GOG.com

Steam

GOG.com

Steam

CHANGES:

• Negates the need to use a CPU Slowdown program on modern systems
• Multithreaded Voxel Renderer for higher performances
• Software bilinear filtering on polygonal meshes
• Partial redesign of the HUD to match higher resolutions
• New high-resolution sky paintings
• Revamped launcher
• Native support for XBox and DirectInput gamepads
• User-friendly controller configuration
• Selectable voice and subtitle languages
• A myriad of bug fixes (Such as Cutter slowing down to a crawl in Riss fields)
• Improved stability

CHANGES:

• Cutter Slade's design has been changed to a younger, more Nathan Drake-esque appearance.
  
• Cutter's silly run is no more. Whether or not this is a good thing is up to personal taste.
• The HUD is now sports a sleek, blue Windows-10-Minimalist appearance instead of the original's oldschool techy green.
• Gamors appear far less mangy or starved, and their heads resemble Earth felines much closer.
• Daokas now have a plain field of energy instead of their original rippling effect.
• The animation of Cutter taking things from/places things inside his backpack has been significantly sped up.
  REMARK: This can look quite awkward in some scenes.
• Cutter no longer gestures at talan he's trying to get the attention of.

• Getting healed by a Shamaz now plays a slowed-down orchestra hit that, in the original game, was only ever used during the ending cutscene.
• Running on the Unity engine, Second Contact also has Unity's built-in doppler effect.
• Several of the more repetitive Advisor headset notifications play less frequently, or have been removed entirely.

• Combat is more fast-paced, with most (if not all) projectiles having been sped up significantly. Enemies go down much faster...
  REMARK: ... but fights end SO quickly, there's almost no point to doing the quests to weaken the soldiers. If you're aiming at an enemy and you have ammo, they are dead - unless they're wearing a red shirt.
• Explosions no longer knock talan down.
  REMARK: This means that dynamite, with its now-relatively-low damage output, is largely worthless.
• Cutter gains an energy shield upon taking damage.
• Lying prone has been replaced with crouching.
  REMARK: This makes it impossible to hide (and drown) in the muddy paddies of Shamazaar.
• In an effort to make Cutter's very high jumps more believable, the Backpack 2000 now emits a booster jet whenever he jumps (Except when going uphill, which has Cutter perform a shorter boost-less hop).
  REMARK: The game can sometimes arbitrarily decide your jump was not worthy of getting a boost, which can be incredibly cumbersome in certain situations.
• F-Link beacons now drop directly underneath Cutter instead of from his hand, making it impossible to use them to glitch through solid objects.
• The "Hazadess" of a dead vital NPC now actually kills Cutter instantly.
• O2K-MINI oxygen tanks now get used automatically when Cutter runs out of air.
• The sneaking test has been made significantly easier - Jan turns very slowly, and more obstacles are put in his line of sight to make up for the fact that Cutter can no longer crawl.
  REMARK: This also means you can now finish the sneaking test with one well-timed uninterrupted sprint.
• The radius of explosives is now much bigger.
  REMARK: No, this doesn't make dynamite any more useful in combat, and will cause unavoidable damage to friendly NPC's in certain quests where explosives are required.
• The barriers in Shamazaar no longer "reach out" to damage you.

• Controls have been altered to be more in line with the standards set by modern day games. The context-sensitive mouse inputs of the original have been assigned to different keyboard keys, among other things such as WASD being bound to movement by default, and Spacebar being set to Jump.
  REMARK: Despite this, some controls are oddly still context-sensitive (such as Jump changing to Dive when near water), which can be incredibly cumbersome in certain circumstances.
• Using the Gaamsavv is now near-instantaneous.
  REMARK: This makes Zokrym's entire explanation of the Gaamsavv completely meaningless, as well as removing the tactical risk of using a Gaamsavv in a dangerous location.
• The original game's purely-vertical auto-aim has been replaced with what is referred to as "targeting assistance" (Can be toggled in options), which attempts to lock the player's weapon onto a target closest to the player's crosshair.
  

IMPROVEMENTS:

• Several previously-unnamed Talan now have names.
• F-Link beacons now appear on the minimap.

