Outcast

Moby ID: 358
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In the year 2007, a parallel universe is discovered by scientists. The U.S. government sends a probe to that universe and learns of the existence of an entire alien civilization there. However, an apparently hostile alien damages the probe, leading to the creation of a black hole threatening the very existence of our own world. Former U.S. Navy S.E.A.L. Cutter Slade is assigned to escort three scientists to the parallel universe in an attempt to repair the probe and avert the danger.

Upon arrival, Cutter is separated from the scientists and is greeted by the local inhabitants, the Talan. It appears that their world, Adelpha, has its own troubles: a mysterious being known as Faé Rhan has been assembling an army consisting of Talans who think themselves superior to the rest of the population and willing to rule over them with violence. Cutter is proclaimed the Ulukai, a savior mentioned in a prophecy, and entrusted with the task of retrieving five sacred relics needed to overthrow Faé Rhan - all while trying to locate the scientists and save the Earth as well in the process.

Outcast is a 3D third-person (with optional first-person view) action game with adventure elements. In search for five sacred relics, the protagonist travels through the five continents of Adelpha (plus one tutorial island). Each land has its own landscape (mountains, lakes, forests), populated areas, as well as dozens of minor problems - small quests that the hero is required to solve. Most Talans populating the world can be conversed with about a variety of topics. A large portion of the game consists of finding key characters and performing quests for them; some of these are optional, though most must be completed in an adventure-like linear fashion in order to advance the plot. Cutter is free to travel between the continents using special portals.

Apart from exploration and completing quests, Cutter will also fight many guards and creatures. At his disposal are six futuristic weapons (railgun and others); ammunition for those guns is scattered around and can also be produced by mixing items. Aiming help is provided in the form of laser sights. Sneaking up to the enemy and punching him out silently is also possible. Gadgets such as a holo-decoy can be used to help Cutter gain the upper hand in combat. The player character can also jump, climb, swim, dive, crawl, and ride a local animal known as Twon-Ha for faster travel.

Spellings

  • 时空英豪 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

161 People (135 developers, 26 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 86% (based on 34 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 92 ratings with 12 reviews)

My absolute favourite game ever!!

The Good
This game is absolutely great! Since the first time I played it, I felt almost one thousand different emotions listening to the best game soundtrack ever written (mixed with excellent sounds), and walking on a land that for the first time I looked as real!! Outcast made me know Voxel graphics, whose I'm a fan now, and I think that none of the modern pathetic polygon 3D engines would have looked so amazing as Outcast's!! Besides the wonderful graphics and music, Outcast has one of the greatest storyline ever written for a game! The whole game is amazingly cinematographic, playing it you'll sometimes wonder if you're just playing it or if you're LIVING what could have easily been a movie! There are thousands of people to talk to, to get informations you'll many times have to do something in exchange, and since the world you've fallen to (Adelpha) is divided in six huge regions, you'll have a lot to do to complete the game! Besides you'll be free to do whatever you want: you can be a classic hero, helping everyone (and consequently get more help from the people), or you can be a lone bastard, killing everything in sight (obviously being forced to make everything of your own): just take care of the fact that your deeds will rapidly spread into the six regions, so people will avoid you if you didn't act as the hero they initially think you are! Strategic elements are really strong too: to weaken the enemies you'll be able to cut their resources by convincing the people stopping working for them: this can be done by doing something in exchange, for example saving an important personality, etc. Finally, there are many quests and sub-quests in the game: some are necessary to complete the game, some just help you to get more money, weapons and so on: try to make them all! ;-)

The Bad
I couldn't find anything bad in this game, I love it too much! Well maybe battles are a bit too easy (but I know many people think they're too tough, instead!). I know a lot of people didn't like the Voxel engine: I repeat it's the more realistic 3D engine I ever saw in a game, so it certainly is not in my BAD section. Besides, you'll have to talk a lot: someone could find this a little annoying, considering that in each dialogue a new person will be mentioned, and it could be a little hard to keep everything in mind (but there's a Notepad annoting everything new you know, so this isn't a real problem!! ;-)); I actually didn't, I really liked the complexity of the whole situation.

The Bottom Line
This game rocks! If you've never played it, you don't know what you're missing!! Its atmosphere is amazing, if you're a science-fiction fan you HAVE to play it at least one (well, I did it three times! ;-))

Windows · by Delusion Master (131) · 2000

Zort, Ulukai! Get on your twon-ha and bring some magwa to the shamaz!

The Good
Developed by a little-known Belgian studio, Outcast is certainly a very ambitious game. Created with its own peculiar technology, the game presents vast free-roaming environments of such intense beauty that simply controlling your character through them becomes an aesthetic pleasure. It is mind-boggling how such marvel could be produced using voxels and a fixed low resolution.

