Playing through Outcast: A New Beginning, immediately after playing the Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection had me feeling like I was inadvertently taking part in a retro gaming week. The difference is that one of these titles was essentially a straight port of a game from 2004, and the other is a brand new 2024 release that is only available on current-gen platforms.
From reading that opening paragraph, you may be led to believe that I am going to spend the rest of this review bashing Outcast: A New Beginning for its outdated physics, and its sub-par character models, but in fact the opposite is true. Playing through this game feels like a love letter to a bygone era; the mid-tier.
Outcast: A New Beginning releases on March 15 and is available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
Outcast: A New Beginning is a AA title, and it is a good one at that. I personally am all for the increased prevalence of AA titles recently. In fact, my favorite game of last year was a AA title, which I think says it all! After playing a litany of bloated AAA experiences, it is weirdly refreshing to play something that feels more focused and bare bones.
The reason I use the phrase, “weirdly refreshing,” is because Outcast: A New Beginning is so familiar-feeling, that it goes all the way back around to somehow feeling fresh again, despite the fact that it doesn’t really do anything new. However, what is here is a lot of fun, and at the end of the day that is what counts.
With that being said, the game doesn’t give the greatest first impression within its opening minutes. After being shown a cosmically confusing cutscene, we are literally dropped into an interior environment that looks about as advanced as something I made for my 3D animation degree course seven years ago. Initially, the physics feel off, with the protagonist having a weight that is reminiscent of PS1-era Crash Bandicoot.
However, everything changes once you step out of that initial interior. You are suddenly met with a luscious jungle environment cast in beautiful (digital) natural light. The vistas are stunning, to the point that you could easily point the camera towards the sky and take a screenshot to create a breathtaking desktop background.
Rugged good looks and a winning personality
After playing through that intro sequence, you will now have a feeling for our protagonist. He is voiced by Luke Roberts, who does a great job with the witty dialogue that he has been given to work with. The game’s writing in general is pretty decent, it reminds me a lot of Firefly-era Joss Whedon, thankfully absent of the thinly veiled toxic misogyny.
As someone who tends to impatiently skip through NPC dialogue, I found myself consistently interested in what this game’s NPCs had to say, which made for a welcome change. The dialogue options feel detailed, even coming with an onscreen glossary to help define local terminology. Unlike Starfield where dialogue options merely give the illusion of choice, here it actually feels like which questions you choose to ask have a bearing on the direction that the conversation will take.
Outcast: A New Beginning is a narrative-driven experience, and the tale it weaves is an intriguing one that combines a variety of sci-fi and western themes. The characters are layered and feel like they all have their own pasts which led them to be portrayed the way they are when we come across them. The game’s cities all feel lived in, again with their own respective histories weaving a thick tapestry of both good times and bad.
The story is well told through the game’s witty writing and solid voice cast, with some environmental storytelling also being effectively sprinkled throughout. It is also good to see that the developers didn’t allow a more modest budget to stop them from attempting to tell an ambitious story, on the level of something we’d expect to see from a much bigger developer.
What are we working with here?
The gameplay in Outcast: A New Beginning is also pretty great. Despite movement initially feeling pretty odd, it begins to feel more intuitive as you make progress through the game. This is partly due to the player getting more familiar with the game’s physics, but also has a lot to do with the gadgets that the game bestows to the player, which open up a range of traversal options.
Chief amongst these is a jetpack; a tool that is difficult to mess up in any game. Thankfully Outcast: A New Beginning nails the feeling of moving through the air like a more traditionally handsome Boba Fett. When this is combined with a cool Stark tech-esque nano shield, a wrist-mounted hacking device, and tight shooting mechanics, you start to feel like a pretty formidable one man army. Further into the game, a wing suit also becomes accessible allowing for more aerial acrobatics.
There were several moments while playing Outcast: A New Beginning where my mind made favorable comparisons to past AA releases. The luscious jungle locale combined with the game’s character design reminded me a lot of Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. In addition, the third person shooting and dialogue options really put me in mind of the vastly underrated Alpha Protocol.
Matching the game’s stunning visuals is a beautiful original score composed by the extremely talented Lennie Moore. From the man responsible for working on the music for everything from several Star Wars games to Halo OSTs, you would anticipate something very impressive. Thankfully Moore is able to deliver on everything from crafting feelings of epic grandeur to conveying a sense of pulse-pounding urgency with ease.
Taking the good with the bad
Unfortunately, not every element of Outcast: A New Beginning is quite as impressive. Despite installing the game on my PS5’s SSD, I still experienced frequent loading screens; some of which were egregiously long. The game’s technical performance on the whole isn’t the smoothest. While I never experienced anything game-breaking, I did encounter a lot of pop in and frequent frame rate drops during cutscenes.
These are all issues that can hopefully be resolved with future patches, but they are issues that are present in the launch build of the game. The only other major negative that stuck in my throat was the fact that the game’s singular child character was clearly being voiced by a 40-year-old woman. Due to the fact that the rest of the voice acting was so on point, this really stuck out like a sore thumb.
Overall, while I couldn’t describe Outcast: A New Beginning as a flawless game, I would describe it as a very pleasant surprise. If this titled had been priced at the 30-40 dollar price point, I would be recommending it to everyone. However, I can see some players being disappointed at the game’s overall lack of polish, given its $50 price tag. That said, if you see it in a sale, then it is definitely worth picking up and checking out.
Outcast: A New Beginning – 8/10
Outcast: A New Beginning was reviewed on PS5 with a code supplied to FandomWire by Dead Good PR.
