Rebellions are built on hope.
Jyn Erso, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
With Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft Massive has created a living Star Wars galaxy for players to interact with. That feat in and of itself is enough to give countless players hours of fun simply navigating that highly beloved universe. Ubisoft has taken all of its strengths from previous action-adventure titles and incorporated them into one of its best games to date. There are many paths to travel down that lead to fun and interesting Star Wars hijinks, as well as systems and world building in play that drive home the experience of playing Star Wars Outlaws as a compelling one. However, an overreliance on inconsistent stealth mechanics, the use of outdated mission structures, and lackluster narrative storytelling hold back this foray into everyone’s favorite galaxy far far away from being an all-time great, and instead make it more of a Boonta (cult) classic.
Permission to jump in an X-Wing and blow something up?
Poe Dameron, Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)
In furtherance of being earnest and transparent as a reviewer especially since Ubisoft provided me with a copy of this game for free – I want to clear the air about visual fidelity and image quality on PS5. I reviewed Star Wars Outlaws on PS5, not PC, and the difference between the footage you might have seen from various outlets and creators during the preview cycle for this game (which was captured on PC) and what I was playing in front of me on PS5 may be rather stark. Star Wars Outlaws is not an excessively pretty game on PS5 – at least when assessed by modern standards (Hogwarts Legacy, Horizon Forbidden West, Final Fantasy XVI, etc.) and looks more like a PS4 game, perhaps proving more comparable to the still visually striking Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, in my estimation. The somewhat dated visuals don’t undermine the overall experience to the extent that it becomes unenjoyable, not even close, but I felt the discrepancy was important to note given the footage that is out there, along with people’s expectations for what a PS5 game they’re purchasing is going to look like. My evaluation is of my experience with Star Wars Outlaws performance mode specifically, since that is the graphical setting I used for 99% of my time with the game. I did switch to quality mode briefly and did not notice any significant or noteworthy improvements to visual fidelity that would warrant the reduction in performance. I also utilized the letterbox cinematic mode the entire time I played to ostensibly boost the visuals since fewer pixels needed to be rendered on screen; my assessment is with that feature implemented. That being said, the performance aspect of the performance mode was stable and reliable. I do not think I ever dropped below 50 frames the entire 40 hours I spent with Star Wars Outlaws, and the majority of the time it felt like I had a consistent 60 frames per second, at least to my somewhat untrained eye.
Chewie, we’re home.
Han Solo, Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
The game starts in the gambling tourist attraction city of Canto Bight on a planet in the the outer rim (an odd choice given many long time fans’ distaste for Star Wars: The Last Jedi), which also happens to be our protagonist Kay’s home. Players are guided on rails through campaign missions in Canto Bight for the better part of 2 hours before their Star Wars adventure genuinely seems to begin. Upon arriving at the game’s second world, Toshara – where the majority of Outlaws campaign takes place – the game immediately starts to feel alive and authentically Star Wars. There is an organic bustle to the city of Mirogana’s streets and corridors. Stormtroopers patrol checkpoints asking for papers, occasionally talking amongst each other about the more mundane aspects of Empire work on an obscure moon. An ambiance of a public address system for the nearby spaceport, locals laughing or arguing with one another, vendors advertising their wares, and cloaked figures whispering shady back alley deals, echoes through the halls players will walk through. The indoor mood lighting implemented in Star Wars Outlaws – usually showcased in vivid reds, blues, and greens juxtaposed with dark shadows and dimly lit textures – is also phenomenal and does some seriously heavy lifting in terms of making it feel like the player is actually in a Star Wars cantina, back alley, or city epicenter. The extent to which Star Wars Outlaws feels like Star Wars brought me an immeasurable amount of joy that didn’t wear off in any short order. Without doing extensive homework, I’d contend that Star Wars Outlaws Mos Eisley spaceport on Tatooine is probably the most authentically Star Wars thing to ever exist in a Star Wars video game, which amounts to Ubisoft’s intentional use of hub space. Locations are filled with organic and lively NPCs, and Outlaws faithfully adheres to and replicates the aesthetics and tone of Star Wars.
Let’s just say we’d like to avoid any Imperial entanglements.
