Introduction

About Outcast

Outcast is an action-adventure released in 1999 by Belgian developer Appeal. It is a remarkable game for various reasons. It uses a combination of voxels and polygons to create a number of lush, beautiful environments while bosting effects such as bump-mapping, anti-aliasing, depth of field and character shadows without relying on hardware-acceleration. It also features full voice-acting and a fantastic soundtrack performed by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra which you can download here. Another impressive aspect of Outcast is the advanced A.I. NPCs move around, do their work, talk to each other or, when they are bored, start smoking or doing push-ups. In combat, enemies can put up quite a fight. They seek cover or try to suround you and attack you from the back. All these things combined help to create the illusion of a living and breathing alien world and make Outcast a very beautiful and immersive game.


Story

From the manual:
In the year 2007, the US government successfully deploys a probe designed to prove the existence of a parallel universe. Minutes into the mission, an intelligent life form damages the probe. On Earth, an unforeseen backlash of energy is created by this action and the result is a black hole, which threatens the very existence of our planet. You are Cutter Slade, US Navy S.E.A.L. Commander, charged with the safety of the three scientists who have been chosen to travel to this new world, Adelpha. Your mission: face the dangers of a mysterious and hostile world in order to recover the probe and close the black hole. The Earth's destiny is in your hands.




Gameplay

Outcast is a non-linear action-adventure that features six vast regions, connected by stargates Daokas. Almost every region is populated by a large number of friendly Talans as well as enemy soldiers. Friendly NPCs can give you all sorts of helpful information about Adelpha or ask you to do various quests. While it's not necessary to do all quests, it is very useful to help as many Talans as possible as they will in turn help you against the soldiers. How this works exactly will be explained in the videos. The quests themselves range from standard fetch quests to more complex and interesting ones to quests that are completely stupid and nonsensical. Although most of the time is spent talking to friendly NPCS and fighting (or sneaking past) soldiers, there's also some light puzzle-solving and even platform-jumping to be done.




Daokas? Shamaz? Hazadess? What's going on here!?
In addition to throwing tons of quests and names of people and places at the player, the game also uses a lot of made-up alien words. It can be a bit overwhelming at times, and I thought about making a list of the most important new terms for every update. That would be a bit spoilery however, and since the most important terms are explained in detail in the game, and a let's play will obviously be smoother than an ordinary playthrough, this shouldn't be necessary. If you do get confused I might still add the lists, just let me know.






Intro: Viddler Polsy Blip Download

Intro (German): Viddler Polsy Blip Download

Intro (French): Viddler Polsy Blip Downlaod

The game can be very heavy on dialog and while I don't recommend skipping any videos, I'll put animated gifs behind each video, so you'll get an idea how much talking and action you'll be seeing.



01 - Arriving on Adelpha
Viddler Polsy Blip Download
Exposition and a tutorial.

02 - Preparing to leave Ranzaar
Viddler Polsy Blip Download
Yet more exposition and a bit of Talan lore.




03 - Entering Shamazaar
Viddler Polsy Blip Download
We enter beautiful Shamazaar and finally get to see some action.

04 - The Village
Viddler Polsy Blip Download
We meet Shamaz Zeb, talk to the Recreator and the very special "Leader" of Shamazaar.

05 - To the Temples
Viddler Polsy Blip Download
We kill lots of soldiers and actually finish a (mini-)quest!

06 - The Essence Stone
Viddler Polsy Blip Download
We retrieve the Essence Stone and learn how Talan babby is formed.

07 - Beginning the quest for the first Mon
Viddler Polsy Blip Download
We make a short trip to Okriana to buy two new weapons and start the first Mon Quest.

08 - The Secret of the Temples
Viddler Polsy Blip Download
We learn about the conenction between the Essence Idols and the Temples and raid the first Riss storehouse.

09 - Raiding the Riss storehouses
Viddler Polsy Blip Download
We substantially increase the body count as we raid the last two Riss storehouses.

10 - Retrieving the first Mon
Viddler Polsy Blip Download
We attack the Fae Temple and retrieve the first Mon.




11 - Rescue Mission
Viddler Polsy Blip Download
Marion and some of the Dolotai Guardians are captured by Fae Rhan's soldiers.

12 - Fetch Quest Fetchathon 1
Viddler Polsy Blip Download
We meet one of the more colorful inhabitants of Okriana, talk to Shamaz Zokrace and take out the armory.

13 - Fetch Quest Fetchathon 2: Fetch Harder
Viddler Polsy Blip Download
We begin the resource quest, listen to Mogi's story and challenge the laws of physics.

