The year is 1999. The Sixth Sense thrills audiences, and the space shuttle docks with the International Space Station for the first time. Elsewhere, Infogrames releases one of the most influential video games ever made. So, how come no one ever talks about it?
The game is Outcast, made by French developer Appeal. I have a massive soft spot for foreign games made to appeal to American audiences, and Outcast makes a strong impression by featuring a story set up worthy of Hollywood. See, in the distant future of 2007, NASA sends a probe to a parallel universe. It arrives on the planet Adelpha, where it is immediately destroyed by an indigenous alien, and, uh oh, the destruction of the probe creates a black hole that threatens the entire Earth!
The US military sends a team of four, a U.S. Navy SEAL and three scientists, who are promptly separated. Players take control of the SEAL as he attempts to find the three scientists and stop the black hole while fighting the soldiers of the tyrannical overlord Fae Rahn.
And what is the name of the wise-cracking, tough-as-nails Navy SEAL that leads this direct-to-video plot? Cutter Slade. Go ahead and read that name again, really savor it. It’s perfect.
Don’t let the silly setup fool you – it’s pretty obvious the writers were fans of the movie Stargate – Outcast has some genuinely funny writing and a clever time travel wrinkle that keeps things moving. With this hokey foundation, Appeal created the blueprint for open-world games that developers are still following.
To defeat Fae Rahn, Cutter — I’m sorry, one more time, this guy’s name is Cutter. Slade. — travels through five zones, each representing a different local tribe, and disrupts the enemy’s war machine. You do this by chatting with and doing quests for the local aliens, fighting soldiers, and waging a one-man guerilla war. Completing each region hurts the enemy soldiers — by stopping food production, for example — and the game keeps track of your overall progress. Resistance gets stiffer, however, the closer you get to Fae Rahn’s palace.
Sound familiar? Outcast plays very much like a proto-Far Cry, just one with a wild sci-fi premise and a sense of humor that is extremely, and I don’t know how else to say this, French.
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See, Cutter isn’t doing this all on his own. Adelpha is filled with friendly, sarcastic aliens who are all too eager to help and aren’t above poking fun at the world-saving stakes the game throws at you. Outcast is very aware it’s a video game: one of the items you receive is a green crystal that, when squeezed, makes a copy of your essence that your spirit will return to if you die. It’s called a “gaamsav.” Nobody at Appeal thought they were writing the next Dune.
Outcast was famous for its visuals, especially its water. If your PC could run it, it presented a lush, open world full of personality. It also has an outstanding live orchestral soundtrack recorded by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. The shooting mechanics weren’t great, especially considering Unreal Tournament came out the same year, but taking down an overwhelming military force with nothing but guts and guns was just as fun in 1999 as it is now.
So why doesn’t anyone give Outcast any credit? Well, it sold terribly in the US, selling less than 15,000 copies despite tons of critical acclaim. It did have a following in France and Germany, and there were plans for a sequel that never materialized. Appeal went bankrupt, and the game went quiet until THQ Nordic released a remaster in 2011 and a sort of half-remaster/half-remake in 2017.
That brings us to today, with Outcast: A New Beginning, a full-on sequel, coming out on March 15. Why are they making a sequel to this game now? I have no idea, but after a year of widespread layoffs and a general sense in the video game industry that big companies are crushing smaller developers, seeing a sequel to a beloved, underappreciated trailblazer is pretty awesome.
It’s easier than ever to get into Outcast. The remaster of the original game, Outcast 1.1, is available on GOG and Steam. The remake, Outcast: Second Contact, is included with PlayStation Plus (and is currently on sale on PS5 for $2) and retails for about $15 on Xbox and Steam.
A demo for the sequel is out now on PC, PS5, and Xbox, which gives you three different tastes of the game: a chunk of the open world, a combat section, and a town where you can talk to aliens and try to wrap your head around the game’s innovative quest system. Outcast: A New Beginning looks pretty good – Avatar has obviously beaten out Stargate as the biggest influence – and while the combat isn’t as slick as Helldivers 2, the whole thing has a charm that is trés magnifique!
