Complete Monster: Prince Shing is a ruthless, overly-ambitious tyrant who murdered his father after being denied the throne due to his sadistic tendencies. Subsequently framing his lawful younger brother, Prince Zhao, and his sister, Princess Lian, as the Emperor's killers, and ordering a manhunt on his own siblings, Prince Shing took over the palace's Black Guard legions, threatening the legion's commander into submitting to him by saying he will have the commander's children nailed to walls in pieces and his wife ravaged by soldiers. Sending Black Guards to massacre entire villages whose inhabitants are suspected to be helping Princess Lian and Prince Zhao, Prince Shing has his army launch a direct assault on a La Résistance hideout and kill everyone in order to get to his siblings, Shing himself gleefully watching as the resistance's leader, Gallian, get brutally impaled by several Black Guards. Challenging the heavily-wounded Jacob to a Duel to the Death, Shing deliberately injures Jacob with multiple slashes and stabs in order to inflict maximum suffering, and even attempts to kill his own sister, Princess Lian, when she tries to stop him from killing Jacob.
Cult Classic: Largely overlooked by the mainstream game market upon its original release, it has come be regarded as a very innovative game for its time, and with pretty well-written story to boot.
Disappointing Last Level: As good as 99% of the game is, the devs really dropped the ball on the final sequence in terms of both game design and writing. After you go through the whole game playing a hypercompetent, cautious badass, you arrive at the abandoned barracks in Okaar to save the captured Guardians and expect it to be a tough but fair mission. You sneak around, surprised that the building seems empty, find a spot to climb over the wall, like you always do, and discover that it is empty. It turns out, the devs are Rail Roading you to stand in front of the main gate like an idiot, so a cutscene can trigger where Cutter suffers a bad case of Cutscene Incompetence, is captured and has all of his gear taken away from him. All this just so that at the eleventh hour, Marion (who has been pretty useless until now) can convince him of her ability by rescuing him (in a cutscene) and the devs can put you through a No-Gear Level. Oh, and by the way, all that ammo the game let you hoard for the Final Battle? You're not getting it back — good luck fighting The Dragon with about three spare clips. And then, just to put a cherry on top, the Big Bad literally pops up from thin air and shoots Marion dead in front of you with zero build-up, simply so that the writers can have a cheap Bittersweet Ending while defusing the dilemma of who goes back to Earth inside the probe.
The animated cutscenes in Second Contact really aren't that bad, but characters do not open their mouths when they speak, giving them a very odd feeling.
The Talan in Second Contact seem to move their brows at random when speaking, which looks very odd since humans strongly associate that with displaying specific emotions, and here it is completely disconnected from the tone of voice the Talan actually uses.
Spiritual Licensee: It's not a long shot to call Outcast the closest thing we've ever gotten to a Stargate video game: A small team of modern-day (well, almost) military and science experts ventures through a portal on Earth into a strange alien world where they get involved in fight against the local tyranny, with definite religious overtones. Cutter's Deadpan Snarker tendencies are even a good match for O'Neill's in the series. Say, don't those daokas look familiar?
Superlative Dubbing: The German dub hired the (very recognisable) voice-over artist that usually does Bruce Willis' movie roles for the main character, making the game feel even more like an interactive 90's scifi-action flick.
That One Sidequest: There are two sidequests where you need to catch a Talan who is stealing from a storage. The only way to do this is to catch the Talan in the act. The problem is that the game can get finicky about what exactly counts as Cutter himself having seen what happens. He has to be right there to witness it, while at the same time somehow not be noticed by the thief so they will commit the act. Trying something clever like watching from afar with binoculars aimed at the spot will not work.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Naturally the Second Contact remake has been met with this reaction from some fans of the original game, particularly in regards to the new cutscenes. There's also the fact that the remake auto translates the Talan language in the subtitles, which annoy some who liked having to learn and remember the language in the original. The option to turn off the translations was requested so much that it was added in an update.