I can keep heaping praises on this world, but my vocabulary is too poor to adequately convey the beauty of hypnotic twin moons, breathtaking sunrises, and sensual, lush nature in words. The important thing, however, is the way how this world becomes open to your interaction. Imagine Tomb Raider taking place in generous outdoor areas and populated locations. Even though there are only a few instances actually requiring you to use your physical abilities, you can physically interact with the environment at any time, anywhere. Climb on house walls, jump on roofs, crawl around, swim in the beautifully rendered water, dive for crystals and avoid angry fish.

The main idea of the game was obviously to create a living, breathing alien world. Each of its five regions has a distinct personality: a journey from the deceptively peaceful Okaar with its deep forests and shiny blue rivers to the stern brown rocks and angry boiling lava of Motazaar is refreshing no matter how many times you take it. Each region has a large settlement populated by Talans - aliens who look a lot like Alf from the popular TV series. The environments in those inhabited areas are so detailed and busy that simply observing their everyday life becomes a goal in itself. People would engage in a variety of activities, work, lie down, and react to whatever you do.

I rarely talk about music in my reviews because, being a musician myself, I appear to have different standards for judging a soundtrack than most other players. But the music of Outcast honestly belongs to the best of the best: magically sensuous and luxuriant, expertly composed and performed by a professional orchestra, it could easily serve as background for the most expensive Hollywood blockbuster. I can't stress enough how much this music contributes to the atmosphere of the game.

The shooting portions of Outcast are quite good. It can be played both as a third- and first-person shooter, with various degrees of zooming complementing the smooth controls. Laser rays are used for aiming, making third-person shooting much more dependent on your precision skills than on awkward manipulations or luck. The enemies display advanced AI routines, teaming up, alerting others, acting with coordination and mercilessly ganging up on you. The fights in Outcast can get quite challenging, and are always exciting thanks to the open battle arenas where you can use a wide variety of tactics to overcome the advantages of the enemy. Six weapon types, explosives, and nifty devices such as teleporters that allow strategic retreats when places cleverly add to the mix.

The Bad
There is one thing in Outcast that constantly undermines the game: lack of genre-bound gameplay substance. It doesn't have enough combat (by far) to be a shooter. It doesn't have any RPG elements despite the towns and the large world that just seem to beg for them. It doesn't have any puzzles that would help it qualify as a real adventure game. Essentially, Outcast is a lot of running around and not much more.

Outcast starts so strong: a fantastic intro that presents a bunch of interesting and promising characters; something happens, and you find yourself in a strange alien realm. You step out of Zokrym's house, and one of the most wonderful views ever to be seen in a game spreads in front of you. Soon you discover (following Jan's tests) that you will swim, shoot, jump, and sneak in this game. You rub your hands, saying: "What a game, what a game! I can't believe it's happening..." And with moist eyes, you enter the portal and prepare to engage yourself for the first Mon quest...

And here it begins. To find the Mon, you have to speak to a certain guy. But this guy won't talk to you unless you bring him something. This something can be obtained from a certain someone, who will talk to you only if you bring him something that you can obtain from someone who will talk to you only if you bring him something that you can obtain from, etc. The brave Cutter Slade (horrible name, by the way) is lost forever in a universe of insultingly inept creatures. The promised savior of Adelpha will be too busy retrieving various household items for priests and village chiefs, running from one Talan to another with his tongue outside. The cool special agent won't find a better occupation other than grilling every boring NPC for obscure information, which they won't share with him immediately, but only after he finds for them their favorite salami sandwich they have lost many years ago.

Outcast thus becomes a curious phenomenon: it is polished and entertaining in details and side activities, but dull and clueless during actual game progression. The constant stream of pointless tasks and long-winded, repetitive conversations emphasizing the Talan's incompetence in an irritatingly condescending way sap the life out of the game.

There are other "holes" in the game's glittering, opulent facade. The settlements and the wilderness look very attractive, but there are no actual indoor areas in the game. Now, I might be biased here since I have a soft spot for dungeon exploration; but isn't it strange that the game doesn't seem to have any real explorable indoor locations in that huge overworld? There's something oddly disjointed in the design of Outcast, in the way it combines its solid tactical shooting with an inane quest system that occupies a noticeably larger portion of the gameplay.

The Bottom Line
As you can see from some other reviews, Outcast took quite a lot of beating from hardcore players who can't be fooled by artificial lengthening of the game, which takes the place of coherent, fulfilling gameplay. I'm at odds with this game - its world is breathtaking and I want to visit it, but I just don't fancy going again through the same hugely annoying string of fetch quests in order to participate in bits of well-designed third-person shooter.