Ben Kenobi, Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977)
Outside of these lively, authentic hub cities, to give a sense of what Star Wars Outlaws functionally is as a video game: It’s fundamentally Ghost Recon Wildlands with the addition of Tomb Raider or Uncharted-like spelunking and traversal elements, and with a pristine level of adherence and attention to detail to the Star Wars universe. Additionally, Ubisoft has gone for the type of blockbuster, single player narrative experience offered in those latter two games, which has proven to be slightly outside its wheelhouse in the past. I offer Wildlands specifically as the closest one-to-one example because I spent considerably more time with it than the more recent Breakpoint, and because Star Wars Outlaws feels cut from the same cloth as Ghost Recon Wildlands in respect to its rusticly grounded open zones, its assortment of available side missions and treasure seeking opportunities, and its heavy emphasis on stealth-based gameplay as the optimal way to approach most missions involving enemies. It’s more than evident from an early stage that – much like Ubisoft’s two recent entries in its Ghost Recon sister series – cautious infiltration and stealth takedowns should be a mainstay in Star Wars Outlaws and are the intended path of least resistance for the majority of in-game encounters. Many of Outlaws main and side missions involve sneaking into an Imperial base, a bandit outpost, or even in one instance Jabba’s palace, to accomplish some goal or retrieve something significant to the plot. When stealth works, enemies drop to the floor with a charged stun pulse to an Imperial officer across the room, a pummelling uppercut to a stormtrooper in close proximity, and a sprinting, leaping punch to take down a second trooper nearby. This altercation is hopefully followed by a welcome silence that confirms the rest of an Imperial fortress outside that server room will be none the wiser to Kay’s presence. These moments that play out almost as well as if they were scripted are nothing short of exhilarating. There were many instances during my time with Star Wars Outlaws where I felt like the coolest darn smuggler/infiltrator on this side of the outer rim.
I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
Han Solo, Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977)
When the stealth doesn’t work, however, it’s just plain frustrating. I genuinely don’t think that’s a skill issue either because I’ve played more than 200 hours of Hitman I, II, and III and I’m a perfectionist when it comes to being covert. Rather, I really think it comes down to Outlaws slightly rudimentary stealth mechanics and its insistence on overutilizing them despite their rudimentary nature. Encounters can quickly devolve into total and utter chaos and not always the particularly good kind. On higher difficulty settings, Kay can feel completely outgunned when going up against the Empire, which, while realistic, doesn’t allow much forgiveness once the alarm inevitably sounds. What’s more, gunplay and combat generally don’t feel all that engaging or multifaceted, offering surface-level fun and bombastic moments, but not much else. The all too frequent tendency for stealth to devolve into an all-hands-on-deck situation can often result in Kay being put down with Imperial prejudice, forcing the player to start again from a checkpoint which is likely much further back than desirable.
That’s not to say things can’t be fun when they get hectic. At one point, I had an AT-ST on my heels with what seemed like an entire Imperial battalion in tow. I was able to utilize corners and cover to take many troopers down and slip into a ventilation shaft to elude those remaining. However, by that point, I was playing on the lowest difficulty setting specifically for enemies. I happily stuck with that setting because of the lower difficulty’s propensity to create frenetic and exhilarating moments when the inconsistent and unreliable stealth caused the bantha poodoo to inevitably hit the fan. I’m not even slightly ashamed of that either, given that stormtroopers are notoriously terrible shots anyway according to canon, and it also saved me no small amount of time and frustration across a dozen or so infiltration-type missions and added considerably to the fun factor when the stealth lucky stars didn’t want to align. Without the crippling feeling of oppression that accompanied Star Wars Outlaws placing me in situations where I was completely outgunned and would lose all my mission progress if I couldn’t navigate the seemingly random variances of stealth, I had an abundance of fun, since whenever things got out of hand I just started blasting. I was the hero – of course I evaded the Empire and won the day, that’s just classic Star Wars.
As I previously noted, the other half of Star Wars Outlaws core gameplay loop is spelunking and rock climbing in the vein of the Uncharted and Tomb Raider series. This isn’t exactly my cup of Corelli-Cola, so I can only say that it’s more than serviceable. The traversal certainly amounts to more than mindless – although it’s utilized with amusing frequency whenever Kay needs to get from point A to point B during the campaign – and delving deep into derelict caves and tunnels to acquire some lost datapad or coveted cache of upgrade parts has an unmistakable air of player fulfilment.
