Star Wars Outlaws Review

Outlaws definitely scratches an itch, but also leaves us wanting for a more tidied, better paced and emergent experience

There’s a few things Star Wars Outlaws isn’t. For one, It’s not wholly open-world. Rather, it’s a series of (large) biomes and hubs coupled with densely-populated interiors, all loosely tied to one another through a fairly basic space ‘corridor’ setup (and fast travel). Two, it’s not an RPG or even an RPG-lite experience. Instead, it’s a game that cleverly employs the concept of skill and knowledge as your character-progression and growth north star, giving way to a less grindy experience when it comes to, well… experience. Thirdly, it’s not an ever-evolving game where environments change around you and you see progress actually happen (outside of reputation elements). And at a three-point-five, it is far from emergent -- a staple most touted open-world games strive for. Rather, it’s a very loud, obnoxious and at times intrusive air-tasker simulator (more on this shortly). But what it does better than most games, especially those made of Star Wars stardust, is it offers you a fantasy.

And boy, does it deliver in the fantasy stakes.

While we’re at it, it’s important to touch first and foremost on that opening point, because it is the most hyped aspect of the game from a marketing perspective; “the first ever open-world Star Wars game” which, in reality, this isn’t. But that also comes down to whatever your definition of an open-world is. Where we fail to see it as such, in our books, is through elements such as hardfail, off-rail, gated exploration and ultra-heavy scripting. It’s definitely an ‘open’ game, but when stacked alongside, say, Red Dead Redemption 2 or even something in-house from Ubi, such as Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Outlaws just doesn’t compare when it comes to touting the open-world tent-pole. And this is because, while free to ride the many planes of the game’s five planetary/satellite destinations, it fails to represent a seamless and fluid experience overall.

But that fantasy… it still very much has a lot to say in proceedings. 

Star Wars Outlaws

Genre: Open-World Action-Adventure
Developer: Massive Entertainment
Publisher: Ubisoft
Release Date: August 27, 2024
Classification: PG
Author: Stephen Farrelly
Date: September 24, 2024

Stealy Nix

First up, that fantasy element -- wretched hive of scum and villainy and all. The Scoundrel’s tale here, though failed miserably in other standalone efforts such as Solo (in this writer’s opinion at least, though I do see it as an anthological entrant in the broader ‘tales of’, albeit tied to canon), is championed brilliantly in Outlaws. This is because we not only live it, we live in it.

"Sure, you have Jabba the Hutt and you do face off against a rancor, but really what Outaws is, is a Cyberpunk 2077-like..."

This is best personified in all of the game’s social hubs; the city elements, villages and outposts. The hidey, hidey, hideaways (lots of these) and, of course, the Cantinas -- the true entrance into the very diverse universe that is Star Wars in Episode IV. Our saloon, our corral, our… Wild West moment. And it all naturally runs centrestage in Outlaws. Though, we’d argue maybe not enough. The why there we’ll explain later, but for the moment, when we talk about “a vibe” Outlaws nails the ‘off the beaten track’ a smuggler or bounty hunter or scoundrel might take. 

Where Star Wars Jedi presents as a larger-than-life Jedi tale with intergalactic travel and huge themes, Outlaws is guttural in its approach to world-building and bombast. Sure, you have Jabba the Hutt and you do face off against a rancor, but really what Outaws is, is a Cyberpunk 2077-like. It’s about the destinations and the denizens that make up the so-called ‘underground’ of this space. In many ways, it’s a game about the ‘rest of us’ in that Galaxy Far, Far Away…. those that don’t have magic space wizard powers -- the moisture farmers, the heavies working under the thumb of syndicate leaders, the food preparers, the merchants, the mechanics… all of us. 