Windows · by Unicorn Lynx (181780) · 2018

The definitive 3rd person adventure

The Good
The story,graphics, cast and atmosphere.Its a living world with great environments, fantastic soundtrack and a cool hero. Outcast might look dated today...but only for ten minutes, then You just forget about pixel and vertex shaders and admire the viewing distance, landscape and environment. Only recently polygon based games achieved this level of quality.

The game is stable even on win2000 (not even the patch is needed !) and the voxel engine is beautiful. The quests and plot work flawlessly.

A true masterpiece both in design and execution.

The Bad
It spoiled it all for me.No other game comes close, so its pretty hard for me to decide which game to play next. Outcast is so full of it all and so perfect that You might not "need" any other game of that kind anymore. Except for a sequel.

The Bottom Line
A living, alien world, a Bruce Willis-like hero, a great plot with great characters, good speech, good handling, great graphics. The right game for any gamer, especially during christmas holidays.

Windows · by Emmanuel Henne (23) · 2002

[ View all 12 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Outcast appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Cancelled Dreamcast version

A Dreamcast version was planned by Infogrames, which would feature a 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 September 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 its core API for 3D acceleration).

Graphics engine

A common misconception is that Outcast employs a voxel engine. Franck Sauer, though, said in an interview with gaming magazine "Strana Igr": "We've all misused the term voxel for what actually is just an height field with some software raycasting". The engine allows for a complex architecture and a wide range of sight. However, 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.

Legacy

On November 1999, Appeal announced a sequel Outcast 2: The Lost Paradise, a PS2 game with a PC release to follow. Appeal however declared its bankruptcy on August 12, 2002 and the game was canceled. A major part of the team moved to elseWhere Entertainment and a petition was started to persuade Infogrames to allow Elsewhere Entertainment to use the Outcast license, but with no result. A team called Eternal Outcasts started working on Open Outcast as a mod for different types of engines, first the one of Gothic, then the Crystal Space engine, next CryENGINE2 and finally settling on CryENGINE3. After two tech demos (Oasis 1.0 & 1.1) that can be played as mods through Crysis Wars, the project was re-branded on 1st April 2013 as Outcast: Legacy of the Yods.

On 3rd July 2013 it was announced that Yves Grolet, along with the other two original Appeal founders Franck Sauer and Yann Robert, bought back the rights to Outcast from Atari. The game will be developed through Grolet's company AMA Studios and Sauer and Robert will work for AMA through their own company Fresh3D S.A.R.L. Tentatively dubbed Duality, it was then confirmed that it would become the official successor to Outcast. Duality was already announced as the third AMA title at least one year earlier, but with no details except for the title.

Outtakes

Appeal created 15 movie outtakes for Outcast. They could be downloaded as mpg-files from the game's official website. Ideally, any viewer should have played the game, in order to understand the puns.

Promotion

A lengthy gameplay demonstration of the game was shown on the main projection screen at the Belgian demo party Wired 1998, nearly a year before its official release.

References

  • Listen closely, and it's possible to recognize the main notes of Luke's Theme from the Star Wars soundtrack being played by some of the flute players in the region of Okriana, particularly those west and east of the palace. Fitting, considering the city is in the desert.
  • The word Okriana could be seen as an anagram of the Russian word okraina, which means the outskirts. However, according to an interview with Franck Sauer, it actually comes from ochre, the yellow colour that dominates the area.

Save

The crystalline object used to save your game is called a Gaamsav. Carefully listening to that name makes its use more than apparent.

Voice actors

In both the French and the German version of the game, the actors providing the main character's voice are the dubbing voices of Bruce Willis in the respective languages: Patrick Poivey and Manfred Lehmann.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • March 2000 (Issue #188) – Adventure Game of the Year
  • GameSpot
    • 1999 - Adventure Game of the Year
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 03/2000 - Best Sound in 1999
    • Issue 12/1999 - #57 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
  • PC Powerplay (Germany)
    • Issue 11/2005 - #8 Game Which Absolutely Needs A Sequel

Information also contributed by -Chris, Lumpi, Sciere, shifter, Supernintendo Chalmers, Xa4, Zack Green, and Zovni.

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Related Sites +

  • Open Outcast
    A fan-made sequel in the works. The team intends to use the CryEngine 2 for terrain modelling. Well worth a look.
  • Outcast - Wikipedia
    article about the game in the open encyclopedia
  • Outcast Hints
    Alex Burrell wrote these excellent hints for Outcast for the Universal Hint System.
  • Outcast II.net
    A very comprehensive site with news, resources, art, guides and interviews.

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  • MobyGames ID: 358
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by robotriot.

Additional contributors: -Chris, Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, Chentzilla, Sciere, CaesarZX, Cantillon, Zeikman, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack.

Game added November 1, 1999. Last modified March 31, 2024.