By:
Appeal
Belgium can't exactly be described as a country bristling with game development houses, can it (the Chocolate's nice though)? Nevertheless, Belgium's finest seems to be on the way via little known Appeal who is beavering away on a 3D 3rd person RPG by the name of Outcast. In fact, it could also be described as mixture between Tomb Raider and Heretic II. With over 1000 NPCs to encounter, your own character will be able to shoot, talk, jump, crawl and swim his way past them all when the game is released on April of this year.
An ambitious project Outcast most certainly is. Even more ambitious though is Appeal's desire to resurrect the old Voxel technology where the 3D engine is concerned. There are advantages in using Voxels over polygons. The enable yet more smoothness and rounded surfaces and more importantly one doesn't need to use fogging to cover up objects in the distance. Depicting outdoor environments and conveying distance is something that one can do admirably by using Voxels. But up until now, there really hasn't been enough horsepower in the average gamer's PC to take full advantage of that effect. Not convinced? Well, we've got a whole deck of screen shots for you to peer at in the meantime.