Review
Played on: Xbox Series XReleased: 2024
As a neat Christmas bonus last year, I was lucky enough to win the whole Ultimate Edition of Star Wars Outlaws! A game I was planning on purchasing for my holidays anyhow. It contains the season pass, which has had one DLC part released already, which I completed during my playthrough. The last DLC is not released yet.
There’s been a bit of controversy at launch of this title, regarding a somewhat rough launch state with bugs. These have since been fixed in updates. In addition, criticism has been aimed towards the originality of the title and the typical Ubisoft design of cramming an overwhelming amount of objectives in an open world. Regardless of this, my experience when it comes to the technical side has been fine and picking out the objectives with actual rewards is key to avoid becoming exhausted before the credits roll.
As for the originality part, I'll come back to that later. That said, I’m not typically a person that joins the bandwagon of complaints just because everyone else is. My opinion of the game was neutral until I actually got to sit down and play it, distanced from the launch hysteria and edgy journalists.
Let's take our alien pet Nix on an adventure and take a look!
Outlaws puts you in the boots of Kay Vess, a master thief if you will. Balancing the act of earning credits, but never having enough, and keeping on the good side of criminal factions to receive work. The first couple of hours sets her up for a heist, which of course goes wrong. Making Kay a wanted person and once again without enough credits to get by. Luckily, she escapes her home planet by stealing a ship, allowing her an opportunity of a fresh start on another planet.
Kay has the classic Star Wars style of a wheeler and dealer character, constantly being in trouble but great at her work. Always going for a plan B and barely escaping dangerous situations. A Han Solo personality if you will, complete with a little snarky attitude and fiery replies in conversations, but at the same time she's inexperienced and makes mistakes.
Accompanying her is Nix, a cute pet alien that acts like a dog. Bringing us the first unique gameplay element of Outlaws: Nix can be ordered around by Kay to perform various small tasks. The most useful is sending Nix to steal stuff, either from characters or picking up items, as he can't be detected. Especially useful in areas controlled by the criminal factions, as stealing from them is viewed as a hostile move. Sending Nix to do your dirty work covers your track!
As a neat Christmas bonus last year, I was lucky enough to win the whole Ultimate Edition of Star Wars Outlaws! A game I was planning on purchasing for my holidays anyhow. It contains the season pass, which has had one DLC part released already, which I completed during my playthrough. The last DLC is not released yet.
There’s been a bit of controversy at launch of this title, regarding a somewhat rough launch state with bugs. These have since been fixed in updates. In addition, criticism has been aimed towards the originality of the title and the typical Ubisoft design of cramming an overwhelming amount of objectives in an open world. Regardless of this, my experience when it comes to the technical side has been fine and picking out the objectives with actual rewards is key to avoid becoming exhausted before the credits roll.
As for the originality part, I'll come back to that later. That said, I’m not typically a person that joins the bandwagon of complaints just because everyone else is. My opinion of the game was neutral until I actually got to sit down and play it, distanced from the launch hysteria and edgy journalists.
Let's take our alien pet Nix on an adventure and take a look!
Outlaws puts you in the boots of Kay Vess, a master thief if you will. Balancing the act of earning credits, but never having enough, and keeping on the good side of criminal factions to receive work. The first couple of hours sets her up for a heist, which of course goes wrong. Making Kay a wanted person and once again without enough credits to get by. Luckily, she escapes her home planet by stealing a ship, allowing her an opportunity of a fresh start on another planet.
Kay has the classic Star Wars style of a wheeler and dealer character, constantly being in trouble but great at her work. Always going for a plan B and barely escaping dangerous situations. A Han Solo personality if you will, complete with a little snarky attitude and fiery replies in conversations, but at the same time she's inexperienced and makes mistakes.
Accompanying her is Nix, a cute pet alien that acts like a dog. Bringing us the first unique gameplay element of Outlaws: Nix can be ordered around by Kay to perform various small tasks. The most useful is sending Nix to steal stuff, either from characters or picking up items, as he can't be detected. Especially useful in areas controlled by the criminal factions, as stealing from them is viewed as a hostile move. Sending Nix to do your dirty work covers your track!
