Star Wars Outlaws Review

I was very excited when Ubisoft's Massive Entertainment announced that Ubisoft would make Star Wars Outlaws. The prospect of playing as your everyday outlaw in the mature Star Wars universe seemed very exciting, and the Star Wars Jedi series had given me a positive impression of the Star Wars games. Star Wars Outlaws is the first time the series has gone open-world, so there was a sense of hope before going into this one.
 

 

Knowing Ubisoft's experience in making open-world games, I at least expected Star Wars Outlaws to be your bog-standard Ubisoft title at worst, but upon playing this game, even my cautiously optimistic expectations were let down. As a rather new fan of the universe created by George Lucas (I have only played the Star Wars Jedi games and seen Andor), playing this game made me feel pretty bad, but I can only imagine how mad the diehard fans feel.

I expected to perhaps experience Andor's lifestyle, where he is used to surviving dangerous situations by the skin of his teeth, but what I got was grossly underwhelming. There is a lot wrong with Star Wars Outlaws, but before I get into that, let's familiarize ourselves with the setting and the protagonist, Kay Vess.

The game is centered around Kay Vess, a local of Canto Bight. She dreams of escaping this planet and making a name for herself in the galaxy's crime scene. She has a cute little companion called Nix.

Although Kay dreams big, in reality, she is an underdog at best in the criminal underworld. After getting involved in the most powerful syndicate in the galaxy, she finds herself caught up in deep trouble after taking a job. It doesn't help that the events in this story are set between Episodes V and VI, where Outlaws' galaxy is in chaos.

Massive Entertainment dubbed Star Wars Outlaws as the Ultimate Star Wars scoundrel fantasy, and, to give them some credit, the game does a good job of conveying that feel on the surface. You've got tons of criminal factions working against one another, and seeing Kay navigate such a risky environment helps you feel immersed once you are in the game.
 

 

One thing that immediately takes you out of the immersion, though, is the facial animations during cutscenes. They can sometimes be rough, almost worse than how the animation looked in Mass Effect: Andromeda. The facial expressions often appear jittery, and at other times, the facial muscles look almost paralyzed because almost nothing but the mouth moves during dialogue, leaving a sort of uncanny valley feeling.

As for the gameplay, it seems that Massive Entertainment has put a lot of hope in the stealth mechanic of Star Wars Outlaws. Okay, that makes sense; you are a small fry in the grand scheme of things in this world, so you cannot just go guns blazing into every encounter, but sending you back to a checkpoint whenever you are caught feels like an ancient video game mechanic at this point. Sometimes, you get sent very far back, which can be annoying.

If stealth is so important here, it must be very good, right? Not really. All you have at your disposal is a takedown that is only usable when you get very close to an enemy and a singular stun that takes over a minute to recharge. You've also got Nix to distract or attack enemies in a pickle.

I get that the idea is that Kay is a scoundrel with not many tools, but being stuck with just a takedown, slow recovering stun, and your little pet can feel limiting—especially so if you keep getting caught. You have to keep trying to take those enemies down repeatedly in the same way.

It would've been one thing if the mandatory and clunky stealth sections were in the main story only, but even the side content isn’t spared. You could be required to stealth your way into a section owned by the Pyke Syndicate, and if you get caught at any point, you are sent back to the beginning. This takes away from the actual fun sections in the game because you aren't as patient as when you started this game after being checkpointed for the 20th time.
 

 

Even the non-stealth moments have problems. You're equipped with Kay's modable blaster pistol, which has three different shot types: plasma, ion, and charge, each doing different things with the environment and enemies. A charge shot targets multiple enemies at once, ion is good for droids and activating machinery, and plasma is your standard damage shot, and that's it.

That sounds pretty good for a default secondary pistol, but you are essentially stuck using this weapon throughout the game. You can pick up bigger guns when in combat from fallen enemies, but you drop them whenever you reach a new area, perform any takedown, or become a victim of the archaic checkpoint system. It feels like the developers are actively against making the game fun.

All of this ends up making Star Wars Outlaws feel rigid. There isn't much going on to switch up the already underwhelming gameplay loop. What also doesn't help is the awful AI. There are many problems with it, and it breaks constantly. You can simply stand in the middle of a firing session and not get hit because of this, and it sort of works in your favor, given you are stuck with your weak pistol all the time.

I had high hopes for space exploration. I crossed my fingers that it would not be a loading screen fest like it is in Starfield, and at least the developers delivered on that end. The transition from space travel to a planet is done well, and it's done sort of like No Man's Sky.

However, space exploration itself is rather underwhelming. Most of it involves flying around, using your scanner, looting chests, and moving on. Given the universe of Star Wars, I expected to be amidst heated battles in space and landing in abandoned spaceships to figure out what went wrong. I could've been a space pirate, but you get none of that in Star Wars Outlaws.
 

 

Fortunately, the environments are visually stunning, but the quality plummets whenever the game shows its characters because of the wonky facial expressions. It is a true letdown because I like how Kay Vess looks. The way she's outfitted, her hair—she perfectly suits the 70s/80s Star Wars vibe.

Unfortunately, the reputation system in Star Wars Outlaws is also not great either. There are four different syndicates that you can influence based on the jobs you take and the choices you make throughout the story and side quests. Depending on your reputation level with them, you can unlock different outfits and weapons, easily access territory owned by that gang, and also access their unique vendors and contracts.

There was a lot more that could have been done here, but this is all you get. It feels like it doesn't matter who you are buddies with or enemies with because who ends up helping you in the story remains the same. This definitely takes away some weight from the main story with regards to the choices you can make.

Another frustrating part about this game is the navigation system. Usually, in a Ubisoft game, you expect the map to be full of icons and objectives, and while that can be a problem of its own, you instead have to deal with vague circles where you have to look for the objective in Star Wars Outlaws. Instead of adding realism, I feel this feature is an inconvenience that does not help with the pacing.

With Star Wars Outlaws, at worst, you'll find a Star Wars story here that will not wow you in any original way. You might be entertained at best, and I think that is fine, but it is disappointing considering that this is supposed to be a AAA game.
 

 

Star Wars Outlaws does have its strengths, though—the worlds in this game can sing. You can feel like there is life that is living and breathing in the world—the snowfall of Kijimi, the rain of Akiva; there are strong environments at times that made me feel like I was in the Star Wars universe. The soundtrack, by the way, is also great. It does what you expect with Star Wars. It mixes in some iconic motifs and then introduces some original ones.

Star Wars Outlaws is a game that made big promises, but unfortunately, it is one of the many AAA games that failed to deliver on them. The restrictive gameplay, subpar story, and uncanny valley facial animations make the game hard to recommend at full price. I wanted to feel like Andor when I played this game, but it seems Massive Entertainment had other, more underwhelming, plans with Star Wars Outlaws.
 

Ahnaf Tajwar
Editor, NoobFeed