Nightdive Studios has a clear mission: to bring back “lost and forgotten gaming treasures”. This cause has seen the studio remaster oldies like Quake, System Shock, and recently, Dark Forces, the first game made on Lucas’ Jedi Engine, but not the last.
“When Nightdive looks at titles, we sometimes look at popularity,” Larry Kuperman, VP of business development, told me at Gamescom. “So when we were asked, ‘Do you want to remaster Doom and Quake?’ I didn’t have to think long on that. But then we also look at influential games that changed gaming, and [Outlaws] falls into that category.”
Outlaws + Handful of Missions is Nightdive’s next remaster project, a Western FPS and “the second game made with the Jedi engine, which Lucas developed for Star Wars: Dark Forces,” Kuperman explains. “Our team had just completed work on Dark Forces, so they had familiarity with the engine and we moved them right over to this.”
The 1997 Western game sees ex-Marshal, James Anderson, fight his way through the new frontier “on a revenge quest”, Kuperman explains. “The life that he thought he left behind is back (standard Western stuff),” after a bunch of criminals break into his home, murder his wife, and kidnap his child while he’s in town on business.
“You rarely see this stuff in videogames, other than that obscure title with ‘Red’ and ‘Dead’ in its name,” Kuperman says. “But otherwise, how many other Western games are there?” Other than Red Dead and Desperados, no other Western games come to mind now that I think about it, although I wouldn’t say I’m particularly well-versed in the genre, so I could be missing out on some real gems.”
Nevertheless, the point still stands that Westerns are still underrepresented in gaming, and to Kuperman’s point, it “deserves to be better treated”, for this and for its technical contributions to FPS games.
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“You see, the bullet count and the reloading mechanics were a core part of the game experience,” Kuperman explains. “That was a new thing. There’s some debate whether this was the first [game] to do this or whether it was just an early entry, but it certainly deserves credit for that.
“The second thing is, when you get the rifle, you have the zoom like a sniper. It’s something you’ve probably experienced in every game, Call of Duty, Battlefield, etc. It’s the summative part of every game. Well, [Outlaws] was one of the early use instances. These two qualities alone made this game influential.” Bumping Outlaws up the list of games that Nightdive wanted to preserve and shine a spotlight on.
Westerns work so well, not just as a setting for an FPS game where you can ride around shooting grunts and criminals all day, but as a vector for storytelling. “The reason why [Outlaws] is such a good videogame is because it’s a great story,” Kuperman says. “Why is it such a great story? Because it explores the concept of new frontiers, new expansion, the hero, and the hero’s journey. I mean, these are all classic things.”
But Nightdive isn’t just bringing back the narrative, as the newly named Outlaws and a handful of missions is a remaster; it features “updated visuals for weapons, characters, and enemies”. Alongside this, there’ll be cross-play multiplayer with game modes like Deathmatch, Team Play, Capture the Flag, and something called Kill the Fool with The Chicken.
I only saw glimpses of what Outlaws looks like at Gamescom, with a lot of the cutscenes still waiting on some final polish, but what I did see looked great. The crucial thing with remasters like this one is to capture the look and feel of the classic game while updating elements to make it more palatable for players today and ensuring it can actually run decently, something that Nightdive knows well. “Disney and Lucas have been exceptional partners in terms of what they have available, just vast quantities of stuff,” Kuperman adds.
I may not play a ton of Western games, but having the opportunity to play classics like this by just downloading it from Steam, and not having to hunt down an emulator or create a demonic summoning circle in my backyard just to check it out? I’ve got a good feeling about this.
“I don’t want to be the arbiter of what deserves to be preserved and what doesn’t,” Kuperman says. “We’re looking at artwork, and we’re saying, ‘Keep those three, burn the others.’ But our mission is to bring back lost treasures, and this qualifies as one of them.”
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