I remember when Outcast came out, PC Accelerator gave it a pretty favorable review due to its huge environments, wonderfully fleshed-out world, decent sci-fi storyline, and the score which was performed by an honest to goodness Russian orchestra. However, they also knocked it specifically for not taking advantage of the then readily available 3D accelerators on the market. In a bold (odd) move, the developers decided to use voxel technology to render the game (if you’re all “WTF is a voxel?” hit this link). It gave the game a pretty distinctive look, but also made the system requirements for the game a tiny bit steeper than the competition. But hey, it was the 90s, that how they rolled.

Anyway, time passed, the world kept turning, and Outcast faded into the background… sorta. Unexpectedly, somewhere along the line, the game attained a cult following, and it started showing up on some “most influential games of all-time” lists. It even got a re-release on the then fledgling DVD-ROM format which brought higher quality cut-scene videos. Even as recent as a year ago, I was installing it (yep, I still have my original discs) on my then new Core 2 Duo system to see how fast those voxels could fly (my first experience with running it was on a Pentium 233). Now there’s even a project called “Open Outcast” which is an unofficial sequel to the game being developed as a total conversion mod for Crysis Warfare. Crazy stuff.

So the point of this post: Edge has posted a pretty cool “Making of Outcast” article. It’s pretty interesting to read the history of this game 11 years after it was universally panned as a failure. LINK