Outcast - A New Beginning is an action-adventure game from Appeal Studios and the follow-up to 1999’s classic adventure game Outcast. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn’t do well, and if it’s worth getting.
Outcast - A New Beginning Review Overview
What is Outcast - A New Beginning?
Outcast - A New Beginning is an action-adventure third-person shooter and Appeal Studios’ follow-up to 1999’s Outcast and 2017’s Outcast: Second Contact. Set in the alien world of Adelpha, Outcast - A New Beginning features Cutter Slade in yet another of his epic exoplanetary excursions. Gun down alien life and automata in equal measure as you earn the trust of the locals. Learn more about the rich culture of the Talans as you find a way to return to your home dimension.
Outcast - A New Beginning features:
⚫︎ A rich alien culture and ecosystem to explore and get lost in
⚫︎ Ranged weapon combat with dynamic movement
⚫︎ A complex and intriguing story on an alien world
⚫︎ Skill trees and weapon attachments galore
⚫︎ Plentiful sidequests and dialogue choices
⚫︎ Stunning visuals with well-designed levels and insane verticality
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Outcast - A New Beginning's gameplay and story.
 Outcast - A New Beginning |
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Outcast - A New Beginning Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Great Visuals Complex Lore and Serviceable Story |
Clunky Controls Extremely Boring and Repetitive Combat Myriad Pacing Issues So-So Dialogue Writing |
Outcast - A New Beginning Overall Score - 52/100
Much like Disney’s John Carter and James Cameron’s Avatar, Outcast - A New Beginning is an extraterrestrial adventure filled with alien creatures, vibrant environments, and extremely militaristic humans. Although the game looks good enough to contend with a few AAA titles, its gameplay is boring and poorly put together. Though its story is steeped in great world-building and complex alien culture, it isn’t paced well throughout and is rife with plot contrivances that lead to nothing. As much as I appreciate the effort made to flesh out the aliens and their world, none of it is presented well, leaving behind a particularly stunning train wreck.
Outcast - A New Beginning Story - 7/10
Outcast - A New Beginning’s Story isn’t the worst, though much of it is weighed down by the game’s boring combat and extreme pacing issues. I often find myself slogging through uninteresting encounters and poorly-written dialogue to get a world-building fix from the game’s genuinely well-designed aliens. While such qualities are redeemable for a visual novel, they are damning for an action-adventure third-person shooter.
Outcast - A New Beginning Gameplay - 4/10
Outcast- A New Beginning’s gameplay is a clumsy, cobbled-together mess of mechanics that’s further weighed down by clunky controls. The developers relied too much on genre staples and didn’t innovate on any of the game’s facets, inadvertently creating a gameplay experience that subjects its players to the worst thing possible for a gamer: boredom.
Outcast - A New Beginning Visuals - 7/10
This game’s visuals are actually quite good, featuring sweeping landscapes, okay character models, and genuinely jaw-dropping architecture. The designs reflect the unique alien culture that the game’s playing with and they’re quite the sight to behold in-game and during cutscenes. The same can’t be said for the human characters of the game, although it doesn’t detract too much from the experience.
Outcast - A New Beginning Audio - 5/10
This game’s audio is decent enough, although it isn’t something to write home about. The game’s voice acting is usually acceptable, although it does lapse from time to time, depending on the character and situation. As for the environmental sounds, it’s passable—more of a suggestion than true immersion, but it will have to do.
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Outcast - A New Beginning Value for Money - 3/10
I hate to use the term, but this game is an absolute ripoff. Depending on the platform, this game can cost anywhere from $60-70, which is a gargantuan ask considering how little it gives you in return. Granted, it has pretty good graphics and extremely detailed world-building, but for this price range, you’re better off buying sci-fi books or movies if that’s all you’re looking for.
Outcast - A New Beginning Review: Bargain Bin Avatar
Stop me if you’ve heard this before. A human visitor from another world finds an unexpected kinship among the natives of an alien planet due to an impairment in their transit. The visitor and the natives are at odds initially, though they end up cooperating and eventually driving away the main force behind the planet’s exploitation. That’s not a poor description of James Cameron’s Avatar, that’s basically the story and premise of Outcast - A New Beginning, though I won’t blame you for thinking it was the former.
Clearly, the similarity between the two isn’t intentional, as Outcast - A New Beginning (Outcast) still has its own unique story elements. Still, it’s fun to draw parallels between works of fiction because literature is built on trends and tropes. That’s where the fun ends, however, as the game’s story is its greatest asset. As you’ll soon see, not much else about Outcast has any business being compared to Avatar. So suit up and get your gear ready; we’re heading planetside.
