Outcast 2: Experience the world of Adelpha as it truely is
The Belgian development team Appeal has begun with
the preparations on the sequel for Outcast: Outcast 2. Not much is known about
the game, but we could picture the following facts out of the mouth of the
artdirector in the team: Franck Sauer.
About Outcast 2's storyline the
team is very quiet. Not without a reason, says Sauer: ‘We don’t want to reveal
the storyline, it still has to be approved and the story is the most important
aspect of Outcast 2. We could dissapoint the gamers if we were to reveal the
story and add improvements later. Let’s just say, without getting into details,
Outcast 2's story is plausable. Especially if you played Outcast from the
beginning to the end. But the most important thing is that you don’t have to
know Outcast to play the sequel. As Outcast 2 has a completely new storyline. Of
course we do have planned suprises and aspects that the gamers will like.
Outcast is a game that plays around the storyline and the characters, Outcast 2
will carry this further through.’
new
lifeforms
Outcast will feature a group of new lifeforms. ‘It is certain
that new lifeforms will appear in Outcast 2. About a new race I can’t say
anything. An interesting aspect is that all known characters from the first
episode will reappear, including Cutter Slade of course, but in a different
context. You will recognize them because of the same personalities, but they
will react, depending on the context, differently. You will be witnessing the
interaction between the different characters and see their personalities grow.
We have done enormous work on the characterdesign. In Outcast you had a number
of characters as baseset and everybody looked like each other. You won’t find
that in Outcast 2. Every character which has to do with Outcast 2's storyline
will look different and unique, with an individual design and their own clothes
etc. That means that many unique figures will inhabit the world of Outcast 2.
There will also be more female characters in Outcast 2. We all found that
Outcast was to inhabited with male characters.’
The action in Outcast 2 will take place in the world of
Adelpha but, clears Sauer, all area’s are redesigned because the player will not
visit it on the same way: ‘some area’s you couln’t visit in the first part but
now... sorry here I have to stop.’
The team is thinking hard about the
inclusion of multiplay capabilities. ‘Outcast 2 will certainly be released for
the PlayStation 2. The question is: will the Internet be available when Outcast
2 will be released? It’s to early to give a good answer’, says Sauer.
farewell
voxels
‘The team has built a completely
new engine for Outcast 2.’ says Sauer. ‘Our research and development team has
spent already 10 months of work on the Himalaya-engine and we have some
promising prototypes running. For graphics we don’t use the voxel engine, but a
polygon engine. There are two reasons for this. One, the pc industry has
massively choosen for polygons and has lauched a big amount of hardware that
accelerates polygons. Not that voxels are that bad, but to put up a fight
against a complete industry is a hard jog and pc’s aren’t optimized to handle
voxels efficiently. We think that voxels will return in the future, as the
physics for every partical has to be calculated to give a virtual world shape.
The second reason is that the PlayStation 2 is capable of displaying polygons
with awesome speeds. Displaying of thousand of tiny polygons give the same
amount of details as voxels, but this time with a regular beat of 60 frames per
second. I’m hearing the voxel fans calling that Outcast 2 will look bad, but I
can say that in Outcast 2 Adelpha will look as it should without technocal
barriers, which we already conquered.’
The release of Outcast 2 is
planned for the middle of next year.
This preview was taken from the PC Zone Benelux - Translated to english by Alastor - Edited by Benny