Star Wars Outlaws is the first open-world game in the franchise’s nearly 50-year history and a different slice of pie to the main Star Wars stories orientating around the Jedi Order and the Sith. But with such a vast galaxy to explore, it’s a shame it feels so empty.
Massive Entertainment’s story follows street-rat scoundrel Kay Vess and her Merqaal companion Nix in a much more grounded story than the usual Jedi space-wizard Star Wars affair, and it’s a refreshing step away from the norm.
Although there’s a lot to like about Outlaws, and it’s an enjoyable experience for Star Wars fans new and old, it misses the opportunity to expand the universe’s lore beyond what we see on the big screen.
Home away from home
As a Star Wars fan, any chance to delve into life on familiar planets is a welcome sight. These worlds are dripping with lore and atmosphere, but until now, we haven’t had the opportunity to get up close and personal with them in the way Outlaws offers.
You traverse the hustle and bustle of Canto and explore Cantinas across the galaxy, all while keeping an ear to the ground to listen for opportunities. Eavesdropping on conversations reveals new secrets and offers hints of where to explore. These populated environments truly feel alive, and I often found myself distracted by everything going on while trying to complete a quest.
How Kay Vess interacts with this world hammers home the strength she has as a protagonist. With regular splashes of sarcasm and a general misunderstanding of the larger stories at play in the Star Wars world, she feels very relatable. But the supporting cast are the real stars of the show.
ND-5, a repurposed battle droid tasked with keeping an eye on your progress during the main story, now ranks alongside R2-D2 as one of my favorite Star Wars droids, thanks to his growth throughout the story. Outlaws shows us that droids have real emotions, too. Ank, a batlike Chadra-Fan with an addiction to explosives, is another standout character—though the rest of the crew are equally fun.
And then there’s Nix, Kay’s adorable Merqaal companion, who acts as a second playable character in certain situations. You can direct him to flick switches, retrieve objects, and, my personal favorite, play dead to distract an enemy.
Wide open spaces
Outlaws’ open-world environment is a heavy focus of its marketing. The game is being pushed as the first open-world Star Wars, and unfortunately, it leaves much to be desired. The deserts of Tattooine and the jungles of Akiva are populated with empty spaces, rivers, and foliage with sparse points of interest, making long journeys to complete quests feel tedious and grating.
It’s a trend that gamers are seeing too often. Developers are pushing for open-world games because an open world sounds good, not because it works. As a result, Outlaws falls into the same trap as Halo Infinite and Gears of War 5—featuring an open world because it can and not because it should.
Similarly, while it makes sense in the story that Outlaws includes Tattooine as an open-world environment, given Jabba the Hutt and his cartel make an appearance, we’ve been there far too many times. The Star Wars franchise has a weird love affair with this barren desert landscape, and I wholeheartedly agree with Anakin Skywalker—I hate sand.
I can say the same about protagonist Kay Vess’s origin story. Abandoned as a child and left to a lowly life without much promise, she dreams of hitting it big and making a life for herself elsewhere in the galaxy. From Anakin in the prequel series to Rey in the recent trilogy, this tale has been done to death.
Familiar yet frustrating
Star Wars Outlaws’ biggest problem, however, is that it tries to include a variety of gameplay mechanics, but doesn’t do anything new or exciting. There’s nothing it does badly, but there’s equally nothing that stands out from the crowd.
If you’ve played Assassin’s Creed or last year’s Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, you’ll immediately spot the similarities—the biggest of which are the clear-as-day yellow markings directing you where to climb. At times, you even get a big, obvious arrow pointing you to your objective. Call me cynical, but I don’t think maintenance shafts have directions in them.
Features like this are part and parcel of modern gaming and will be overlooked by many, but the one thing I can’t ignore is how clunky Outlaws’ traversal, combat, and stealth mechanics feel.
Sometimes, you automatically cling to climbable walls, while other times you don’t, and end up falling to your death. Jumping is also incredibly frustrating—you can occasionally do an Olympic-level long jump, but you often fail to leap over a small ledge.
Combat is equally frustrating, as Kay isn’t super-skilled with a blaster like Han Solo or Boba Fett. Though she does have an adrenaline ability that slows down time, so you can pick off targets with a quick flurry of shots, it usually feels like you’re shooting BB Gun.
The most surprising thing of all, however, is how disappointing the stealth mechanics are. With decades of experience making Assassin’s Creed titles, you’d think the Ubisoft-owned studio would be masters at stealth. Instead, enemies either have the intelligence of a wet blanket, oblivious to anything you’re doing, or eagle-eyed vision that spots you from a mile off.
Consistency, clearly, is not one of Star Wars Outlaws’ strong suits.
What could have been
I’m in a difficult head space with Outlaws. I did have fun with the game, and it offers a fairly decent experience on the whole, especially for Star Wars fans. Any chance to enjoy the Star Wars world in more detail is a welcome one, but Outlaws doesn’t stand out as a must-play.
There’s no denying it fell short of my expectations. I hoped for an open world filled with possibilities, always offering me something new to try. Instead, the environment is bitterly lackluster, and I can’t help but feel Outlaws would have been a better game if it had a mission hub and smaller environments to explore, rather than an open world.
Sadly, Outlaws doesn’t quite fit the role it was supposedly created for. Had the developer fully ironed out all the gameplay kinks and filled the environments with interesting things to do, Outlaws may have been able to go toe-to-toe with Jedi Survivor—but alas.
Instead, it leaves behind little more than a few fond memories and enjoyable experiences, and I probably won’t be returning to it any time soon.