Would you like to know more?
Toshara, the game's first moon, was created specifically for Outlaws where wind-farming is a job and the land's siesmic activiy has produced deep caverns, caves and rich veins of amber across its varied plains. While the devs have said they were inspired by the Savanna for its creation, it's hard for Aussies to not also feel a rich red earth attachment to it from our top-ends in parts of Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

Kayfabe

Starring in this downtrodden and workaholic playspace then, is Kay Vess. A kid who grew up to be a scoundrel. Learning to grift, pick marks and sniff out opportunity where others might not normally poke their nose. She’s tough, in an 80s heroine movie sense (which rules), and has both the wits and charm to not only survive, but thrive. At times I feel the writing around her is too direct though -- she takes on jobs quicker than anyone, often from strangers she ought to be more weary of (based on that street schooling mentioned above), and this can add layers and layers of confusion upon the player as requests and jobs and other ‘quest’ aspects come in thick and fast, especially at the beginning of most new location journeys. And while we get that she’s an opportunist, she still could have been written with a bit more caution rather than having it thrown to the wind as often as it is. 

"It’s Nix you’ll fall in love with. Kay’s adoration and devotion to him is infectious. And sometimes even tear-jerking..."

Her dialogue is fantastic, though, and she’s terrifically portrayed by Humberly González in the VO department. She’s also not alone on this journey and has ND-5 -- a tough-as-nails droid who wears a duster jacket and, honestly, deserves his own game -- alongside her as well as a host of other fairly interesting characters (when you meet Ank you’ll know what we mean, and these support characters do help). But it’s Nix you’ll fall in love with. Kay’s adoration and devotion to him is infectious. And sometimes even tear-jerking. Nix is Kay’s right hand merqaal (his species) and can be utilised to fetch, steal, distract and interact with important parts of the environment. He can also be passively buffed through truly interesting eating mini-games at the various droid vendors throughout the game, and these are cute, unique and wild. We absolutely love them. 

But on that overuse of trust, Ubi and Massive really did kind of go too full-on in how quests are dolled out to you. And while we’re not necessarily against open-world content ‘bloat’, here it simply comes in too thick and fast and in the early throes is quite disorientating. It doesn’t mean you don’t get a hold of it all, but there definitely should have been a steadier pace to how quests fall across your lap. We say this in particular because many are gated behind upgrades or having to go offworld, which you can’t do readily early on meaning you become a bit of an expert at Toshara -- the game’s first world, but maybe with your arm twisted behind your back.

Mos Eisley Tourism Board

When you finally get to Tatooine after a bit of planet-hopping, the fantasy kicks up a notch and despite that space being the most barren among all, it’s just kind of awesome riding your speeder across the sand and discovering elements of it that might have tickled your interest from as far back as 1977. Most of the worlds and playspaces in the game, as we’ve mentioned before, are large, but still interestingly gated or requiring of more upgrades to wholly explore. This becomes problematic because the geography of them is so large it’s kind of easy to forget there was a wall in a cave somewhere you wanted to shoot through after you upgraded your blaster with that ability. Your map is pockmarked with points of interest, of course, so you can track everything easily enough in your Journal, but as we’ve teased , it can be a bit overbearing and certainly doesn’t lend itself to emergent discovery.

"The game has many broken bits and this comes up most in its combat, properly highlighted by an encounter with Luke Skywalker’s rancor..."

What equally doesn’t help any of this is the game’s incredibly bad AI. You can go stealth in *most* situations; take out a grumbly guard (they hate their jobs), and still leave their concussed selves out in the open. Other guards will stand right near them and just continue to grumble and not even notice. It’s a Ubi thing and has been forever, but some more dynamism in a game literally about theft, double-crossing, trespassing and heists, a higher level of guard cognitivism wouldn’t have gone astray. 

So while we’ve certainly painted a positive picture around the fantasy of being in the Star Wars universe, heralded mostly by Tatooine, the reality is, and even at a parsec beyond launch, the game has many broken bits and this comes up most in its combat, properly highlighted by an encounter with Luke Skywalker’s rancor. (We know it’s not his, but he did own it, in a boss fight sense, some 47 years ago).

Would you like to know more?
Massive Entertainment's other licensed open-world game, Avatar Mists of Pandora also suffered many of the drawbacks we encountered with Outlaws, however, its ultra-alien setup allowed for much of its world density to be, well... dense. Less interiors and more just 'world' helped it but what we will say is that both of these games and the studio's flagship product, Tom Clancy's The Division are all fundamentally different in unique ways, giving way to this studio being trustworthy enough to know how best to lean into either a license or its own product.

