Stagnation and scandal has left Ubisoft’s recent output feeling more like bloated “products” than actual experiences, and too many Star Wars properties of late are content to mash tired series locations with overused Jedi tropes and call it a day. Star Wars Outlaws seeks to subvert this status quo from the outset, as new protagonist Kay Vess is as far from a valiant, masturbatory Jedi Knight as you can get: She’s a scoundrel, building off of the Han Solo archetype as a thief planning one of the greatest heists the galaxy has ever seen.
Growing up on the corrupt casino city of Canto Bight, Kay survived as a low-level criminal acquiring tools of the trade that become core skills in Outlaws. Stealth gameplay, reminiscent of the Assassin’s Creed games, is fully incorporated into the experience, from sneaking to stealing to taking down unaware enemies. Kay is also handy with firearms and melee fighting, though the occasionally sluggish combat typically takes second place to satisfyingly covert traversal and exploration of this dangerous, unscrupulous world, aided by alien companion Nix.
Nix, an adorable marqaal, is frequently the star of the show, and controlling the creature is a consistent pleasure, not least of which because he an important part in the game’s plot. You do so with a sensing mechanic that gives extra awareness of the environment, and context-sensitive actions that allow him to assault unaware enemies or fetch unprotected weapons and loot. Nix can even enter a guard mode where he attacks any enemies that pose a threat to Kay, getting an edge over groups of enemies or allowing the player to focus on their current task.
Too many recent Ubisoft open-world games, despite being overloaded with side activities and graphical detail, leave you with a feeling of emptiness. By contrast, there’s a sense of dizzying abundance to Star Wars Outlaws, especially when it comes to simply immersing players in the setting and letting them explore. In the film chronology, Outlaws is set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, at the height of Imperial control, and this allows the game to explore new and old locations alike, with ground traversal covered on foot and via the series’s iconic speeder, then through space on Kay’s upgradeable ship The Trailblazer.
One pivotal setting, the moon of Toshara, posits lush outdoor locales resembling east African savanna alongside built-up districts thriving with criminal activity. “A wretched hive of scum and villainy” indeed. Subsequent areas such as the frozen wasteland Kijimi and the lawless desert planet Tatooine add variety to the open-world locations to be explored, and with the latter, Outlaws strikes a good balance between satisfying demands for wish fulfillment (being able to zoom around Tatooine on a speeder and explore the Dune Sea desert) and injecting the franchise with plenty of entirely new and well-conceived additions to the overall mythology.
The developers have truly gone out of their way to make the settings reactive to the player. Like a galactic spin on a Grand Theft Auto Wanted Level, getting caught committing crimes escalates notoriety with the Empire, whose Imperial forces will respond in force. At the same time, Outlaws features a system for reputation, where the player’s standing with the four crime syndicates of the universe impacts mission and territory access. Nearly every mission will change Kay’s reputation with the factions, and different approaches to gameplay will invariably alter the rewards and opportunities. Smartly, the game doesn’t allow players to stick to one faction, forcing allegiances to shift as the story plays out and Kay travels from planet to planet.
Galactic travel and aerial battles are well-handled and fun to engage with, and the game’s explosive, blockbuster-sized set pieces invite favorable comparison to the Uncharted series. Even beyond story missions, there’s never any shortage of action. Wherever Kay goes, “emergence events” occur nearby, such as suspicious conversations overheard in a cantina or a sudden ambush in space. These simultaneously open up new gameplay and mission possibilities while continually making the environments feel alive, be it planetside or in space.
There are kinks in the game’s armor, like skittish enemy AI and a bunch of absolutely gratuitous cameos (you’ve been warned Solo haters). For all of its efforts to stretch out to forge its own identity, Outlaws can’t resist occasionally returning to the nostalgia well. But such grievances are likely to run off you like water off a duck’s back. In the end, everything here, down to the scaleable difficulty, clever upgrade system that bypasses usual RPG-levelling mechanics where skills and upgrades are tied into missions, and the surprisingly fun minigames, is so well executed that you’ll always feel like your wildest galactic scoundrel fantasy has been realized.
This game was reviewed with code provided by Ubisoft.
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