Nix can also scan environments for interactive objects or people. He can even attack enemies to distract them, leaving room for Kay to sneak past or knock them out from behind. It's a charming buddy relationship between Kay and Nix, with some heartwarming and funny moments in the story.
Along the way Kay also gets aid from companions on her ship, most noteworthy being RD-5. A seemingly mission focused, cold personality robot, who over time begins to show an emotional and thoughtful side. Then there's all the shady, cartel personalities you meet along the way to. The kind you avoid putting too much of your trust into! In general, the dialogue and cutscenes between the cast and especially the small talk as you wander about, has a great vibe.
The game takes place on four planets, each with their own biotype. Be it desert canyons, rainy jungles or a frozen planet. In turn, they give a distinct visual appearance at to which one you’re traversing. Each planet offers a rather large open world to roam, with towns containing salesmen, gambling places, food stores and lots of NPCs with side missions. It depicts an organic and living world within the towns in a busy and detailed fashion, but falls on the barren side that lacks personality when you're traversing about the open world.
The game takes place on four planets, each with their own biotype. Be it desert canyons, rainy jungles or a frozen planet. In turn, they give a distinct visual appearance at to which one you’re traversing. Each planet offers a rather large open world to roam, with towns containing salesmen, gambling places, food stores and lots of NPCs with side missions. It depicts an organic and living world within the towns in a busy and detailed fashion, but falls on the barren side that lacks personality when you're traversing about the open world.
Here we hit a bump in the road: if you're tired of crowded Ubisoft maps with tons of objectives thrown at you, then Outlaws is going to feel that way. It quickly opens up to become a little too large. Granted, the maps aren't overly massive if you speed through them on your hoverbike, but it feels like they should've toned down the size and focused on small areas as the towns and indoor locations are high quality. Luckily, one of the planets you visit is only a town and doesn't have an free roaming area. On the contrasting side, Tatooine feels too large and bland.
I mentioned the hoverbike earlier, it allows Kay to swiftly speed over open deserts, fields and jungle roads. It's a fun way to travel and with opportunities to take massive jumps and access new areas as you upgrade your bike. Sometimes you have to run away from pirates or imperial forces too. However I felt the hoverbike battles are underwhelming and messy. Don't get me wrong it's a cool ride, with it's 1980s cross bike vibe, but it serves basically as a horse does in an open world RPG.
The main bulk of the gameplay is a light stealth-based, action adventure. Most recommended is sneaking Kay into most places, avoiding gunfights altogether. There's lots of alternatives for hiding places and going unnoticed allows you to keep on the good side of each faction, while at the same time steal stuff with consequence. It can seem tricky to avoid detection all the time, but luckily checkpoints happen often and enemy awareness is very simplified and easy to avoid.
Sneak attacks are instant knock outs, but you can also engage in shoot-outs with Kay's trusty laser gun. These fights are fairly simple in nature and lack a bit of engagement to make them memorable. You can fill a meter to put Kay in a slow-mo, gunslinger move. When doing this Kay will shoot multiple enemies in one sequence. It’s a flashy, yet a fairly simplistic super attack. The stealth approach is clearly the most engaging, but you'll be forced into some shoot outs during the course of the campaign nevertheless.
As mentioned, stealth is key to keeping a good relationship with the four criminal cartels. Kinda reminiscent to how Grand Theft Auto 2 worked; doing tasks for one gang might annoy another. Doing each mission loud with guns will result in Kay losing faith with a cartel, resulting in whole areas on maps becoming hostile. What's key here is keeping all the factions happy by successfully completing missions undetected. Stealing from one faction, for another, unnoticed results in no penalties. It's a balancing act and it's exciting!
As mentioned, stealth is key to keeping a good relationship with the four criminal cartels. Kinda reminiscent to how Grand Theft Auto 2 worked; doing tasks for one gang might annoy another. Doing each mission loud with guns will result in Kay losing faith with a cartel, resulting in whole areas on maps becoming hostile. What's key here is keeping all the factions happy by successfully completing missions undetected. Stealing from one faction, for another, unnoticed results in no penalties. It's a balancing act and it's exciting!