The Show
Adaptation Displacement: Sort of. People who watch the show will be surprise it's based off a comic series. However most people do know Outcast was based on a comic series considering Robert Kirkman's other work.
Base-Breaking Character: Anderson around Episode 2 on wards, considering his treatment of Kyle, his It's All About Me mentality, and his flat out Took a Level in Jerkass personality over the fact he's jealous over the fact Kyle has the power to stop the possessions. He seemed to get fans back by the end of Season one when he decides to let Kyle take his battle with Sidney on his own, before jumping the gun and helping him fight back without his religious tropes.
Small criticism towards the fact regarding the show being accurate to the comic. Most fans will agree the series is very accurate, but the series focus more on supernatural elements in comparison to the comic having analogies to inner demons. Some criticism was thrown to the fact that Mark lives in the comic, only becoming paralyzed as opposed to being dead in the series.
Epileptic Trees: Nobody really knows what the "entities" are that possess everyone in Rome. Fans theorize demons, spirits, angels, or even aliens. There's also a slew of theories regarding why Kyle himself is called the "Outcast", as is also explored in the comics.
Fan Nickname: After the events of Episode 5, fans began to call the dark forces "The Nameless/Numberless".
Iron Woobie: Kyle in spades. His life is nothing but misery and woe and constantly blames himself for what happens to everyone around him. The fact he can't go anywhere without the "demons" finding him doesn't work either.
Jerkass Woobie: John Anderson. When Kyle shows a lot more success with removing the "demons" (sort of), Anderson becomes distraught and even shows signs of a Sanity Slippage when he realizes his exorcisms were all for nothing and as a result, ends up isolating himself from the town. His attitude towards Sidney (rightfully so however) doesn't help as it makes him look crazy. It's also implied that in his determination with religion, he abandoned his son, becoming infuriated when he loses the photograph of him and his kid.
Moral Event Horizon: The entities cross this a lot (possessing Kyle's mom into abusing him, ect ect) but they cross this in "Close to Home when One possesses Megan and proceeds to have her smash Mark's head into the mirror and letting him bleed to death.
Sidney crosses it when it's very much implied he killed Norville and attacked Anderson by carving a pentagram on his chest.
And even before then Sidney was implied when he wasn't too possessed to have been a child murderer.
Aaron crosses this soon enough when he kidnaps Amber as part of his "work" for Sidney.
If the season one finale gave any idea, Anderson may have crossed it considering he burned down Norville's house (as Sidney lived in it for half of the season), but may have killed Aaron who was known to sleep inside it.
Donnie crosses this when he raped Megan.
The Scrappy: Aaron MacCready is very disliked in the fandom due to his Jerkass personality against his mother, his immediate joining with Sidney and even going as far as to help Sidney kidnap Amber. His implied death by Anderson's (accidental) hands via setting Sidney/Norville's house on fire had nobody to cry for him.
Mildred revealed a lot of dislikes within the season with her Jerkass personality and her treatment of others. While it is implied she was still possessed by a failed exorcism by Anderson, she still came off as just a horrid individual. Even Sidney got tired of her with her attempts to attack Kyle, resulting with her dying of a stroke, or at least killed by Sidney.
Megan. For someone being all sunshines and rainbows, it makes it depressing to know she was raped by a boy her parents took in, has to go back and forth while Kyle and Allison, have said rapist return to town and have her husband beat him up, resulting with them probably being demanded to go to court, and then losing her husband because she was possessed. No wonder Kyle decides not to tell her the truth.
Allison, considering she attempts to fix her life and still has feelings for Kyle despite believing he beat her up. When she learns she herself hurt Amber and Kyle had nothing to do with it, only taking the blame to protect them, she abandons Amber to Kyle and proceeds to put herself in a mental institution.
Patricia. Her son is a little shit, her husband abandoned her, and she has a on-off relationship with Anderson.
