I love the original Outcast, and I thought I'd share my thoughts on the remake. This will largely be me comparing the two versions. I haven't gotten far yet, and will likely update this as I go along.

Overall, I love the updated visuals, especially when it comes to the environments. There are a few points where I don't much like the design decisions for the new graphics. Cutter looks more generic and doesn't quite fit the voice as the original design did. Honestly, when I first saw him in the game, I was reminded of this. The Talan look... I would say that somewhat paradoxically, they look both too human and too cartoony at the same time. The cartoony part is that I think their heads and eyes are slightly too large, while overall the design of their heads looks like they could be humans in heavy prosthetics. This could be changed by just little things, like making the ears and noses smaller to nonexistent, along with making the eyes smaller.

Another minor thing that annoys me with the visual design is that the original version had a very distinctive look to the Talan essence effects, where they always had the look of a thick glowing mist. In Second Contact they look more like generic mildly glowy things. The Well of Essence is particularly underwhelming. Same goes for the Daokas, which just have a generic glow across them and they no longer have the distortion effect like they were vertical surfaces of rippling water. That last one seems like an odd thing to leave out, when actual water still does have that visual effect.

There are a number of removed minor features and gameplay mechanics that I miss. For example, you can no longer zoom the map in and out, you cannot enter first-person view, and since crouching no longer makes you go prone (which I am otherwise fine with), you can no longer hide under the water in the riss fields of Shamazaar. I was bummed (pun intended) when I noticed that steep surfaces no longer cause Cutter to slide down on his ass. Actually, I am hard pressed to find any surfaces where you just plain lose control and slide down.

I wish there was an option to turn off the crosshairs. What's the point when all weapons that fire in a straight line (apart from the sniper rifle, but that uses the scope automatically anyway) have a laser sight in the first place? Worse, since the crosshairs are directed towards the camera and laser sight towards the barrel of your gun, there is some dissonance between the two methods of aiming, with the laser sight being more accurate to the actual trajectory of your projectiles.

edit: I noticed that the gaamsavv's functioning has been sped way up. In the original version you had to stand still for a few seconds while energy swirled around you, but here it is almost instant. Which makes it particularly silly when you are still told the same warnings about how slow and flashy and disrupted by energy it is. What's the point when it is too fast for anyone to actually shoot you before it finishes?

more edit: I have noticed some odd removed bits in the dialogue. When you ask the keeper of the Well of Souls whether he has ever been selected for mating, he says that is a very personal question, and it stops there. As I recall, in the original Cutter teased him a bit that he's clearly never been selected, and he admitted that was the case. All right, I can understand that being considered an inappropriate joke. A more puzzling removal is when talking to the pot maker in the city where he tells you how great it is Cutter has been breaking all the pots and increasing his demand and then he rewards Cutter. There is a final line missing where Cutter says something like, "That's what was missing! Borderline illegal bribery." I don't understand why that was removed.