The best way to enjoy Star Wars is to ignore the franchise’s fans. The community is cancerous and its toxicity has metastasized through social media with a rabid irrational hate over most projects. With that bias, it makes any online criticism about Star Wars shows and video games hard to trust.
When it comes to “Star Wars Outlaws,” the hate that the title has received is overblown. Ubisoft’s foray into the space opera is a rarity because of its open-world nature and its focus. Unlike 90% of Star Wars games, it’s not about Jedis or saving the galaxy, but rather, the campaign focuses on the scoundrels. Instead of following the footsteps of a Luke Skywalker-type character, “Outlaws” asks players to shoot first and double-cross denizens of the underworld like Han Solo.
That requires a different set of gameplay systems from the likes of “Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic” or the “Star Wars Jedi” franchise. Scoundrels need stealth, smarts and gunplay, and those are elements that the developer, Massive Entertainment, has experience in through their work with “Tom Clancy’s The Division” franchise.
THE STORY SO FAR
“Outlaws” follows the exploits of Kay Vess, a young thief who becomes the target of a ruthless crime lord. During a high-stakes job, Sliro Barsha, head of the Zerek Besh syndicate, catches her in his vault, but she manages to escape with the help of her axolotl-like sidekick Nix. Kay steals a ship called the Trailblazer but ends up crash landing on the moon Toshara while fleeing. With a Death Mark on her head, Kay has to fend for herself and navigate the Star Wars criminal underworld, and that leads her to another heist that can solve all her problems. To pull it off, she’ll need to recruit a team while visiting three other planets. Players will travel to five in total.
From the outset, “Assassin’s Creed’ fans will pick up on the gameplay adopted from the series. Kay will climb walls, move through air vents and sneak past foes. As a sly desperado, she won’t bust through an Imperial base blaster blazing. She scouts and marks enemies, reads the layout of a base, plans a route and then methodically dispatches adversaries one by one in the same way an assassin would.
FIDGETY GUNPLAY AND A HELPFUL SIDEKICK
Often, those plans don’t work out and Kay has to engage in gunplay. She has a customizable blaster that has several different functions based on the situation and enemy. Players will have to move Kay in and out of cover, but unfortunately, there’s no cover button. She’ll mostly duck behind objects or slide into safety. She has grenades, smoke bombs and other gadgets to help give her the edge.
The gunplay is hectic, especially when switching out ammo types to deal with droids, henchmen and situations. The aim assist helps relieve that pressure but combat can feel clunky with all the tools in hand. Players have a lot of options but not an efficient control scheme to switch among them.
The last part of this equation is Nix. The creature’s role reminds me of the ferrets from the 1980s movie “The Beastmaster.” Using the left bumper, players can control Kay’s sidekick and have him grab treasure or items. When it comes to puzzle solving, he’s indispensable for finding solutions. In combat, Nix becomes a way for players to manipulate the environment or enemies. He can distract enemies so Kay can sneak through or set fuel canisters to explode, causing a commotion. He’s essentially how players touch the world.
LEVELING UP
Aside from that, Kay also has skills that she learns from other experts she encounters. It’s an interesting progression system that requires players to achieve certain goals before the protagonist learns techniques such as fast-talking. By pressing R3 when enemies spot Kay, players can talk their way to an escape or move closer to knock out the enemy quietly. Other skills make it easier to hack terminals or sneak quietly.
The other way to make Kay more powerful is through items. Players will scavenge for materials to build faster speeders, upgrade the Trailblazer for space battles and modifying the blaster. Players can also discover or buy clothes that have notable perks.
A HAN SOLO SIMULATOR
All these elements forge a solid Star Wars experience, but what makes it great is how Ubisoft’s team incorporated player choice in this Han Solo simulator. This is where “Outlaws” captures that childhood fantasy of being a swashbuckling renegade. The team creates a reputation system among the four factions: The Hutts, the Pykes, the Ashiga Clan and the Crimson Dawn. Taking on a mission that curries favor with one often means gaining the disapproval of another.
This creates a wider strategy in how players tackle missions as they build their crew. Each cartel controls territory on the planets and being on the outs with one of them impacts quest difficulty, closes off shops and hurts opportunities. Kay often finds herself with a choice of finishing a contract or betraying the client to win the approval or reward of another faction. Players quickly learn that there are no good guys in the underworld and trust is a weakness.
It’s a refreshing take on player agency in Star Wars because Jedi-centric games focus on how choices affect the protagonist’s leanings and powers with the light and dark side of the Force. As a scoundrel, players decide on their own code among a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Players can stay loyal to a faction or they can just work for the highest bidder so that they can acquire better gear for Kay.
The system creates magical moments when the gameplay and story mesh well together. They complement each other so well that it elevates the whole experience.
Those highs almost cover up the lesser parts of “Outlaws.” The space combat is decent but unremarkable. Like any other Ubisoft open-world game, the developers stuff the experience with plenty of distracting side quests that are repetitive or recycle places that players have already ventured into. The game is also filled with bugs or inconsistencies that take players out of the experience. I’ve run into dynamic missions that glitched out or save points in missions that dropped me into unfamiliar places.
These flaws are annoying but don’t ruin a game that successfully explores new stories and gameplay mechanics in a promising branch of the “Star Wars” universe.
‘Star Wars Outlaws’
3½ stars out of 4
Platform: PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S
Rating: Teen
Originally Published:
