Warm up your speeder, and make sure your blaster is powered up. It’s time to wreak havoc in the criminal underworld of
Star Wars to establish yourself as the boss! Well, actually, you won’t be doing that… at all. For a game being set in the underbelly of society, the people here are for most of the time well-spoken, friendly, and forgiving. Sure, there will be the occasional betrayal, and people getting blasted for seemingly petty things. But the situation is not that dire to be honest, and besides, that’s not your objective anyway.
Star Wars Outlaws plays it incredibly safe for walking into the territory of murders, corruption, and robberies; boringly so, even.
Unlucky thief
You play as Kay Vess, a thief and a slicer with some seriously bad luck. Life as a criminal is not going well for her. Maybe a change in lifestyle would be a solution, but that’s not for our dear protagonist. So once again she sets out on a big score with a couple of not fully trustworthy individuals. And wouldn’t you know it, things go sideways. It’s not enough to just be betrayed. This time, she gets a death mark in addition to everything else, which is a bounty with some major creds behind it. She has to flee for dear life, but at least it comes with a new fancy stolen spaceship.
Old clone war starship, when droids knew how to bleep
You crash-land on a distant planet, filled with scum and villainy, and the Empire, of course. From here on out, you have to do jobs for the planet’s different criminal syndicates. To earn enough credits and parts to repair the spaceship. Kay also takes on a major mission of putting together a group to do the heist of the century. A job that will pay out enough credits to get her out of the black pit she is in. This will be the main quest for the remainder of the game, and I wouldn’t say it’s a bad story hook, but it’s incredibly meandering considering it’s an open world Ubisoft title.
Friendly big boy
The story takes place on three different planets that all come with the same setup. There is a specialist that needs recruiting, and the planets themselves are embroiled in some sort of syndicate conflict. This means, you will have to take a stand in whom you want to support, which makes your rep with the chosen organization go up. The issue with this is that it feels absolutely meaningless beside making certain missions easier, as the factions will not blast you on sight. There is no cool story payout, the rewards consist of credits, clothes, and skins which has a minimal impact on the gameplay. Another problem is that Kay has no conviction. She does not believe in anything, she just wants credits and get the hell out of dodge. Not even the rebel cause gets her interested. Actually, she kinda dislikes those guys, since they make everything just a little more difficult, seeing as their relationship with the Empire is not the best.
The tale of zero happenings
I like Kay well enough, and she comes off pretty likable, even if her chosen way of life perhaps isn’t the greatest. She does not kill civilians, and seems to only rob the corrupted or super rich. However, she has no issue with taking bandit, mercenary and soldier life, since blasting aliens in the face comes second nature to her. The huge problem with her and the story is that ninety percent of it is just meandering, with you doing random side-quests and playing the rep-game that does not advance the plot in any way. I mean, it works, when you take Kay’s character into thought. But it makes the overall story awfully slow with no stakes, since the heroine herself doesn’t give a crap about anything. This lasts throughout the whole game, right up to the last segment of
Star Wars Outlaws, when suddenly stuff matters. It’s way too late, and way too little. While things might look interesting at this point in the story, it ends entirely unsatisfactory with Kay getting what she wants, with the world remaining in the exact state it was in before this final showdown.
It is a very boring and safe tale to tell, which has no impact on the
Star Wars setting at large. This can be a good thing, as it never goes down the road of the chosen one Jedi master, but you have to give me something. It has no great character arc either, since the game ends as it began, with the only change in the amount of things in Kay’s possession. That cool new 70s style jacket sure was worth the twenty-hour journey. Oh boy, it was so totally pointless. It has been a long time since a story just left me feeling nothing. I rather take utterly disappointment and rage, then this any day, as it just feels like a giant waste of time. The story sets out with nothing to tell, and at the end it succeeds, I will give them credit for that.
Touch your nose! Now you will sleep forever
The force is female
Unfortunately, but not surprising,
Star Wars Outlaws has been
Disneyfied, and made for the mysterious “modern audience”. Zero regard of the lore has been taken, as of now, the majority of important characters are female. The same goes for the mooks, and the worst sin of all, Imperial soldiers and officers. It’s absolutely ridiculous, since it seems to be even more than the usual fifty percent to satisfy the worst of social media. Biology is a thing, you know. I seriously doubt so many women would go into service and die for the Empire, or whatever criminal syndicate you are blasting up next, even for a sci-fi setting. Regardless of that, it has already been established that men will do the majority of the fighting going by the films, so it’s a direct lore contradiction. Look, I have nothing against the occasional women in the setting, as I have no problem with Kay, the protagonist. But they are just filling too many parts, and they always play the typical tough-guy role, which is much more suitable for a gruff and strong man. It just makes the world completely unbelievable.
That’s not all, because it never is.
Star Wars Outlaws has also been “diversified” to eleven. If you see or meet a white man in-game, you can make sure he will betray you, or just be straight up evil from the get-go. I don’t think there is one good white guy throughout the whole game. All these roles are either filled with women or anything other than a white man. Even the good guy aliens are based on black men. It’s silly, and all these things take me out of the game repeatedly. Not because of the characters being black, or female, or whatever they now might be. It’s only so, because it’s a forced diversity quota that needs to be filled and then shoved down your throat at the expense of white people, and keeping the lore intact. Tiresome.
Time to leave this dusty crap town behind. See ya, suckers!
Stealth is key (and so is blasting)
Being a thief, the objective of
Star Wars Outlaws is to steal stuff and become rich doing so. This is best done through stealth, and lightly knocking people on the head so they… die? Yeah, it’s a bit weird, but the main function of the game works fairly well. Well, at least the basics. You can take down people around corners, lure people with a whistle, and distract clueless guards with your cute little creature friend. The levels are also pretty well-designed, albeit a bit linear, but they allow you to
ghost the levels by crawling in vents and finding other traversal areas.
Yeah, he’s cute
The issue with the stealth comes from the absolutely broken AI, and how the game is designed around getting noticed. First off, the guys you will be sneaking past are dumb as bricks, even on the highest difficulty setting. They do react to stuff, at times, but more often than not they seem totally blind to what’s in front of them. This is something that can get exploited very easily, since their range of reaction is extremely limited. It’s disappointing, since cool AI should (and must) be a staple of any stealth game. However, I can live with subpar AI if I have to, but what I can’t fathom is how “dead” bodies are treated. When you knock someone out with a light bump on the head, even through a helmet, they are treated as dead. So, if an Imperial officer comes across a body, they are always considered dead, as you can hear the officer in question say this. After this, they get agitated for a few seconds and will walk around and look for the perpetrator. And here is where their alarm state ends. If they don’t spot you, they will go back to whatever they were doing, letting the body, or what should be an unconscious body, just lay there in the middle of a pristine Empire corridor. Darth Vader would not be pleased, let me tell you.
It’s incredibly baffling, especially if you have played the modern
Hitman trilogy, where guards will carry away dead bodies and weapons, or wake up anyone unconscious. They will go into a state of alarm, since you know, one of them got their lights punched out. In
Star Wars Outlaws, they do nothing, making me think they might have been programmed by the Secret Service. The only time things escalate is when they spot you and manage to call in for reinforcements. Then all hell will break loose, with loads of Empire Stormtroopers gunning for you. Until you can find a way to call off the search, like by hacking a terminal.
I was in belief these would come alive at one point, but alas, they did not to my disappointment
Plenty of lasers
When sneaking fails, you must blast your way out. Much like
Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, you are for the most part restricted to your little blaster pistol. You can pick up other weapons, but repeaters, grenade launchers and sniper rifles are only temporary and only lasts as long as the magazine/battery allows. The absolute majority of the shooting will be with your pistol. Luckily, it can be upgraded and provide different modes, like an ION discharge to wreck droids or an explosive laser bolt that sends people flying. However, the pistol, even when upgraded, will never reach the usefulness as the pick-up weapons. On the hardest setting, more often than not, a Stormtrooper will be able to eat five or six blaster shots before going down, if you don’t nail him in the head, that is. The rifles waste them much faster, only requiring one or two shots to kill, making the combat feel a lot better.
