CUTTER STAID

OUTCAST A NEW BEGINNING rekindles the original game's epic scope 

- Robert Jones

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 forests, coastal beachfronts, rocky mountainous expanses, snow-capped peaks and waterfall-laden ancient metropolises partially reclaimed by nature. The audio 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, haggardlooking 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.