14 - Fetch Quest Fetchathon 3: Resource Quest Clusterfuck
Viddler Polsy Blip Download
We F-Link the fuck out of the most aggravating quest in the game.

15 - Fetch Quest Fetchathon 4.0
Viddler Polsy Blip Download
We explore the southern part of Okriana, fix Heza's well and retrive Balazar's Relic.

16 - Fetch Quest Fetchathon: With a Vengeance
Viddler Polsy Blip Download
We listen to Cutter singing in Agazork, talk to a Talan pothead and attack High Town for no particular reason.




17 - Entering Okasankaar
Viddler Polsy Blip Download
We enter Okasankaar, kill some local wildlife, take out another camp and find out why Gorgor feces makes for good construction material.

18 - Oru's Island
Viddler Polsy Blip Download
We meet the old hunter Oru, talk to the leader of Okasankaar and fight a pack of Gamors.

19 - The sunken Temple and the Darosham
Viddler Polsy Blip Download
We retrieve Oru's Gun from the sunken Temple and enter the Darosham.

20 - Kyuran
Viddler Polsy Blip Download
We make a short trip to the tree region Okaar to talk to Oru's friend Kyuran and take out a camp of high soldiers on the way.

21 - Zorkatraz
Viddler Polsy Blip Download
We attack Zorkatraz, free Martigar and get the last Booyat.

22 - The Gorgor
Viddler Polsy Blip Download
We hunt for the Gorgor and retrieve the second Mon.

23 - Rescue Mission II
Viddler Polsy Blip Download
Marion and some of the Dolotai Guardians are in trouble once again.




24 - Talanzaar Revisited
Viddler Polsy Blip Download
We return to Talanzaar to finish a whole bunch of quests and do a little mass murdering.




25 - Entering Motazaar
Viddler Polsy Blip Download
We enter Motazaar and immediatley start the fetch-questing.

26 - Zogard's Mine
Viddler Polsy Blip Download
We help a crazy miner, fix the boat light in Okasankaar and take out another soldier camp.

27 - Zonar's Bridge
Viddler Polsy Download
We meet Zonar the ARTIST, Shamaz Zagy, who still has a lot to learn and repair the rift bridge.

28 - The Rescue of Shamaz Keb
Viddler Polsy Download
We pass the Test of Fae, rescue Shamaz Keb and get the third Mon.

29 - Rescue Mission III
Viddler Polsy Download
The guardians are in trouble yet again; also world-hopping and wild Twon Has.




30 - The Oogoobar
Viddler Polsy Download
We enter Okaar and encounter a tribe of Oogoobar.

31 - The Achondar
Viddler Polsy Download
We fight the Achondar and get the remaining sound pipes.




32 - Stopping the Tax Flow
Viddler Polsy Download
We return to Okriana to show Shadi the ancient notes and finish the last resource quest.




33 - The Training Center
Viddler Polsy Download
We take down the training center and solve the puzzle of the fourth Mon.



34 - Finale
Viddler Polsy Download







Character Bios




Weapons






B01 - The Making of Outcast (Spoilers, especially after 11 min.)
Viddler Polsy

B02 - The Twon Ha
Viddler Polsy Blip Download

B03 - Close Combat
Viddler Polsy Blip Download

B04 - Okasankaar Deleted Scenes
Viddler Polsy Blip Download

B05 - The Reputation System
Viddler Polsy Download

B06 - Space Dance (Ending spoilers!)
Viddler Polsy Download



Outtakes
The developers also released a bunch of outtakes that I'll post alongside the updates. You could watch all of them at once on youtube or wherever, but if you haven't played the game you won't get some of the jokes and they contain minor spoilers too. The numbers indicate which videos you should have watched before watching them:

Outtakes 02: Viddler Polsy

Outtakes 04: Viddler Polsy

Outtakes 12: Viddler Polsy

Outtakes 22: Viddler Polsy

Outtakes 31 Viddler Polsy

Outtakes complete Viddler Polsy Download


Animated gifs!
These are also a bit spoilery, the numbers in brackets show from which videos they were taken.

Scared captain (10)
Cutter Slade, master of reloading 1 (31)
Cutter Slade, master of reloading 2 (34)
Angry captain (33)


Soundtrack
You can download the full soundtrack here




_{NOTE: If you're watching the videos streamed, Viddler produces slightly better quality than Blip. I'm not uploading the videos as flv and Blip's encoding does horrible things to them.}