• The world of Adelpha has been lovingly recreated with not only high-resolution textures, but a complete overhaul of every model and location in the game. Buildings seem more lived-in, and the outside seems more naturally organic than ever before. Every detail of the environment has been given a substantial upgrade, and this is where Second Contact truly shines.
REMARK: Unfortunately, the cinematics were not changed with some of the new lived-in clutter in mind, and characters will clip through objects in cutscenes as early as the opening in Ranzaar.
Additionally, the new models still use almost all of the original animations... Which were not made with the new graphics in mind. Model clipping can be seen as early as Cutter trying out his headset transmitter in Ranzaar.
• Makes full use of the fancy new lighting and shading options that the new engine provides, and to great effect.
• Skies have been repainted and received very subtle animations.
• The shadows of clouds moving overhead are cast on the ground.
• Bodies now have ragdoll physics.
  REMARK: This does not include animals.
• It now actually rains in Okasankaar, a feature described in the files of the original Outcast but for some reason never seen in-game.
• The color of a Talan's essence now appears on the minimap.
  REMARK: Animals, however, appear green like Gandahar talan as opposed to the unique yellow "essence" color from the original game.

ADDITIONS:

• It is now possible to perform dodge rolls (Can be toggled in options) by pressing either Shift or the left mouse button while strafing.
• It is now possible to sprint by holding either Shift or the left mouse button while moving, which depletes your equally-brand-new stamina bar.
• Cutter's health can be set to replenish automatically. (Can be toggled in options).
• By default, English definitions for every new Agazork word will appear the first time you hear them. (Can be toggled in options)
  REMARK: Turning this off is recommended, as in some cases the addition of definitions can throw off the flow of the dialogue and spoil the fun of discovering the meaning organically.
• By default, icons indicating the locations and awareness of enemies will appear on your HUD, even through walls. (Can be toggled in options)
  REMARK: Turning this off is recommended, as this otherwise makes it even more impossible for enemies to strategically flank or hide from the player than it already was. It also renders the PROXI-130-HF gadget utterly pointless.
• All NPC's now display their name, occupation and disposition towards Cutter over their head, including on the minimap.
  REMARK: The fact that this, of all things, cannot be turned off is downright bizarre. The original game goes to great lengths to make the entirety of your HUD appear to be performing believable functions of the ADVISOR Headset worn by Cutter, and the idea that your fancy display is showing you information that nobody could possibly have obtained beforehand makes this objectively one of the most intrusively immersion-breaking changes in Second Contact.
  
  Not only that, but it also displays information Cutter cannot possibly know yet, such as Ezef in Shamazaar being the brother of Yagu the Riss Trader from Talanzaar.
  
  Aside from these complaints, it does mean a handful of previously-unnamed Talan now have a little more of an identity, which is never a bad thing.
• The game now autosaves at regular intervals.
• The laser-firing guard post soldiers now take more than one hit to kill.

• A new relatively-secret room underneath the Temple Fae in Shamazaar contains a statue of a female Talan (a rare sight!) and a few boats, possibly in reference to the island of Kizaar. The developers planned on adding the entire region to the game if the "Outcast Reboot HD" Kickstarter had succeeded, which it did not.
• A new relatively-secret room in Okaar contains some neat environmental storytelling.
  REMARK: This is weakened a bit by the giant stone Ulukai symbol floating magically in the middle of the room.

REMOVALS:

• In a bizarre omission, it is no longer possible to manually zoom the camera in or out.
• First Person view has also been completely removed, which seems odd considering how perfect it would be for studying the new visuals up-close.
  REMARK: The inability to zoom manually & the removal of First Person view also makes exploring indoor areas a bit more awkward, and renders combat borderline unplayable when the game decides Cutter's rear is more interesting than the thrilling action happening on the other side of it.
• Characters no longer leave physical footprint indentations in the snow.(Likely a limitation of the Unity engine)
• The cinematic fly-over of the Ranzaar region has been cut from the opening cutscene, leaving its associated musical track completely unused.
• The "Game Over" screen and its associated musical track have been completely removed.
• The wavey effect upon entering a Daoka has been removed.
• All of Naarn's dialogue is now unused, as he dies immediately upon leaving the Daoka.
• Cutter will not grab onto as many ledges, making it much harder to (for example) climb certain parts of the temples in Shamazaar or to get on any of the rooftops of Okriana.
  
