A long time ago in a galaxy with untapped potential. Star Wars: Outlaws Review

Star Wars: Outlaws is an open-world, third-person action game developed by Ubisoft’s Swedish studio Massive Entertainment. The game lets you experience the Star Wars universe not from the perspective of a Force-wielding Jedi Knight, but rather that of Han Solo’s “colleague” – outlaw Kay Vess and her furry little companion – a Merqaal alien named Nix.

Star Wars: Outlaws, or a distant galaxy from the perspective of a thief

The game’s main asset is undoubtedly the omnipresent Star Wars atmosphere. This can be seen, among others, in the meticulously designed locations on the five planets we visit, inhabited by an extraordinary human-space-robot society. The time of the action, which takes place between the events of the films “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi”, was also perfectly chosen and takes us to the most traditional imagination of this universe. When during the game we visit the city of Mos Eisley on the desert planet Tatooine with stormtroopers patrolling the streets and mammoth-like banthas walking around them and visit the famous cantina, we can literally feel like we are in the old film trilogy. Minigames such as the Kassel Sabak card game, the possibility of betting on fatier races, or climatic slot machine games only enhance this atmosphere.

Since we play as a thief in Star Wars: Outlaws, we get to know the criminal underworld very well. The game’s plot is a skillfully written heist story, a story about a planned grand heist, in which we first gather a team, and then pull off the biggest heist in the galaxy. It is to allow us to get back at the brutal boss of the new cartel, who marked us with the Mark of Death for the theft experienced in the first hours of the game.

The game has an interesting outline of our protagonist, whose past and path to becoming a thief we learn about during many flashbacks. The companions we recruit for the heist are interesting, but their characters are lacking in greater depth, especially the android ND-5. The story very well captures the climate of the underworld, in which it is not about the fight between good and evil, but about survival and satisfying one’s selfish motives, and individual characters, even those who are positively disposed towards us, are capable of betraying and killing just to earn more.

Between the Hutts and the Scarlet Dawn

When it comes to the underworld, the game, in addition to the main missions, features interesting mechanics of maneuvering between four galactic cartels. – Pyke Syndicate, Scarlet Dawn, Hutt Cartel and Ashig Clan. During the game, we will complete orders for individual gangs, increasing our reputation with them. This translates into better prices and unique goods in stores associated with them, additional missions, or the ability to visit territories occupied by them without raising an alarm, and other conveniences.

However, very often, when completing a mission for one gang, we can decide at some point to betray it and support another group competing with it. In this way, we will usually gain a better reward and improve our reputation with the new faction, while worsening it with the first one. Throughout the game, we can maneuver between factions, cyclically increasing and decreasing reputation with the given cartels. However, lowering reputation is associated with difficulties – less access to the missions of a given faction, limited entry to its territories, and finally even attracting hunters who will have the task of eliminating the heroine we control. Unfortunately, the cartels system has little impact on completing the main missions, giving the impression of a separate game.

Sneaking Among the Stormtroopers

The gameplay itself draws from many popular titles – primarily Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed series. When it comes to exploring the world, including climbing and combat, we can often feel like we’re playing an Uncharted game, but in the Star Wars universe.

Star Wars: Outlaws can largely be called stealth, because it seems to be the creators’ default approach to combat. And although many missions can be completed by fighting enemies in direct gunfights, this is made more difficult by, among other things, the fact that our heroine can only carry her basic blaster (although it can be improved in various ways), picking up and using enemy weapons only for a moment, and throwing them away with every interaction with the environment. Players who prefer open combat may also be disappointed by the fact that the game includes missions that can only be completed quietly, and any alarm triggering returns us to a checkpoint.

Unfortunately, the stealth system is quite clumsy, much less developed than in the Assassin’s Creed games. In the game, it is true that you can distract enemies, either by using various tricks of the accompanying Nix or the whistle popular in such sequences, but you can’t even hide the bodies of fallen enemies. Although, on the other hand, why hide the bodies if the guards are only temporarily more worried after seeing their dead colleagues, but it is enough to hide for a short time and they will completely forget about the matter.

The enemy AI is simply stupid. The whistle itself only distracts the nearest enemy, while an enemy standing a meter away will not hear the whistle. Enemies also do not hear the sound of a scuffle, which is why it is most effective to attack them one by one with a deafening fist, even right behind your teammate’s back. And here’s a warning – a single headshot from a blaster is usually not able to knock down an enemy, but hitting our protagonist through a stormtrooper’s helmet definitely disables him from further combat. Additionally, when sneaking during a mission, there is no save at any point, which often takes us back a few minutes and several defeated enemies. There are also no traps that could help in a secret fight with enemies. If sneaking is the basic combat system, it should be done much better, because it’s simply boring.

It could be much better

Although the presented world seems alive at first glance, you can feel in it as if you were in a large model. Sneaking through the empire’s base and seeing the AT-ST machine standing alone, you would like to get on it and fight with it. Unfortunately, although we are the target of attack by other AT-STs, there is no such possibility. In the entire open-world game, we cannot get on any other vehicle than our speeder and spaceship, which we use to travel to planetary orbits.

Similarly, the “police” system known from many open-world games is very simplified. If we mess up the game world too much, or simply appear in an area controlled by the empire, we will be stopped and arrested, or killed in combat. When we get six “stars”, elite Death Troopers will chase us. However, before each chase, it is enough to hide for a moment to stop being wanted – even in the center of an enemy base! On the other hand, being arrested will take us a lot of credits, but will only send us a few hundred meters away from the location where we got caught, even if it is still a restricted area. Flying on a speeder is also problematic, as we cannot shoot at enemies except for a charged special attack when they are constantly attacking us.

The game has thrown in a lot of really interesting mechanics known from other games, but in almost every case they are worse than in the titles that became famous for using them. The game does not implement any of these mechanics in an outstanding way, nor does it introduce anything exceptional in such a way. It is a bit like an average paper written for a credit, in which it did what was necessary to pass, but not much more.

However, some mechanics in the game are worth appreciating. Among the more interesting solutions is acquiring minor missions by eavesdropping or finding clues about them in the environment – this is a much more natural way than through hundreds of markers on the map known from many open-world games. The system of acquiring new skills is interesting, which consists in finding the right expert, we have to do minor challenges, such as defeating a given number of enemies appropriately, or finding several ways to please Nix, who accompanies us everywhere. Also great is opening locks in the form of a rhythmic mini-game or hacking based on the rules of the board game Mastermaind.

In terms of technical aspects, I didn’t experience many bugs while playing on the Xbox Series X console, although I did encounter a few minor glitches that didn’t hinder my gameplay in any way. Graphically, the game isn’t particularly impressive, but it’s not bad either.

Summary

Star Wars: Outlaws is a game that can be played primarily by Star Wars fans. If they turn a blind eye to the shortcomings and immerse themselves in the role of a rogue planning the heist of a lifetime, maneuvering between space cartels, they will have a really good time. However, if someone is allergic to stealth and sees nothing appealing in stories from a distant galaxy, they should subtract a point from the overall rating, and the game itself can be given up with a clear conscience. You will certainly not find anything exceptional here in terms of mechanics and gameplay. On the other hand, in many places in the production you can see its untapped potential. If Ubisoft decides to continue the story of Kay Vess, it will not take much to make it not only a solid, but also a very good game.

Rating: 7.5/10