Summary
Playing through three sections ofStar Wars Outlaws- advertised loudly as the first-ever open worldStar Warsgame during this year’sUbisoft Forward- my underlying thought was that this is not an open world game. Since this would be an odd thing to lie about, it’s obviously more the case that three linear sections were chosen to best highlight the game, but that in itself is a bit worrying. With three chances to show the game off, the open world was never chosen. What I saw left me excited and concerned in equal measure.
Both of these feelings can be summed up in a single sentence: Star Wars Outlaws would have been Game of the Year in 2011. On the one hand, I love that era of gaming. The second Outlaws section had me infiltrating an abandoned mine with yellow-paint climbing, swinging across gaps, charging elevators with electric blasts, and escaping through a linear platforming set-piece while being chased by a collapsing mineshaft.
On the other hand, a lot of those design conventions are quite dated. The second Outlaws section had me infiltrating an abandoned mine with yellow-paint climbing (yawn!), swinging across gaps (dull!), and so on and so forth. Star Wars Outlaws is leaving itself open to criticism by essentially being Star Wars Uncharted, but the vast majority of gamers would consider Star WarsUnchartedto be a killer pitch. The cards are on the table that this is chasing excellence in a well established framework rather than anything groundbreaking, and now Outlaws just needs to deliver.
We almost had Star Wars Uncharted with Star Wars: 1313, a project that was sadly cancelled and many still think about today. Outlaws could deliver on those promises.
For me, it will depend on how many recycled ideas it uses, and how often. There were two unlocking systems I came across, one a cryptic tile matcher like Wordle, the other a rhythmic button tapper, and across a few 20 minute bursts, sure. Fun. But a 30 hour game that can grow to 60? They’re the kind of thing that can quickly become a bit of a nuisance.
Likewise, another section had me sneaking past a bunch of guards protecting an artefact, leaving me with the choice to take them out one by one or go in guns blazing. Also very 2011, and also very easy to become incredibly boring after being overused. There didn’t seem much new here - sneak behind, distract, knock out, get spotted, kill everyone… it’s that whole deal, but people like it.
Then the final section was more standard Star Wars fare, inside an Imperial base with its too-white lighting with some cover shooting and space battling. This was a minor stellar skirmish, with just two ships after me, but the gameplay felt a little simple compared to Squadrons or even the battles inStarfield. Aiming tracking with where ships will be heading rather than just aiming at them is a decent slice of realism, but the controls were a little less responsive than I’d like if this is to be a regular occurrence. Maybe I should have tried spinning, I hear that’s a good trick. Or perhaps even listing lazily to the left. Now that’s a manoeuvre.
Another standard Star Wars fare, the screenwipe, was not present in the game despite featuring heavily in trailers.
As for our heroes, the first thing about protagonist Ves you need to know is that she made me cry and scream and wet my pants because she has a woke chin or a feminist haircut or something. Irritating screams of discourse aside, there didn’t seem much to her. A longer section would have suited her more than three unrelated fragments, especially as I ate into the first section’s cutscene by wandering around the city a little. Nix, however, was the star of the show with his mischievous Stitch-like personality and ability to perform several useful tasks like detonating the packs of enemy guards.
Great early ’10s game design hasn’t gone out of style. Tech aside, a lot of theSpider-Mangames' DNA hails from this era, and I love those. Likewise, while the middle section I played with all of the platforming immediately crystallised my impression that Outlaws was playing it a little safe, it was also easily my favourite section to play, and one of the best atSGFfull stop. My biggest issue comes with the game hiding its open world.
While there was a cavernous casino city and a blizzard-stricken ice fortress (Outlaws is a band that plays the classics), these seemed like fairly small dwellings. I’d love for the whole game to be like that, with no wasted space and everything more intimate and purposeful, which would make sense for Vess' story as a low-level scoundrel rather than a galaxy-changing Jedi. The chase section did lead to a bike sequence (unfortunately unplayable) which suggests some level of exploration. It also can’t just be hub after hub after hub if it wants to be the first open world Star Wars game becauseStar Wars Jedialready does that.
I suspect this lack of open world gameplay was to have greater control over what players could see, which in turn made for less pressure on devs - making three vertical slices that cut to black once you reach the end is easier than a 60 minute open world playground. But I have gradually fallen out of love withUbisoft’sFar Cryseries as it has continued to repeat the same old ideas while making the map bigger and bigger, emptier and emptier.
DittoAssassin’s Creed,whose dated mechanics got major cheers at the Ubisoft Forwardwhile I watched on, a little perplexed. If Star Wars Outlaws, as the first game in the series, can resist the temptation to go ‘bigger = better’ and make a concentrated throwback of an action adventure game, maybe Ubisoft and the galaxy have a new hope.
Star Wars Outlaws
WHERE TO PLAY
Star Wars Outlaws follows Kay Vess as she bids to out manoeuver the galaxy’s deadliest criminals. An open-world action-adventure game from Ubisoft, it also features grand space battles and a deep story.
