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Vol.
2, Issue 1
November 10, 1999
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The other
great thing is that the game continuously throws challenges at
you. Just as you pass one major hurdle, another one will get set
to present itself. However, these aren’t bulldozed down on
top of you with no break; and I’m quite impressed with the
pacing of the game, overall. With all there is to do, it's nice
that the game doesn’t time you. Just because you didn’t
take care of something immediately, doesn’t mean that you
have to load an earlier game and try again. Don’t get me
wrong, you can fail tasks or die (most of the time by doing
something dumb like trying to pet dangerous animals; or in battle
against soldiers) – but because its almost always a result
of something you chose to do, it doesn’t get you frustrated
with the game developers so much as yourself.
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Exotic
beasts populate the world of Outcast (44k)
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The quests themselves vary from a simple message-bearing request, to
killing a monster, to searching an entire landscape for an artifact,
to going around and trying to get a whole group of merchants to lower
their prices – and the proverbial “much much more!”
The major quests in the game seem to follow a common theme, but each
one requires different sub-quests and activities; so they never really
get boring - though I will say that the entire explorable area of
Adelpha is vast; sometimes taking several minutes to traverse.
Throughout these quests (which, basically, comprise the game), you’ll
constantly be dealing with the natives of Adelpha. The voice acting
for these characters is superb; and the sheer number of people you
run into breathes a lot of life into the game. I’d venture to
say that a full 60 to 70 percent of the populace is unique and has
different knowledge, needs, requests, and so forth. They also do a
good job of sprinkling humor throughout the game; which not only provides
a break from the seriousness of some of your tasks, but makes your
character seem more “real” – and less of a goody-two-shoes,
or digital puppet.
It's amazing
that only a handful of people were used for the voice-talent of
these natives – the digital processing and voice skills carry
a vast array of inflections, mannerisms, and tones that uniquely
identify them. Good variances in clothing and animation also help
avoid the “cookie-cutter” effect seen in most games.
There’s some repetition; but its not so high as to interrupt
the enjoyment of the game. This brings us to the graphical elements
of the game. I personally think that a great job was done with
the graphics in Outcast – nice particle effects, detailed
textures, and vibrant colors.
The one
drawback (which everyone comments on) is the use of voxels
to render the terrain. While it makes for very detailed landscapes,
it forces the use of software rendering - severely limiting
screen-resolution (performance is almost totally CPU-dependant,
instead of video-card dependant). As a result, graphics are fairly
chunky and not very crisp in most modes (things seem to kick into
super-high detail during close-ups while conversing; which is
nice). While being “ugly” at first glance, I can remember
that only a couple of years ago, 400x300 mode was quite acceptable
for Quake and the like. And if you give the game a chance
(i.e. play it for more than 10 minutes), you will find that you
quickly become accustomed to it; and the graphics take a back
seat to the game-play and the story. As I mentioned before, however,
there is evidence that the graphics really were done well
– as details and effects can be quite pretty, especially
in “close-up” mode. They also have included a bunch
of anti-aliasing and other rendering tools designed to “nicen
up” the graphics, even at their low-res., without causing
major performance hits - and they do help.
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