Outcast - A New Beginning review

What is it? A sequel to the 1999 classic action-adventure game, Outcast.
Release date February 8, 2024
Expect to pay £49.99
Developer Appeal Studios
Publisher THQ Nordic
Reviewed on Nvidia RTX 3090 Ti, 32GB RAM (DDR4), AMD Ryzen 7 5700X, ASRock B450M Pro4
Multiplayer? No
Steam Deck Yes
Link Steam

There's a fundamental contradiction between how Outcast — A New Beginning looks and sounds to how it actually plays. Visually, it's often epic. The alien world of Adelpha has never looked better, with Pandora-lite environments seamlessly alternating between lush, verdant forests, shimmering coastal beachfronts, rocky mountainous expanses, snow-capped peaks and waterfall-laden ancient metropolises partially reclaimed by nature. The audio, utitlising the same sweeping orchestral soundtrack of the original game, is also beautiful and atmospheric—it always speaks of wondrous cosmic adventures that await. What a shame, then, that hero of the hour Cutter Slade spends so much of his time in Outcast — A New Beginning undertaking very mundane, far from epic, open world busywork.

Here's a typical sort of exchange. Cutter Slade, ex-Navy SEAL and now, after far too long trapped on the alien world of Adelpha, haggard-looking dad bod chosen one, goes to alien Talan A because Talan B has told him he needs to for plot purposes. Talan A, after lengthy dialogue, much of which welcomes the skip button, reveals he can help Cutter but only after the cosmic space adventurer has gone to D to gather X amounts of Z. But D can't be accessed until Talan C has been helped with Y. And so on and so on.

These tasks vary in mundanity, ranging from escort missions (such as slowly guiding a Twon-Ha space ostriches, who constantly need you to double back if you get even a little bit too far from them), to item collecting missions (grab 10 space fruits), to straight-out domestic chores (herding 12 space cows into a pen). At mutliple times there are mechanics where for a location's main plot to be advanced, you