gates from anywhere. I found out fairly late that the mid-field teleport gates don’t require a collected energy source, and can be activated simply with interacting with them. They make moving across the map that much faster. As far as I know only the village teleport gates require an energy source retrieved from an enemy base. This is clearly an AA budget and value game – without the sales number that it should merit. The game was stable for me, it didn’t crash (except when I tried the experimental DirectX12 mode).

Outcast: A New Beginning was a complete surprise for me—and I really loved it. What I enjoyed most is how the story progresses. Instead of having one obvious main quest surrounded by disposable side content, the game gives you many medium-length village stories that gradually connect and merge into the larger plot. It feels much more organic than the usual “main story plus side quests” structure, and honestly, it was refreshing. Adelpha is huge, exotic and genuinely fun to explore. Traversal is a major reason why: gliding across the landscape and chaining jetpack jumps makes simply moving through the world enjoyable. Cutter Slade is also a strong protagonist. He has personality, the voice acting is excellent, and while I know the humour will not work for everyone, I was completely on board with his dry, slightly detached style. The side quests and mini-games are another highlight. There is a surprising amount of variety: gliding routes, traversal challenges, creature-related tasks, village problems, environmental puzzles and strange local customs. They give the game a playful identity and rarely feel like standard open-world filler. I also loved the old-school theatrical soundtrack. It fits the adventurous tone perfectly. The main problem is repetition. The music itself is good, but there simply is not enough of it—especially during combat. Hearing the same fighting track again and again becomes tiring over time. Even two or three occasional alternatives would have made a huge difference. The technical side also needs criticism. I experienced far too many Unreal Engine crashes, and having only four manual save slots feels bizarrely restrictive. Are we back in the 1990s? Despite those issues, this is one of the most enjoyable open-world games I have played recently. It has personality, freedom, unusual ideas and a world I actually wanted to spend time in. A rough but memorable surprise.

Игра прикольная рекомендую