A lot of the optics around Star Wars Outlaws has been less than great. Although the reviews at launch were fairly decent, the game hasn’t sold all that well, and culture warriors jumped on it once they realised they could use its ill fortune to push their agendas. Now that the dust is settled, online discourse on the game is mostly very negative. I’ve seen a great amount of people who haven’t played it decry it as woke, lazy, dull, and a cash grab. However, the truth is that it’s actually a great game with a ton of heart and a lot of fantastic world design. It’s a shame that it’s been treated as it has, but the final result is well worth dumping hours into.
I’ve seen people repeatedly rebuff the game because they weren’t into the story, but Star Wars Outlaws isn’t even all that story-focused. You play as Kay Vess, a young thief attempting to get off her world after a job gone wrong results in unsafety. Upon attempting another score to get the funds to get off-world results in her acting foolishly and getting caught, she ends up with a death mark on her head from one of the most powerful syndicates in the underworld. The main story beats revolve around her doing jobs for the game’s syndicates, while recruiting new members for a heist. It’s very much an excuse to go traipsing around the galaxy.
While Star Wars Outlaws begins in the city of Canto, Kay shortly heads to the planet of Toshara, which is where the first act of the game takes place. There she soon gets a speeder bike and is able to head out into the zone. Unlike pretty much every other Ubisoft title in this vein, this really isn’t an actual open-world game. It has three large, open zones with plenty to explore, plus two additional cities. Of course, you’ll also be exploring the orbit space for the game’s zones, so this is far from a tiny game. Once you complete the game’s first act, you’ll be able to go to the other three main areas and do their quests in any order.
What’s more, the zones here are unique and mostly densely packed with things to see. You won’t find any sprawling, empty open worlds here, which was a great move. Star Wars Outlaws doesn’t have the same ridiculous scope as, say, recent Assassin’s Creed games, which was definitely the right call. As far as gameplay, though, I’d read that there was a lot of stealth here, but I didn’t realise it was predominately a stealth game. The stealth is a bit too no frills for its own good in a lot of ways, as it’s quite simple and doesn’t grow in complexity all that much as it goes.
Kay has a little animal partner named Nix that she can order around, reminiscent of the drone in the second and third Watch Dogs games. Nix can be used to grab items, interact with switches and buttons, distract enemies, or just straight-up attack them. He’s incredibly useful and quite adorable on top of that. Kay constantly talks to him too, so he really feels like a team member and not just some tool. As for Kay, she can crouch and sneak around, climb, and use improbable stealth takedown. How such a small person is knocking a helmeted enemy out barehanded with a single punch is a bit silly, as is how she tends to be able to knock nearly anyone out with her three-hit combo.
As for spotting foes, Nix can highlight enemies and important objects in the environment. Kay can whistle to call enemies to her, as well as drop smoke bombs to get away when situations get hairy. But don’t expect to be able to move bodies or anything like that. For the most part, Kay just has her blaster to rely on. At first, this mostly means that getting into fire fights is a bad idea. Getting spotted while sneaking will often call every enemy in the vicinity down on you. An alarm getting pulled will call reinforcements too. Thankfully, alarm panels can be turned off, sabotaged, and even trapped.
Early on, the blaster can only shoot single weak shots, but it soon gets a stun function, and the ability to charge up powerful shots that instantly kills normal foes. Once you get this last one Star Wars Outlaws becomes much more forgiving about its stealth, although there are numerous missions where you’re not allowed to get caught. Each of these blaster versions can be swapped out on the fly during combat, but they also have alternative versions that can only be switched out in menus. It leads to a good amount of options. Enemies can also drop weapons with finite ammo (your blaster has a heat gauge that can be actively reloaded once it overheats.)
Star Wars Outlaws is very fully featured as you can see. If all of the above isn’t enough, Kay has quests that unlock abilities and perks that are made available by completing certain objectives. You’ll also upgrade your blaster, speeder, and your ship and freely fly around a planet’s orbit to fight and search for loot. The space combat is based around locking onto opponents and blasting them down and it all feels appropriately Star Warsy, even if the camera here messed with my head.
The game’s syndicates even have a reputation system. Having high rep with them will allow you to freely move about their private compounds and access their traders. You’ll frequently need to choose which syndicate whose good graces you want to stay in, as many jobs will see you betraying one. If you end up in hot water with a syndicate, their areas become restricted and you’ll have to avoid them or incur their wrath. So much thought and care was put into the game that I find the degree of people who haven’t seen most of it have written it off for nothing.
Of course, there are some parts of the game that irk me. You can’t save when in hostile territory, so dying or getting caught during an infiltration typically means starting it over from the beginning. There’s a bug where you might not be able to save at all and you’ll have to kill yourself (and lose progress) to fix it. After climbing up a ledge, if you press the sneak button, Kay will immediately drop back down, which annoys me greatly. The game’s visuals can look kind of poor at times too, although it generally looks quite pleasing. In addition, it doesn’t make much sense to me as to why Kay can’t carry any non-blaster weapons around with her. It just feels kind of arbitrary.
Most of these are honestly just nitpicks (and I only got that save bug a single time.) I think Star Wars Outlaws is great fun that makes terrific use of the license. It’s got a good amount of content and variety, plus a lot of disparate gameplay styles that meld together well (including climbing sequences that wouldn’t seem out of place in the Uncharted games.) The general consensus among gamers might be poor, but that ire is completely unearned in my opinion. If you’re a Star Wars fan that likes stealth and exploration and you’re willing to actually give the game a fair shake, it’d be a shame to ignore this one.
Star Wars Outlaws: Brimming with character, a lot of varied content, and plenty of love for the source material, Star Wars Outlaws is one of Ubisoft's best 3D games in years. – Andrew Farrell
Check out our previous review:
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