When Nightdive Studios announced it was remastering LucasArts' 1997 western-themed FPS Outlaws back in August for PC & consoles, the decision immediately made a lot of sense to us.
Not only did it seem to fit with the studio's ethos of bringing back classic games that have long since been abandoned commercially, but the game itself also shared some joint DNA with Star Wars: Dark Forces — another first-person shooter that Nightdive has remastered in the past — having both been built on top of LucasArts' Jedi Engine.
In fact, according to Stephen Kick, the studio head at Nightdive Studios, speaking exclusively to Time Extension recently, the deal to make Outlaws was even agreed at roughly the same time as Dark Forces, with Kick claiming that the shared engine had given them "the confidence to propose remastering both games, one after the other." This doesn't mean the journey was a walk in the park, though, with Nightdive having to unpick many of the extensive changes the Outlaws team made to the Jedi engine to accomplish their goals.
"In a way, reverse-engineering Outlaws is like time travel," said Kick. "You’re not just looking at code—you’re seeing the fingerprints of a team that refused to let the technology define their vision. And the more you learn about how they pulled it off, the more respect you have for what they achieved back in 1997.
"Even though Outlaws and Dark Forces both trace their lineage to the Jedi Engine, the Outlaws team at LucasArts made so many deep modifications that it’s almost a completely different beast under the hood. They pushed the engine well beyond what it was designed for: higher-resolution assets, more complex animation systems, cinematic scripting, AI routines, and even features like scoped weapons and environmental interactions that simply didn’t exist in Dark Forces. So, when we began porting it to the KEX engine, we couldn’t just reuse the groundwork we’d done before — we basically had to rebuild our understanding of how this version of the Jedi Engine functioned."
"Sam[uel Villareal], our lead engineer, says what shocked him was how much LucasArts re-engineered their codebase; however, he was pleased that they moved away with the task-based system that was present in Dark Forces, and was also impressed with how they achieved better room-over-room effects with their double-adjoin sector system."
While in the beginning, it was the technology that is arguably what led Nightdive to suggest a remaster of Outlaws, there were also other reasons Kick and his team wanted to see the game given a second life, with many within the studio feeling "it isn’t as well-known as it should be". This is something Kick claims has nothing to do with the quality of the original game — with the studio head praising the "gripping story", "beautifully animated cinematics" and "masterful soundtrack" that would "make Morricone proud" — but instead has more to do with it being LucasArts' first FPS from the studio that didn’t utilize the Star Wars franchise, and being "a PC/Mac only release that up to this point was only available as a re-release on Steam and GOG."
He, therefore, hopes that with this remaster, he and the team can introduce the FPS to even more players, who typically wouldn't have known about it or been able to play it in the past, introducing a bunch of additional features and options that aim to strike a balance between "authenticity and enhancement."
"For me, it’s the ability to finally experience Outlaws in full high-definition with modern controls and fluid performance — while still preserving the hand-crafted look and feel of the original. The team worked incredibly hard to make sure that, even at 4K and ultra-wide resolutions, it still looks like Outlaws.
"Our artists went above and beyond on our remaster of Outlaws when updating the visuals. Specifically, every character and first-person weapon model was modeled in high-resolution 3D, rigged and animated to match the key frames of the original sprites, then output to a format the game engine could interpret. It was an immense amount of work, but we weren’t willing to compromise our artistic ambitions."
"We’ve also added full controller support, brand new HUD elements, and the kind of quality-of-life options that make the game instantly approachable again. I’m most excited for people to experience how good it feels to play now. The gunplay, the animation timing, the music cues — when Clint Bajakian’s score swells behind you, it’s pure magic. It feels as cinematic as it always deserved to be."
Besides the painstakingly remastered artwork and newly added quality of life options, another aspect of the game Kick is particularly proud of is The Vault. This is an area that is available from the main menu that features everything from the game's original storyboards to music, old press disc character artwork, concept art, renders, and information about the tools and colour palettes used on the 1997 release.
Speaking about The Vault, Kick said, "We were able to track down a number of original developers with the help of Lucasfilm Games. And they had archives of original materials used to develop Outlaws, which they graciously shared with us to include in The Vault. One of my favorite inclusions is written commentary from Clint Bajakian, the composer of Outlaws’ incredible soundtrack for every piece he composed."
Outlaws + Handful of Missions: Remaster releases today on Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, with reviews starting to go live across the internet.
In one of the more positive reviews, our friends at Digital Foundry, labelled it "one of the more impressive, top-to-bottom touch-ups in a Nightdive remaster yet — at least on a technical level", but also warned that it does feature some "dated" gameplay that saw the DF Retro duo of John Linneman and Audi Sorlie struggling to find hidden keys and gears "for 30 minutes at a time". Nevertheless, they still "strongly urge FPS diehards to look into and understand the quirks of this Lucasarts game so that they might get the most out of an unlikely Nightdive gem".
As to whether we can expect to see more collaborations between Nightdive Studios and Lucasfilm Games in the future, Kick was unable to talk specifically about any potential projects, but told us Nightdive "would love to continue our collaboration" in the future.
Which begs the question, which LucasArts games you'd like to see Nightdive turn its attention to next? We'd love to hear your suggestions in the comments!