I don’t think this was designed for humans
Even so, I think this system works well, considering who you are and what you are doing (sneakingly stealing stuff). You are not here to kill, even if certain missions always seem to turn out that way. But I can’t deny that only using your pistol for the majority of the game becomes pretty boring. Now, you can of course use other weapons, as mentioned. Yet, these only last for a moment. And if you are required to climb anything, or go through a vent, Kay will always drop the weapon. Overall, I found the third-person shooting action competently made, and enjoyable, particularly if you play on the higher setting, which makes blaster bolts actually hurt. It comes with a few issues, though. You can’t switch shoulders at will. Many times,
Star Wars Outlaws will freak out when you step out of a cover, going back and forth over which shoulder to use. It’s incredibly annoying, since it slows down the game with you having to fight the mechanics to be able to see and shoot what you want. God forbid, you want to switch shoulder to peak around a corner; you will be denied every single time.
Jumping & climbing
When you are not sneaking and blasting things to small smoldering bits, you will have to climb around and do some light platforming. It works out okay, but it comes from the school of minimum failure allowed, like the
Uncharted series, and the
Tomb Raider survivor trilogy. Your path is marked with yellow paint, but even if it weren’t, you can’t really get lost, since these segments are very linear. Almost all the major quests work in this way, when they do not contain any sandbox elements.
The sandbox gameplay is a much better experience. When visiting locations under “free-roaming” it allows for experimentation and freedom to try to do whatever. This goes double for stealth and blasting, too. You see, when you are free-roaming, you can infiltrate any base you want in any order to steal the treasure the base contains. This is pretty entertaining in the beginning, before you realize that the treasure and credits earned by doing so means very little in the end. It gets way worse when you have upgraded your equipment to a satisfying degree, as by then only clothes, vehicle skins and credits remain to steal. And who cares about that?
Let’s hope it does not turn into an Event Horizon situation
In another (better) timeline,
Star Wars Outlaws would work like
Sniper Elite 4. You are presented with a mission. Something to kill or steal in a large area that allows for plenty of paths to take to reach your goal. An area that is also filled with diversions and side-quests. And then you are just let loose, to go your own way, either loud or sneakily. I realize that
Star Wars Outlaws would have had to be a completely different game for this to work, but as it is currently, that would have been a major improvement.
Imagine working as a rookie spy for the rebels with the dangerous task of infiltrating Imperial bases, with on-site procurement the only way to get equipment. And since you are working for the rebels, the intel you collect would be of importance, unlike the speeder skins that Kay nicks from the Empire. This would eventually lead you down the rabbit hole of secret weapons, and forbidden dark Sith knowledge. Making the bases you need to infiltrate become much more elaborate and hazardous to sneak into. Man, that would have been cool, instead of this narrative mess that we got in
Star Wars Outlaws that ends with the same excitement as a slowly deflating balloon.
When stealth fails, the blaster will have to do the talking
The vehicles
Being an open-world game, you need vehicles to take you from mission to mission. While on a planet, you got your trusty speeder. It works as a motorcycle, with one main difference beyond the hovering; it’s a pain to control. You can steer it with your keyboard, but for some baffling decision it’s also linked to your mouse. So, if you decide to take a look at something to your side, you instead turn your whole speeder around, instead of panning the camera. If you hold down the right mouse-button, you activate free-look, but why even make it like this? It’s awfully annoying, since it’s almost impossible to remember this during busy chases. The muscle memory is way too strong with this one. Other than that, there is nothing to say. It’s a vehicle to take you from one objective to the next, in endless, mind-numbingly boring treks across the various planets.
