Star Wars Outlaws Review – GamersHeroes

It has been 42 years since the release of the first ever Star Wars game, and open world games have been around for decades. I’m not sure why this is the first open-world Star Wars game, but to say it was overdue would be an understatement.

Full disclosure. I have spent the last year playing Star Wars Legion, Star Wars Armada, Star Wars X-Wing, and Star Wars Unlimited, I’m ready for this.

Star Wars Outlaws follows the adventures of Kay Vess and her cute and furry companion Nix. Abandoned by her mother at an early age, Kay struggles to survive on the syndicate dominated worlds of the Outer Rim, always looking for that next big score to buy her freedom.

A Star Wars Game Has Never Felt So Authentic

Betrayed by the Rebel Alliance during a heist on the Zerek Besh crime syndicate, Kay is approached by Jaylen, a charming and charismatic smuggler with an offer impossible to refuse. That one final score, a heist to end all heists.

Kay and her trusted companion Nix set across the galaxy, tracking down and recruiting her crew for the big score.

The narrative takes place between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, delivering both familiar faces and locales, while keeping things fresh with fantastic new characters and planets to explore.

It’s a story that, for much of the game, just felt good. Each of the planets is home to one of the characters Kay recruits, and a boiling pot of syndicate betrayal and political turmoil that’s just begging for a chaotic smuggler to stir the pot.

Aiding Jabba and the Hutt Cartel to maintain control of Tatooine, choosing sides between the Crimson Dawn and Pyke Syndicate on Toshara, exploring the Separatist history of Akiva, meeting a cast of truly memorable characters, it was good.

And then I hit the ending. I have issues with endings. I got to the end of the original Final Fantasy VII probably 15 times, and didn’t actually watch the ending until 15 years later. If it wasn’t for the fact I’m required to finish a game before reviewing it, I’d probably skip the ending in 95% of games.

The culmination of events in Star Wars Outlaws is the most rewarding and satisfying conclusion to a video-game that I can remember. It elevates the entire story, turns something good fantastic, ties into the wider galaxy of Star Wars effortlessly, and it doesn’t rely on countless cameos to do it.

A Star Wars video-game has never felt this authentic.

That Star Wars Feeling

That authenticity, that Star Wars feeling, spreads and infects every single aspect of the game. This is all without a single Jedi or lightsaber. Ubisoft’s game worlds have long been some of the most visually impressive offerings in the video-game space, Avatar was visually outstanding, but Massive could have developed the best we’ve seen to date.

Everything looks and feels as though it was filmed in the 80s. The lighting, the screen filters, the simplicity of the Speeder and Trailblazer design, nearly everything is a visual package perfectly befitting the original movies.

Blasting across the open sands of Tatooine on a Speeder, looking for a random innocent and unknown child to run over, was a blast. Navigating the back alleys of Mos Eisley, avoiding the gaze of the Empire, fantastic. Leaping over cliffs in the windy canyons of Tashora, glorious.

I’ve finished the game and still find myself drawn to fighting stuff in space, for no other reason than it just looks amazing.

Star Wars potential will always be best delivered in an open-world experience, and Massive has created one of the most visually breathtaking galaxies I’ve ever seen.

I did say nearly everything. Unfortunately, the characters are struggling to keep up. The animations are clean and crisp, the voice-over work stellar, but highlighting characters during dialogue often presents dead expressions and strangely wandering eyes. It’s a minor discrepancy, one only really noticeable because of how high the bar is in the rest of the game.

A Very Ubisoft Open World

The open-world elements of the game are very Ubisofted? Ubisoftfied? It’s very Ubisoft. Clear similarities with Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Watch Dogs, it’s a recipe they have used for many years, and it’s one that works.

Star Wars Outlaws does follow the more recent evolutions of the open-world formula. Many of the aspects of exploration are objective marked and intel based, creating sequences of eavesdropping on conversations and stealing datapads to reveal locations of interest.

That said, I never once felt bored exploring the open-world areas of the game, I enjoyed every minute. The stealth and combat system made approaching syndicate strongholds an intriguing playground of ideas and approaches, and while the constant reward of Speeder and ship skins grew tiresome toward the end, I near enough 100% completed every POI before that happened.