I’ll keep it brief because there's not much to talk about anyway. Outcast is a third-person shooter where you, Cutter Slade, are teleported into an alien world without anything, not even your memories, to your name. You encounter the Talan—bipedal aliens native to this planet—who consider you their savior after their god declares you as such. Now you must drive the invaders away to earn your right to go home and be with your daughter.
It’s a decent story to work with, but the meat of the narrative comes from the amount of detail provided for the denizens of Adelpha. I cannot stress enough how phenomenally hard the world-building goes for these aliens. Everything about them is so detailed and well-defined, it’s almost like a documentary at times. The writers went ham for these aliens, writing entire paragraphs about their social castes, economics, foods, clothing, livelihoods, history, ancient technology, pantheon, and societal systems. I wouldn’t call it my gold standard—that still goes to Horizon: Zero Dawn—but it’s certainly one of the game’s strongest points.
Speaking of strong points, Outcast looks great for a follow-up to a game from 1999. The environment actually looks like it’s thriving, featuring immense verticality and some of the most unorthodox stage designs I’ve ever seen. It looks and feels like an actual alien planet, and I appreciate that so much. It isn’t hyperrealistic either, so it retains some of that sci-fi uncanniness that the genre thrives on. It’s been a sweet ride so far, but this is where it ends. However great its world-building and graphics may be, Outcast falls short in almost every other aspect.
Let’s go for the action genre’s bread and butter first, shall we? Gameplay: every game has it, but not all of them execute it well. Judging from my lead-up to this paragraph, you already know that this game’s gameplay is clunky as all heck. Never mind the controls for mouse and keyboard—which are equally as clunky—I want to talk about the mechanics themselves. This game doesn’t really have anything unique in its mechanics. Sure, you have dynamic air traversal and third-person gunplay, but almost all third-person shooters have those by default.
You’ve got weapon customization and upgrade trees, but, again, those are both genre staples. I’d also talk about the unlockable skills and yadda yadda, but you get the idea. There’s nothing new or distinct about this game’s gameplay that lets it stand out. More to that, it doesn’t have a mechanic that holds all the others together into one tight and usable bundle. It just really feels like it’s all over the place and its wonky controls only make it worse. I’d call the game’s mechanics bad, but they’re not. They’re much worse, actually, as they, together, commit the most egregious sin that any game could ever commit: they’re boring.
I don’t feel like playing this game for its action, its roleplaying, or its shooting. In truth, I play to move the story along so I can experience more world-building; that’s how lackluster this game’s combat is. The oddly bland UI and predictable sidequests serve as the last nails in the proverbial coffin, rounding out a disappointing array of unrelated and uninspired combat mechanics.
That’s not all that’s plaguing this game, though, as its pacing is completely out of whack. You’re either ping-ponging between 30-second cutscenes and tutorial gameplay or blitzing through the story like your jetpack’s on fire. It’s such a whiplash to go from the tutorial’s glacial pace to the breakneck speed of…well…the rest of the game. I wish I had the time to get to know the Talan people’s culture more, but the devs seemed keen to just bullrush the heck out of this game’s story like it wasn’t even there. A true shame, if you ask me.
And that’s about it for Outcast. I want to love the game, I really do, but it’s proving itself hard to love with every boring second that it drones on. I love its scenery, I love its people, heck, I even love the cheesy one-liners that the man with the most 2001 name ever, Cutter Slade, makes every 2 seconds. What I can’t love is its horrid gameplay and somehow worse pacing. And for a $60+ asking price, you’re out of this world if you think I’m buying that.
Pros of Outcast - A New Beginning
| Things Outcast - A New Beginning Got Right |
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Great Visuals Complex Lore and Serviceable Story |
Great Visuals
This game is actually quite stunning in some areas, but that’s to be expected from a game set in such a unique locale. Adelpha is a beautiful planet to set the story in and its people are just as detailed and complex. The Talan people’s architecture really pops against the endless green of Adelpha’s forests, showing a great contrast between alien civilization and alien wilds. I wish humanity got the same treatment, but no, they’re still just your generic, morally gray invaders from another planet. Even the protagonist looks like he escaped a Time Crisis cabinet from an arcade somewhere. Overall, I still think this game looks stunning.
Complex Lore and Serviceable Story
I can appreciate genuinely good world-building when I see it and I think that Outcast - A New Beginning has it in spades. One does not simply birth an alien race into existence, one must also give them a history, culture, and people. Whoever created the Talan people knew what they were doing because theirs is a civilization that I can actually picture existing. They’re not just aliens, they’re also survivors, soothers, and subjects of a pantheon we do not know but hear endlessly as we explore their world.
