Outcast is being remade as Outcast - Second Contact

Big Ben (that's the video game publisher and not the grand London timepiece) has announced its intention to publish a remake of Outcast—and it's being developed by Appeal, the studio behind the original. The remake will be released "at the start of 2017 under the name Outcast - Second Contact", with a remastered soundtrack and voice acting, and with new character models, animation and environments. Oh, and we might have to hold a memorial service for the original's striking voxel-based 3D art assets, as they're being swapped for the more widely used polygons.

NeoGAF dug up the press release and a German announcement video, although you can watch it with subtitles. It doesn't show any screenshots or footage of the remake, but it does shed a bit more light on the team's plans. We can expect images of Second Contact soon, the first trailer a bit later after that, and if the remake does well, there may even be a sequel.

Of course, there already was an Outcast reboot in the works a few years ago, but the Kickstarter failed to reach its funding goal. Back in December 2014, a slightly jazzed-up version of the original game appeared on digital stores, that had been reworked to perform and look better on modern PCs.

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.

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