Then we have the spaceship, and I think I used it for a maximum of twenty minutes. It’s a highly unlikable section of the game. The view is weird, as it puts you right behind the ship, blocking your sight. There is no cockpit view as far as I know, so you can’t bypass the awkward vision-angle by switching to anything else. The controls feel strange. I controlled the ship with my mouse, but it’s designed in a way to constantly lock you into engagements, with or without your help. It also wants you to hold down the right mouse-button to follow enemy fighters. I tried to fly without this function, but it just comes off as clumsy, and very off-putting. You are free to roam around in space with the spaceship. Since I disliked this aspect, I just skipped it entirely. And apparently, even on the hardest setting, it is of no requirement to do so, seeing as I made it through
Star Wars Outlaws with no problem. It’s a totally wasted gameplay segment that probably should have been left at the cutting-room floor.
Oh wow, we are back to the hellscape of Tatooine
Looking Star Wars
The stand-out part of
Star Wars Outlaws must be the environments. They look stunning, especially the indoor Empire base zones. These areas truly look the part, and they are also designed for a normal human use. For example, in
Star Wars Jedi Survivor the locations for traversal felt very abstracted, and designed in a way to accommodate the platforming. Seeing as Kay has a more normal means of getting around, the Empire bases, and other places look and feel realistic, and makes a lot more sense in the world. It’s unfortunate that the rest of the game doesn’t follow the same quality. The animations for movement look okay, but facial animations, and the aesthetics overall of the people that inhabit this world, does not look that impressive always.
I want one of these
At points, the game looks very good, though. It makes the whole thing puzzling. The quality of cutscenes, and scenes of normal dialogue varies regularly. It’s a rollercoaster in quality. It makes
Star Wars Outlaws not feel very polished, or a next-gen
AAAA product with a matching price point (the game is expensive). And like all modern games nowadays, it comes with extreme blurriness as standard; just to make it run adequately. I didn’t have any FPS problems, but I can’t deny the performance requirements are incredibly high, even for a measly 1080p setup on high settings. On the planet Tatooine, the game decided to crap out on me several times, forcing low-textures and with that making the game look like a PlayStation One title.
On UI, I’m happy to say that
Star Wars Outlaws allows for a lot of customization. This is a damn good thing. However, they forgot a toggle for the absolute most obnoxious thing; the hitmarkers. They are enormous, and block all the cool graphics of actually hitting your target with the blaster. I hate hitmarkers so much. I even tried to remove it by editing the config file, but nothing worked. In a final desperate act, I tried to reach out to Ubisoft on Twitter (X), but sadly, I got no response. If I used a scoring system for my reviews, this issue would probably have taken away two points at least. The hitmarkers are that bad, and it’s made that much worse, as everything else is customizable.
The music, and the general soundscape, is fine, since it’s all
Star Wars. I enjoyed the music as well. It felt very in tune with the setting, and it’s all new songs, too, which was a surprise to me. The voice acting is also passable. But there are no voices of characters that I remember standing out. It’s probably not the fault of the actors, because the characters are written very bland. Otherwise, it comes with no issues, even if it’s a bit boring.
It’s rare to see, but the rebels are actually helping out here
Conclusion
As it has been shown countless times in the movies and TV shows, brand recognition is not enough, even for something mega popular like
Star Wars. Not even putting it in the old trilogy setting helps anymore. You need a good story to tell, and there is plenty to pull from when it comes to
Star Wars. Sadly,
Star Wars Outlaws didn’t do this, and failed spectacularly on this front. It took a cool setting, the criminal underworld of
Star Wars, and somehow managed to make it lame and unexciting. The story is written way too safe, and the worst sin of all, made it meaningless at the end. If that was not enough, it also got the touch of death called forced diversity. So, if you are allergic to that, or care about the lore, you will not have a good time. I do not recommend
Star Wars Outlaws, at all. While the gameplay can be entertaining at times, it’s not enough to save the game. The gameplay also works as a reminder that it could have been cool, if they put some serious effort into it, instead of presenting this lame bantha thing. The funny thing is, I don’t even mind the Ubisoft formula that much, like many others. I have praised and liked games like
Watch Dogs. But this time around, they really dropped the ball.
Thanks for reading.