Your friend is quite a mercenary. I wonder if he really cares about anything. Or anybody.
Princess Leia Organa, Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977)
I noted earlier that in Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft has gone outside its usual and recognizable formula (which is commendable) in an attempt to deliver a single-player narrative experience comparable to those incredible works of storytelling that have graced the action adventure genre. The results are…mixed. Personally, most of the time I’d rather have been doing anything else besides following the golden path. For starters (whether this is actually the case or not) it feels like it takes more than a considerable amount of parsecs to actually get to a point where Kay has a fully functioning ship that can travel to a location other than Toshara. I estimate it took me at least 10 hours to be granted the ability to go to another planet or moon (admittedly I may have stopped to smell the roses too many times) which feels like a really long time in a game where the major selling point is being able to warp around the Star Wars galaxy to a variety of ecosystems, both literal and sociopolitical. Outdated mission types contributed greatly to this extensive onboarding period. I must have been forced to retry several different missions a collective dozen times because they had an auto-fail state built into the mission design, such as being spotted in a stealth mission or not staying close enough to a particular NPC while we jetted away on speeders from an Imperial pursuit. Why do I need to stay close enough to that particular NPC or else be forced to replay a certain mission segment? Why am I not given access to my blaster or combat abilities for a non-skippable stealth section that isn’t fun and isn’t necessary? Are we still doing this with game design in 2024?
Furthermore, my subjective evaluation is that Star Wars Outlaws particular brand of narrative storytelling just isn’t all that interesting. Kay comes off as almost unbelievably naive and unpracticed for someone who purportedly grew up as a street urchin and has had to utilize a particular skill set all her life just to be able to survive. While this inherent contradiction is admittedly endearing in some scenes, it can require an excessive suspension of disbelief from the player. Likewise, the plot premise of Kay unwittingly breaking into the biggest mansion on her home planet within the game’s opening hours necessitating her to assemble a crew to…break into it again, just doesn’t land for me. I like Kay on the run in the outer rim, navigating wretched hives of scum and villainy and earning the respect and favor of the Hutts – not “we have Ocean’s Eleven at home.” Even beyond that foundational premise (light spoilers ahead), it felt like any story-relevant character that I formed an attachment to ultimately stabbed me in the back, which made me wary as a player of caring about any new additions. ND-5, the imposing droid showcased in the game’s cover art, doesn’t even make an appearance until about 10 or more hours into the game, and he isn’t even Kay’s droid. He’s essentially a lackey for the wannabe hotshot who commissions Kay to do the heist, and what’s more, ND-5 and Kay have hardly any chemistry together. Moreover, those looking for a Cassian Andor and K-2SO type of relationship here will likely be disappointed. (Spoilers over)
Moments with Kay and Nix are a highlight, but that consolation just further lends itself to how circumstantially isolated Kay feels. To me, it was Kay a Nix against the galaxy, and the other characters consistently felt like sideshow distractions. The entire narrative premise pushed me to elevate her reputation and capabilities in the syndicate-driven underworld almost exclusively through side content rather than accrue untrustworthy allies to pull off a heist I had no interest in undertaking since the game had already had me break into that mansion before. When the entire culmination of the story is ostensibly built around doing something the player has already experienced, I’d have to imagine that is going to push players toward wanting to do almost anything else.
You fold now, you’ll walk away with enough to get yourself your own little ship. You call, I’m gonna clean you out again.
Lando Calrissian, Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
As I may have already heavily implied, none of the aforementioned features are what I enjoyed most about Star Wars Outlaws. Likewise, I bounced off Star Wars Outlaws’s space combat and exploration quite hard, but that’s admittedly very subjective. I had difficulty controlling the ship, especially when scavaging derelicts. I couldn’t replicate docking in an Imperial space station when I had docked there earlier in a scripted mission of the campaign, leaving me to conclude it was just a one-off. Dogfights were fun at first, but once I’d experienced a few, it felt like I had a grasp of what they offered. Overall the ship gameplay just wasn’t for me.