Meeting characters along the way, each with their own speciality in various combat or exploring tactics, grants Kay access to their ability upgrades. Completing tasks like pulling off certain amounts of headshots, stealing items from enemies or successfully opening safe boxes, to mention a few of many, will unlock an ability. Which in turn gives Kay some form of upgrade to make her adventure easier. Such as extending the life bar, faster crouch movement or being less detectable by enemies are welcome additions. These rewards make the list of mini-tasks to unlock an ability interesting and engaging to complete.
I mentioned the hoverbike earlier, it allows Kay to swiftly speed over open deserts, fields and jungle roads. It's a fun way to travel and with opportunities to take massive jumps and access new areas as you upgrade your bike. Sometimes you have to run away from pirates or imperial forces too. However I felt the hoverbike battles are underwhelming and messy. Don't get me wrong it's a cool ride, with it's 1980s cross bike vibe, but it serves basically as a horse does in an open world RPG.
Speaking of vehicles, you can use Kay's spaceship to delve into some space battles too. There’s a small orbital area to roam around each planet, with lots of minerals and resources to collect in massive battleship wrecks. Engaging in space battles is quite fun, taking sharp turns to follow enemy ships and landing a rocket or laser hit on them, all while keeping an eye on your shield.
I'd put the spaceship battles on the same page as Starfield, review here, they're a a limited entertaining diversion, but in no way have the gameplay depth needed to sink into. As a result they feel a little disconnected from the main game. If you want Star Wars space battles with more depth and tactics try Star Wars Squadrons, review of that here. Unlike Starfield though, Outlaws cleverly masks it's transition from orbit to landing on the planet surfaces with a neat cutscene speeding through clouds, rather than just a static loading screen!
When it comes to aesthetics, Outlaws has nailed the visual style of the 70s and 80s Star Wars movies, complete with visual video effects typical for that era. Graphically it's a great looking title, in similar fashion to the Star Wars Jedi titles. Although, Outlaws is a far larger and free-roaming title than those. Just like how Ubisoft cleverly balances massive open areas and smaller finesse on indoor locations with their Assassin's Creed series, Outlaws does the same.
I enjoyed the sheer visual variation of going from say a jungle area, deep into a immaculately clean and shiny, laboratory like, environment of an Imperial Army base. Or sneaking about in grass blowing in the wind, out on some plains while the sunset falls over the planet surface in some spectacular colour scheme!
For consoles you can choose from a few graphics options, whatever you choose results in some impressive visuals with ray tracing across the board and fairly similar amounts of detail. Resolution avoids looking blurry but resides in the lower range if you go for performance mode. If you're lucky enough to own a 120hz TV, it allows a 40 fps mode. It resides between fidelity at 30fps, which is the highest setting for resolution, reflections and finer detail, and performance mode at 60fps. It feels more responsive than 30 fps, yet doesn't quite have the smoothness off 60 fps when it comes to faster gameplay, like driving around on the hoverbike.
A factor for the rather lukewarm reception by players for this release, could be related to a lack of proper identity. When Outlaws was announced I genuinely thought it was the third game in the Fallen Order/Survivor Jedi series, reviews of those here, and baffled to learn that it wasn't. They too are action adventures, Outlaws is a Ubisoft and not an Electronic Arts release, but I understand where my confusion began. Not only is the visual aesthetic similar, it's mimicking the classic Star Wars movies after all, but a lot of the locations share common appearances. This is due to the similar design of spaceships, bases and the general lore of the franchise.
Even gameplay shares commonalities with the Star Wars Jedi titles, like the Tomb Raider styled traversal when exploring and climbing. I might add that Outlaws has some clever alternative paths if you use the time to sneak about thoroughly, a rewarding element for explorer fans! Another similarity is that the latest Star Wars Jedi title had a level with with a hoverbike, in Outlaws though, it's a large part of traversal.
That said, the combat is were Outlaws and EA's Jedi games part ways. They're vastly different. One is souls-like lightsaber battles, the other is stealth light with third person shooting. Nevertheless, standing from the outside all these titles kind of seem alike. Luckily, they're not and offer some very different experiences. For a more casual player, I'd think Outlaws is a better choice, with an overall complete Star Wars package of colourful characters, lightgun shooting, space battles and hoverbiking.
With updates out and keeping to main campaign, it results in another neat Star Wars experience of modern times. Both for fans of the franchise and players who enjoy sci-fi with light stealth elements will really enjoy this.