Rank Rancor

Even this far beyond release Outlaws is still a bit of a technical mess (oh, that Cyberpunk reference is now really singing). Kay doesn’t like jumping, and vaulting or climbing is not even remotely fun. And this from a publisher that reinvented those elements ala Assassin’s Creed (in fact why the studios didn’t just choose to use the Anvil engine over Snowdrop seems odd given how much stealth and infiltration you do). Nix will oddly glitch from your back to a nearby climbable space while textures will load in and out based on how many Midi-chlorians are happy enough to help the game that day. And the idea that the game wants to right your ship to a 2D plane while in space is one of the oddest decisions of all. 

"It is a beast of a game, we get that, but it needs some serious post-launch love..."

But the glitches and broken elements go further; the aforementioned AI and poor vision cones, bad camera angles while climbing or trying to be stealth and scope a room and then there’s the console overheat. Outlaws makes our Series X do additional situps and then borks its OS to points where screens or Achievements won’t display after an hour or so of play, lest we do a Restart. It is a beast of a game, we get that, but it needs some serious post-launch love.

The “Rank Rancor” sub-head above, however, took the whole performance cake for ours. Not only were we stuck in a loop during our Rancor ‘boss battle’ (a loose term here) where said rancor, who was meant to hit its head three times on Jabba’s giant metal doors before concussing itself, didn’t and just kept charging us to the point we started pulling our collective hair out. And it had done this on a couple of occasions before, however, after the earlier-mentioned console reset, it (finally) hit its head and went quietly to sleep as programmed so we could slip out the door, likely wholly noticed. (Stealth. Broke. Joke.) But seriously, it was among one of the most frustrating moments of the game and left a very drooly and sour taste in our mouths. Thankfully we knew the exact post-boss battle thing to do -- pull up a couple of cards and throw down some credits...

Sylop Sabbac 

By far the most fun thing in Outlaws is gambling. An odd thing to say, but we are talking of wretched hives of scum and villainy, remember?

"There’s something proprietary about it here that makes it feel really unique. And when you get good at the game… well, you start to feel that scum and villainy really seep out of your veins..."

And amongst these options is Sabbac. Star Wars aficionados will know of Sabbac well, but for newcomers it might be a bit odd. It’s essentially a spin on both poker and blackjack while also adding dynamic elements players can throw at other sharks around the adorably-crafted droid tables. And it’s not hard to see Massive spent a lot of time on it. It’s not dissimilar to Gwent in The Witcher 3 or actual poker in Red Dead Redemption, but there’s something proprietary about it here that makes it feel really unique. And when you get good at the game… well, you start to feel that scum and villainy really seep out of your veins.

There are other side-elements to the game, such as fathier racing, speeder races and more, but for ours sabbac is where it’s at and we just hope there’s a die-hard fan with an engineering and design degree out there who wants to see one of those amazing tables come to life.

Oh, and the reason we didn’t go any deeper into sabbac or its unique mechanics is strictly because, if you haven’t played yet, this is the sort of thing you want to discover and get good at yourself. It really is that awesome.

Eat Sand for Free

So, where does all of the above leave us? On many levels Outlaws is fantastic and invites players into a much-loved-but-rarely-explored subset of the Star Wars universe. Nix is awesome, Kay is fantastic and the interiors you visit are intricate and full of the sort of attention to detail we wish Jon Favreau could inject into a certain helmet-centric series. But it’s oh-so flawed.

"The decision to use FMV for cut-scenes rather than just staying in-engine is also a weird one..."

AI is terrible, hard-fail scenarios break the immersion. The lack of freedom -- for an ‘open-world’ game -- is often jarring and the decision to use FMV for cut-scenes rather than just staying in-engine is also a weird one. Kay is too ready for work and the game’s quest and intel and other mission systems get too overcrowded too quickly. We love that instead of XP you actually go and learn from experts out in (various) world(s), but even these aspects become a bit ‘checklisty’ after a while. But, still…

There’s a charm and reverence to Outlaws that brings it right back to the original trilogy. From a perspective of pure fandom, Massive can’t be faulted. The game is super-detailed and the studio truly invites us into those wretched hives. More could have been done with these though. When we visit a cantina, for example, we don’t want to “Lean”, we want to drink, not at all unlike Nix wanting to eat. We want more NPC exchanges that aren’t specifically aligned to quests or Intel, and we want the very-easy-to-manage reputation system to be more involved; more dynamic and unpredictable.

