Description
Outcast is a 3rd-person action-adventure.
The Messiah has a name. It is Cutter Slade. The Messiah has a job. It is US navy. The Messiah has a mission. It is retrieval of a lost probe. The Messiah has... a problem. It circles mostly around all that sudden messiah-being stuff, but minor problems like being stranded on an alien world and having lost all equipment add to the flavor. Cutter has been sent to this world, Adelpha, because the malfunctioning probe threatens all life on earth. To find it, he needs the help of Adelphas' inhabitants. Luckily, they have only recently witnessed the arrival of their messiah (guess who). On the downside, they have high expectations of their savior: He's to rid the world of the evil tyrant who torments it. No revolution, no probe. Okay, Cutter: You’ve got work to do.
In search for five sacred relics, you travel through the five huge continents of Adelpha (plus one tutorial island). Each land has its own landscape (mountains, lakes, forests) as well as dozens of minor problems -- small quests that you've got to solve. Apart from exploration and puzzle-solving, you'll fight lots of guards and creatures. Using your six futuristic weapons (railgun etc.) works fine, but sneaking up to your victim and punching him out silently is also possible -- and safer. Cutter swims and dives, jumps and crawls, talks to lots of people and discovers many useful objects. In short: He's having a hell of an adventure.
Outcast is technically notable in many ways. It combines a voxel landscape (allowing for a smooth, rolling terrain) with polygon objects and persons. More interestingly, it is the first game to apply textures to voxel structures -- thus making a house distinguishable from a square rock. The voxel engine allows for a complex architecture and an enormous range of sight. Unfortunately, it features only low resolutions up to 512 x 384, does not support 3D accelerator cards and requires a potent processor (preferably 500 Mhz) to run smoothly.
The impressive orchestral soundtrack was performed by the Moscow Symphonic Orchestra and Chorus.
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Trivia
A Dreamcast version was planned by Infogrames which would feature a brand new, fully polygonal engine to replace the original one. However, thanks in no small part to Outcast's small sales and the self-destruction of the Dreamcast console, on sept. 22, 2000 Infogrames announced the cancellation of the port's development. This is sad indeed since Infogrames had hinted that a 3D acceleration patch for the PC version would be available thanks to the Dreamcast port (since the console uses DirectX as it's core API for 3D acceleration).
This entry to the MobyGames database was contributed by
robotriot 
(6380) on Nov 01, 1999.
