On the floor, Star Wars Outlaws feels quite a bit like Respawn‘s Jedi: Fallen Order.
It’s a sport that takes a longtime developer, again by a monolith writer, and lets them play with their Star Wars toys. It’s bought sky-high manufacturing worth, a enjoyable solid of recent characters, a standout primary duo and it does ship on the Star Wars fantasy.
Nonetheless, the sport additionally units out fascinating concepts that it doesn’t capitalize on, performs it far too secure, and is stuffed with technical issues. We come away from Star Wars Outlaws having loved our time, but in addition overwhelmed by the sensation that the sequel has the potential to be unimaginable.
Star Wars Outlaws follows Kay Vess, a down-on-her-luck scoundrel making her approach within the galaxy. Following a job gone unsuitable, she must clear her title, and the hefty bounty on her head. Set within the 12 months between Empire Strikes Again and Return of the Jedi, within the Empire-controlled galaxy, the one approach for Kay to make the credit she wants is to get entangled with the underworld.
It’s right here we’re launched to the sport’s primary factions; The Pykes, Crimson Daybreak, The Ashiga Clan, and The Hutts. Kay takes on missions for the clans, and the way she completes these can lead to her fame with these clans growing, or falling into disrepute.
The sport does an excellent job from the outset of setting the clans up like they’re going to be an enormous think about your playthrough, however the actuality is much much less fascinating. For instance, exterior of two particular cases (that we received’t element attributable to spoilers) there’s just about no affect on the primary story. What affect there’s so minor you can virtually really feel the place the developer realized they’d need to execute this story second in such a approach that would match each clan.
Star Wars Outlaws spends plenty of time telling you that the clan you facet with is necessary, however the advantages are minor and largely beauty. Not solely this, however even for those who’re on the lowest attainable ranking with a clan, you should purchase your approach again into their luck through simply discovered in-game gadgets.
The clan system often manifests in gameplay while you’re tasked with coming into an space that’s clan-affiliated, so your standing will affect if the enemies begin to assault you immediately. Once more, this appears like an enormous problem within the early sport, however it’s largely forgotten as the sport progresses.
“Star Wars Outlaws spends plenty of time telling you that the clan you facet with is necessary, however the advantages are minor and largely beauty.”
Talking of gameplay, Star Wars Outlaws is a third-person shooter, with a higher-than-expected emphasis on stealth. The gunplay is serviceable, akin to Naughty Canine‘s Uncharted collection, however it’s by no means standout. The primary narrative units up some wonderful, cinematic gunfights, however the random battles out on the planet aren’t something particular.
The sport’s stealth system largely revolves round utilizing Nix, Kay’s totally lovely companion, to distract your enemy, or work together with an alarm in an effort to both take the enemy down, or sneak previous them. The stealth is rarely laborious, and in the direction of the top of the sport we started to understand fairly really easy it was to dash proper previous most guards, however it’s additionally by no means massively intrusive.
Kay and Nix are the undisputed highlights of the sport. Kay, performed by Humberly Gonzalez, is a heat, earnest protagonist, that by no means appears like she’s doing a Han Solo impression. Kay and Nix have to hold the whole sport, and contemplating certainly one of them can’t converse, they do a superb job. Very similar to Cal and BD-1, they really feel like pure additions to the Star Wars universe.
The sport’s robust writing carries throughout its primary story, to its smaller facet tales, and even right down to its random collectibles. Each fashionable sport is crammed with random bits of paper filled with dialogue, that most individuals will utterly ignore, however we learn each single knowledge pad we present in Outlaws. Not solely as a result of they supply good context for the world, and supply some gameplay advantages such because the places of things, but in addition it’s the place a few of the funniest writing within the sport is discovered.
The sport largely avoids the entice of dangling dozens of legacy characters in entrance of you, however in these knowledge pads it’s clear the builders wished to have enjoyable with the truth that they’re enjoying within the Star Wars toybox, and we don’t blame them.
Nix will not be solely a terrific comedian presence and accomplice to Kay within the narrative, he’s additionally a helpful gameplay instrument. Developer Large Leisure beforehand described him as an extendable arm on the planet. He’ll seize gadgets, decide up collectibles, distract enemies, and spotlight factors of curiosity.
“Each fashionable sport is crammed with random bits of paper filled with dialogue, that most individuals will utterly ignore, however we learn each single knowledge pad we present in Outlaws.”
Star Wars Outlaws is pitched as the primary open-world Star Wars sport, however we had been quite disillusioned with the sport’s 4 primary planets. Solely three of the planets, Tosharna, Tattoine, and a 3rd we received’t spoil, are totally explorable. Kijimi is basically only a metropolis, that whereas detailed, and enormous, isn’t what you’d count on from an open-world space.
Tattooine is the most effective of the bunch. It’s massive, and every of its settlements feels filled with conversations to pay attention into, and buildings to stalk by means of. We acknowledge that getting the possibility to discover a large-scale Tattooine is basically simply Star Wars porn, however it’s additionally the sport’s finest space from a content material and writing perspective, not merely attributable to nostalgia.
Whereas the sport isn’t overstuffed with issues to do within the typical Ubisoft sense, the facet content material that’s there suffers from a special problem. Exterior of credit (that are extremely simple to come back by), the reward for nearly each facet mission or contract is tied to your standing with the assorted factions.
As talked about beforehand, the faction system doesn’t find yourself being crucial, and the rewards for being loyal to at least one faction or the opposite are so minor that an elevated fame with these factions is not any nice reward.
We encountered a number of technical points throughout our playthrough of Star Wars Outlaws on PS5. This included issues like characters disappearing out of the world, our speeder additionally disappearing leaving us floating mid-air as we sped throughout a planet, a number of voice traces enjoying without delay, and interactable components not showing.
In probably the most egregious bug we encountered, Nix turned solely unusable, thus making that space’s puzzle solely damaged. The one repair for this was to load a save from three hours earlier. We additionally encountered our share of laborious crashes, although the sport’s beneficiant autosave meant this was extra annoying than catastrophic.
We used the “favours high quality mode” which runs at 40FPS, and is obtainable to these on a display that helps VRR. This was a pleasant stability between the uneven high quality setting and the blurry, however regular efficiency mode.
Star Wars Outlaws does many issues nicely, however we’re left disillusioned that so few of its components obtain greatness. The assorted Syndicates are arrange strongly within the sport’s opening, however fall to the facet as the sport progresses, leaving the fame system feeling massively underutilized. Tattooine is a standout, however the sport doesn’t do as a lot with its different planets as we had appreciated.
You possibly can play by means of Star Wars Outlaws and have an gratifying time, as we did, however you’ll be left craving for a sequel that takes all its finest bits, of which there are loads, and delivers on them to the fullest. For now, it’s an excellent first step right into a wider galaxy, however received’t bother lists of the most effective Star Wars adventures ever.
A duplicate of Star Wars: Outlaws was equipped by Ubisoft for this evaluate.