• Cutter no longer slips and falls down steep inclines, making it possible to climb previously-non-climbable slopes.
  REMARK: This, coupled with the ability to sprint, renders Twon-Ha and the traversal options they provide largely obsolete.
• Twon-Ha can no longer jump.
  REMARK: Wait, no, THIS renders Twon-Ha obsolete.

• As listed above, the "Game Over" track no longer plays when Cutter dies or otherwise fails his mission.

• The ruins in Okaar no longer mysteriously exude yellow essence.
• Bumping into a talan no longer makes them physically react.

• Likely due to efforts made to make the game more compatible with consoles, there is no longer a dedicated Walk button.
  NOTE: It is still possible to walk by using a gamepad.

REGRESSIONS:

• The pre-rendered opening cinematic has been replaced with a simplified concept-art animatic reflecting Cutter's new design, losing much of the cinematography of the original but adding some sneaky foreshadowing for the sequel.

• Cutter's movement is far more heavily based on his animations, which - while making his movement seem much more organic - makes many simple jumps and maneuvers far more heavy, sluggish and tricky than in the original where Cutter was far more immediately responsive.
  Despite this, the physics of some controls (like Swimming) are almost completely unchanged.
  Additionally, as a result of this, flinching in pain will actually throw off Cutter's aim.
  However, it is no longer possible to simply swim forward underwater, as Cutter will constantly try to go up towards the surface.
• The EVD's X-Ray Lock-On function is incredibly unreliable.

• The cinematic camera during cutscenes and dialogue has been significantly cut down. Though it still switches between a simplified set of canned camera angles, outside of a few exceptions it will no longer pan or zoom as characters talk. The one or two instances where the original game used a Dolly Zoom effect have also been removed.


• The original game's full range of motion captured animation for all dialogue looks much stiffer on the new models, and in some areas appears to have been cut completely in favor of simpler, equally-stiff replacements.
• Lip syncing is, for lack of a better term, simply atrocious. For instance, characters' lips will often continue to flap during a pause in speech, and other times stay completely shut while they talk.
• An attempt at giving characters facial expressions was made by having their eyebrows move now and again, particularly when speaking certain syllables, but this ultimately results in everyone only being capable of putting on varying degrees of a scowl.
• All of these character model changes and shortcomings come together to make them appear far more lifeless and inexpressive all around, something that was nowhere near as glaring in the simplicity of the original's models.
• Lastly, the high fidelity of the new models strongly accentuates the fact that almost all Talan characters have the same face.


• Essences no longer have distinct colors, instead all appearing as white.
• The Well of Essence is no longer a bursting geyser of essence colors, now being a simple almost-motionless beam of light.

• A save made during combat will have the ordinary exploration music playing instead of the combat music when loaded.
• Cutter can put up his fists mid-dialogue, which can often result in the conversation glitching out as it can scare the character you are talking to. This almost invariably lowers their disposition towards you as well.
• Sometimes, attempting to drop dynamite during a jump will leave it floating in mid-air.

ODDITIES:

• For whatever reason, the game has a configuration file located in the userdata folder that contains control input settings for functions from the original Outcast, going completely ignored by Second Contact.
• There is also a "Legacy" folder that contains most (if not all) of the original game's files.
• Alt-Tabbing in and out of the game will swap out the currently playing musical track.
• Though the health plant is said to contain high levels of adrenaline, they do not affect your stamina bar in any way.

• The Daoka in Ranzaar still pops open extremely abruptly, with no visual effect or fade-in of any kind.
• Twon-Ha can still only be mounted from the left.

EXTREMELY SPECIFIC ISSUES:

• Some terrain in Shamazaar is incorrectly assigned to be the same as the Riss fields, resulting in characters sinking up to their ankles in some patches of dirt that otherwise appear to be elevated.
• The Talan that blows up the boat in Shamazaar (known as Elzirir in Second Contact) does not run away from the explosion properly, and will more often than not take damage from it.