Fractured remnants of a previous age litter their forests and seas, ripe for your discovery and rife with their worship. Their society has several strata, each with its own detailed rules and interactions with the others. Their settlements have well-defined economies with equally detailed logistics. I could go on and on about how well every detail paints a grander picture of Talan society, but I’m sure you get the gist. If this game would have an aspect that could rival the juggernauts of the gaming industry, it’d be its setting and world-building, hands down.
Cons of Outcast - A New Beginning
| Things That Outcast - A New Beginning Can Improve |
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Clunky Controls Extremely Boring and Repetitive Combat Myriad Pacing Issues So-So Dialogue Writing |
Clunky Controls
I played this game on mouse and keyboard, but I think that hardly made a difference. Quite simply, there are far too many things to do for you to have comfortable and accessible keybinds. In addition to the traditional key binds one might expect from an FPS, this game also has a lot of traversal and consumable mechanics that you’d have to bind to something. Pretty soon, you’ll realize that you’re out of keyboard real estate and you’ve got 4 more things to assign shortcuts to.
This is arguably a skill issue, but this problem persists on every level of difficulty this game has to offer. If I can’t have air acrobatics and third-person carnage with accessible and smooth controls, I don’t want it.
Extremely Boring and Repetitive Combat
I don’t know what else to say, this game’s combat is just plain boring. You shoot, you shield, you dash, that’s it. You get better gear down the line, maybe even a few new powers, but none of them are ever as impactful as they sound. Despite its status as an action-adventure game, Outcast - A New Beginning’s combat almost feels…vestigial, which isn’t a good look for a game in a genre where action is king.
Myriad Pacing Issues
I have a love-hate relationship with video game cutscenes. On one hand, some of the greatest cinematic pieces I’ve ever seen are cutscenes from famous video games (Devil May Cry and Red Dead Redemption 2 come to mind). On the other hand, especially when they’re poorly made, they can be extremely detrimental to their game’s overall quality.
Unfortunately, Outcast - A New Beginning falls in the latter category, with its plentiful cutscenes messing up the game’s pacing immensely from start to finish. The tutorial is over an hour long and half of that is all cutscenes. One might think that it’s because there’s just a long one in there, but no, it’s far worse—it’s a bunch of short cutscenes interspersed with gameplay and transitioned by a painfully slow fade-out. Repeat that for the rest of the game and you’ve got a title that would benefit from a pacemaker.
So-So Dialogue Writing
Don’t get me wrong, this game’s general writing and world-building ain’t half bad. I genuinely felt engrossed by the Talan people’s culture many times. No, what I’m referring to is the dialogue itself, which mostly consists of one-liners, uninspired banter, and jokes that fall flat. I understand the disparity between the quality of this game’s world-building and dialogue—I, too, struggle with writing dialogue despite my love for world-building. While that much is excusable for a singular writer though, it’s less excusable for a development team consisting of many strengths and weaknesses.
Is Outcast - A New Beginning Worth It?
Absolutely Not, Go Watch Avatar Instead
Yeah, I wouldn’t buy this game even if it was at half-price. A bad game is at least memorable, but this one is just a great big ball of "meh". $60+ is an audacious price for a game that delivers none of its mechanics well. It has some redeeming qualities, but none of them can justify a pricetag like that.
For that much money, you can rent out James Cameron’s Avatar and even have enough leftover cash to get yourself a snack or two. Just go do that, you’re not missing out on anything, I promise.
| Digital Storefronts | |||||
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Xbox |
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| $49.79 | $69.99 | ||||
Outcast - A New Beginning FAQ
Is Outcast - A New Beginning A Remake?
Outcast - A New Beginning is not a remake. Rather, it is a sequel to Outcast: Second Contact, which is a remake of the original Outcast from 1999.
Do Your Choices Matter in Outcast - A New Beginning?
Dialogue options in Outcast - A New Beginning are varied and can be selected from an array of options when prompted. Despite this, your choice of response doesn't seem to matter much. The game lacks a developed morality or infamy system, so the various dialogue choices are likely there to pace exposition rather than branch the narrative according to player choice.
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Outcast - A New Beginning Product Information
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| Title | OUTCAST - A NEW BEGINNING |
|---|---|
| Release Date | March 15, 2024 |
| Developer | Appeal Studios |
| Publisher | THQ Nordic |
| Supported Platforms | PlayStation 5, PC, Xbox Series X|S |
| Genre | Action, Adventure, Shooter |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | T 13+ (Teen 13+) |
| Official Website | Outcast - A New Beginning Website |
