Outlast 3 Will be "a Departure" From Earlier Games

Outlast, the first horror game to come from studio Red Barrel, was a revolution, a ground-breaking game that managed to shake the survival horror genre after years of stagnation and falling into the same tired tropes (even though Outlast itself didn’t exactly avoid tropes, giving the insane asylum setting). And following off that enormous success, the studio made Outlast 2, which… happened. It happened. Not a terribly bad game, but one that wallowed in the legacy of the first, a game that was practically indistinguishable from the dozens of Outlast clones that its predecessor had inspired.

Still, it could ride laurels just fine, and the game still sold well. Combined, the two games have managed to sell 15 million units and earn the studio $64 million. Not bad at all.

So it shouldn’t be surprising to hear that they’re working on an Outlast 3. And speaking at Berlin’s Quo Vadis conference, developer Philippe Morin said that they had some crazy new ambitions with the series going ahead:

"If you'd told me a year ago that the project we're currently working on was going to be our next thing, I would have said, 'Nah, I don't think so’. It's an internal struggle. On the one side you have to stay motivated as a developer, but at the same time we have to think about stuff as company owners. That's why it took us several months to find the sweet-spot between doing something that's going to please the fans, and something that we're driven by personally. In big studios, they can say, 'If you're burnt out we can always give the IP to a different team'. But that's not the case here."

So what’s the plan? Apparently, it’s to create something that will be “a departure” from previous titles, but set in the same universe.

What does that mean? Because right now all I can think is “You know, Outlast would be a great name for a Battle Royale game.”

But frankly if I said that out loud, I’d sound like a paranoid crazy person, given how often I've made that prediction lately. I’m not… crazy, am I?

I think I need to sit down.