Outlaws is great and worth any Star Wars fan’s time, but it might also only scratch a few itches while having you wishing it just did a bit more to truly serve up the ultimate scoundrel fantasy.

What’s Boss?

  • Intricately-detailed planets and satellites where the ‘underground’ is the star
  • Nix is a perfect companion and a great gameplay tool
  • An expansive universe and some very large biomes to explore
  • Kay and her voice actor, Humberly González, are excellently aligned with the OG trilogy
  • ND-5 is awesome and needs his own game
  • The game’s lean on character growth is fresh and unique for Ubi open-world games

Not Boss Enough?

  • The lack of an emergent element to quests, missions and intel hurts the game’s discovery element
  • Climbing and jumping don’t really work fluidly in the Snowdrop Engine and would be more suited to Anvil - and it shows here 
  • The fantasy is strong in the game, but not being able to steal other rides or even ships breaks it a bit and belies the character in many ways
  • Still needs a lot of technical work for a smoother experience, especially on console
  • Too much too quickly from a quest-giving perspective

Star Wars Outlaws flips the franchise script and lets us live the life of a Scoundrel archetype, rather than that of a Jedi or Rebel in one of the most detailed representations of the Star Wars landscape yet.

About the Author

Written By Stephen Farrelly
Stephen Farrelly is a veteran journalist and editor with more than two decades experience in the worlds of gaming, entertainment, lifestyle and sport under his belt. He is a proud pug dad, loves art in all forms but particularly street and tattoo culture, and is the director of Swear Jar...
More from this Author
  • + It's Time to Let Raven Software Soar, Activision - An Emergence is Nigh…
  • + Star Wars Outlaws Now Available via Steam, Title Update 1.4.0 and the Wild Card DLC Also Released
  • + Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Review

    • Explore More in Gaming

    What could a Black Ops game-universe look like? Shared universes are all the pop culture rage right now (though not very new), but does this one, in particular, have the chops to not just stand out, but even dominate? And we're not even adding other Call of Duty titles... this is strictly Black Ops' time to shine. Click through to learn more!

    Available now on Steam alongside a massive title update and the first story DLC, Star Wars Outlaws has re-entered orbit as a game to jump back into. And we've got all the reasons why inside...

    Halls of Torment is a new roguelike survival game that might not stray far enough from the formula laid out by Vampire Survivors, but it has enough new things to keep you coming back. That is, in addition to the awesome retro Diablo-style visuals that look like they're straight from 1998.

    Our definitive Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 review. We dissect its three key pillars in Campaign, Zombies and, of course, Multiplayer and how they stack in the grand scheme of things. There's more here than initially meets the eye, too, so strap in and give it a digest of some possessive reader-type form...

    After a year of Seasonal updates and overhauls and a brand-new expansion introducing new story, a new class, and new activities, Diablo IV is in a great place. In fact, so much has been improved or refined since the game's initial June 2023 debut, that the game feels like it has grown into what it was always meant to be.

    Half-Life 2 turns 20 this year, and to celebrate NVIDIA has released a new retrospective video on the game's legacy from the talented team behind the impressive Half-Life 2: RTX mod currently in development.

    Atomfall from veteran developer-publisher Rebellion becomes increasingly more and more enticing. Is it Fallout-like? Dying-Light-like? Metro-like? Is it completely new and something we shouldn't be comparing to other games? And won't somebody answer that damn phone?!

    Reckon you could solve a 'time-loop' day? How many days would it take you, and how long before you just took the opportunity to be a dick about it all? Rue Valley might just be the game to see how well you'd actually do in a Bill Murray-type environment...

    While plenty of racing games feature drifting, few use it as their entire point. That's where JDM: Japanese Drift Master comes in. Launching next year and featuring an open-world to explore and drift in, powered by a manga-inspired narrative, this has "unique racing gem" written all over it...

    Bethesda has updated its long-running MMO, The Elder Scrolls Online, with Update 44 now available on PC and consoles and, as expected, it brings a lot to the fore. We've got some deets for you inside if you're willing to come on in...

    Comment

    Please note, comments need to be approved before they are published.