Alternatively, it was Star Wars Outlaws syndicates and side activities that I found to be the most compelling, by an extensive margin. The levels of intrigue to the seemingly vast underbelly that Ubisoft Massive has given life to can hardly be understated. To that end, I firmly believe most of the fun to be had in Star Wars Outlaws lies off the beaten path. For starters, there are just so many great gambling opportunities; it’s ridiculously awesome. Kay can play casino-style arcade games, bet on track races, or buy into backroom games of kessel sabacc to ultimately make some high-rollers’ pockets a few hundred credits lighter. Sebacc is definitely Outlaws version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s Gwent or Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s Queen’s Blood, in that it will have players gleefully devoting hours to playing it and there are in-game incentives to chase which strengthen players’ “deck” and abilities. I couldn’t even contain myself from spending a half dozen hours playing sabacc in various gambling dens – it was just that fun – when I probably should have been spending my precious pre-embargo time evaluating other aspects of the game. However, the reason for such a seemingly irresponsible divergence is that to a certain extent, sabacc is the game, sabacc is Outlaws, or at least part of what comprises the core essence of Star Wars Outlaws that I find truly riveting. In Star Wars Outlaws, you get to actually live the life of a scoundrel for hire, and that involves hanging out in some seedy places, greasing the right palms, double-crossing when lucrative, and depriving rivals of their precious credits. There’s a strong element of role-play enablement that Ubisoft has been able to hit on with Outlaws, and it’s fantastic. Playing round after round of sabacc and taking my smuggler rivals for all they were worth made me feel like I was a part of Star Wars’ underbelly. So too did running clandestine errands for persons of considerable influence to make a name for myself as a respected mercenary.
That’s where Star Wars Outlaws syndicates come into play, and I have to attest that they are the game’s best feature. Early on, Kay is introduced to three major syndicates that are fighting a cold war against each other for influence and control. They essentially amount to factions that Kay can earn favor with, depending on her decisions and the side jobs she chooses to take. Furthermore, there are several instances in the main campaign where Kay must choose which syndicate to court, often in the middle of conducting a high stakes job, and it’s consistently at the expense of the syndicate that she doesn’t choose to align with. The result is a balancing act where the player is trying to rise up the ranks of recognition in the underworld and acquire access to additional jobs with higher payouts but also needs to balance favor with all three factions so as not to become a pariah with any of them. In fact, Kay’s reputation can get so low with a syndicate that they will actually put a bounty out on her and the player will have to contend with hit squads sent to take her down. Conversely, Kay can become held in such high regard that she receives exclusive gear sets with unique abilities (such as being able to elude the Empire much more effectively) and guards will even speak to her with a certain reverence. I even found the different contract brokers (essentially handlers) to be much more compelling than any of the recurring characters in the game’s main story (shoutout to Danka). These details make experiencing Star Wars Outlaws so engaging and cool. The systems are so intrinsically gratifying that I can’t conceive that a Star Wars fan would not get ample enjoyment out of engaging with them. I couldn’t help but smile when a Pyke guard said “This one can be trusted, she has proven a great help to us” as Kay walked by a checkpoint where she was previously denied access before working to gain substantial favor with the organization. It made it all the more personally difficult when I had to double-cross the Pykes later, but such is business. After putting 40 hours into the game, I can say engaging with these systems becomes significantly more shallow and repetitive later on – exemplified by the fact that I’ve been able to maintain an excellent reputation with all three major syndicates without much difficulty, but that cannot undermine the sheer bliss I experienced during those first 20-30 hours.
That’s how we’re gonna win: not fighting what we hate; saving what we love.
Rose Tico, Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)
Star Wars Outlaws is an obvious labor of love that accomplishes certain things that no prior Star Wars game has achieved before. To that end, Star Wars Outlaws offers the most visceral, lived-in Star Wars video game world for players to engage with and enjoy despite its glaring shortcomings – and delivers a largely wholesome experience. While each player’s moment-to-moment experience may vary given Star Wars Outlaws propensity for frustration-inciting moments or forays into the mundane, the close-at-hand presence of immersive fun and wonder remains a constant.
-Kirkland Gray