Outcast is getting a sequel 20 years after the original
Outcast 2: A New Beginning is being made by some original devs
Hello, the 90s are calling and they'd like to offer you sequels to games you've probably forgotten about. Outcast 2: A New Beginning is the newly announced follow-up to 1999's Outcast. It's an open-world third-person shooter that takes place right after the events of the original, where Cutter Slade (the best-named man in the world) has been stuck in time for 20 years after trying to get home to Earth from the alien planet Adelpha.
Unfortunately, he wakes up on Adelpha again, except now it's overrun with robot soldiers. It's gonna be a culture shock if he gets back to Earth too, which has now been overrun by Twitch streamers.
THQ Nordic bought the rights to Outcast from the game's creators back in January 2019. The sequel is being developed by Appeal Studios, and during a press event they said the new team has a number of developers who worked on the original game 22 years ago, including the game director and composer.
Outcast came out in 1999, and was actually supposed to get a sequel shortly after, but the devs had financial troubles and couldn't get the cash to continue. In 2014, folks from the studio tried Kickstarting a reboot, but failed to reach their fundraising goal.
It didn't end there though. In 2017 the devs released a remake backed by publishers Bigben Interactive. Alas, according to Alyse Stanley's Outcast: Second Contact review, it wasn't a particularly welcoming experience for new players.
"Fans of the original may well love seeing Adelpha modernised," she wrote. "For a newcomer like me though, while it's impossible to ignore the foundations that Outcast laid for later games in the open-world genre, at its core, Second Contact is clunky. Infuriatingly imprecise combat and stiff controls constantly jerk you cursing back into reality."
Here's hoping that the sequel does a little better on that front. There's no set release date yet, and the game is just about to go into alpha, so we'll probably be waiting a bit longer to see more.