More Challenging Than I Expected

The game is a lot more stealth based than I was expecting. I spent more time analyzing patrol patterns, sneaking through vents, and quietly punching Stormtroopers in the face than I did in open blaster fire, but the combat and stealth systems complement each other perfectly, eventually.

In the beginning hours of the game, before Kay has learned many new abilities, it can be surprisingly difficult. Frequently I found being discovered was a death sentence, overwhelmed by Pyke Syndicate soldiers, Gamorrean guards, even angry bandits.

That was until I’d met a few Experts, unlocked some set item bonuses, and upgraded my Adrenaline Shot, the latter being the single best aspect of the entire combat system. Slowing down time, picking enemies one by one, and watching Kay’s Han Solo hip fire wipe them all out is satisfying from start to finish.

The Expert System Is Surprisingly Good

The Expert system is one that I initially presumed to be rather dull and unimaginative, a glorified interface for skills and abilities, just with a different paint job to what we’ve seen before. I was wrong.

Experts are characters dotted throughout the universe that Kay meets, either through story progression, side quests, or hidden tidbits of intel discovered here and there. Bram, the Zabrak Bartender, Sheriff Quint, the Weequay Gunslinger, these are characters that live and breathe in the world Kay explores.

It creates a meaningful connection and justification for the learning of new abilities, it’s not something Kay just pulled out of a hat because she killed enough Stormtroopers to figure out how to shoot her blaster a bit quicker.

The Unlock Conditions, challenges and requirements Kay must meet for the Experts to teach her the abilities, create another layer of rewarding exploration and challenge that the more objective-based open-world games can sometimes lack.

I Expected Someone With Your Reputation To Be A Little…Better

The Reputation system of Star Wars Outlaws was a prime target for much of the marketing in the build up to release, but it’s a system that doesn’t feel it lives up to its potential.

Many of the quests, contracts, and choices made throughout the story impact your relationship with the syndicates, but the consequence of these relationships is lacking.

With a Good rating, Kay can freely explore the syndicate controlled areas of each city, making other quests and objectives in these areas infinitely easier to achieve. Higher ranks reward Kay with rare and exclusive gear.

It works, managing the reputations can be fun during certain parts of the game, but the choices seldom seem to matter outside an immediate conversation or event. Even hated factions, those that send death squads out to hunt Kay, can be farmed back to loving status in an hour or two.

It’s Not Without Its Issues

Despite its brilliance across practically every area of the game, Star Wars Outlaws is not without it’s open-world woes. Several times I was forced to close the game or reload a previous save because an elevator wouldn’t work, or Nix was distracted by something and stopped functioning entirely.

Spending many hours at certain points of interest trying to locate a single treasure chest with the Nix Sense ability felt a real step-down from the aerial ease of the Assassin’s Creed games. Turning what should be a challenging but rewarding element of exploration into something more frustrating.

It’s a game of many tiny problems, problems unlikely to make an impact if I didn’t enjoy it so much to want to complete practically everything.

Final Thoughts

The history of Star Wars in video-games is one marked with brilliance and marred with mediocrity. Rogue Squadron, Knights of the old Republic, the original Battlefront games, there’s no shortage of old classics that stand today as some of the best games to come out of the Star Wars galaxy.

For each of those, however, there’s another that even seasoned fans would like to forget ever happened. Republic Heroes, the Battlefront remaster, The Force Unleashed 2, it’s an IP with near limitless potential but one, that until recently, had yet to hit its stride in the modern era.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is easily among the best games under the Star Wars umbrella, and LEGO Star Wars has been carrying the banner for years. Now, however, it all feels real as Star Wars Outlaws joins those illustrious ranks as one of the greatest Star Wars games of all time.

Massive Entertainment created breathtaking environments across the galaxy, delivered a fast-paced combat system true to the scoundrel style, and crafted a story that rivals the modern movies. Star Wars Outlaws is, simply put, the Star Wars game of a generation.