It’s no secret that ever since Disney has taken over ownership of the franchise, there’s been no shortage of Star Wars media coming at us left, right and centre. Some of it clearly better than others and when it comes to the movies and tv series, it’s showing no signs of slowing down. When it comes to video games though, it’s one area of the Star Wars franchise that has seen fairly consistent releases right from when the story debuted back in the late 70’s, once again, with wide ranges of quality and success. But now with the latest release, Star Wars: Outlaws, we get our first ever open world, or actually open worlds game and puts us in the shoes of an area of the franchise that’s a bit less explored. The side of scum and villainy. Sure, it’s always been an aspect of the films, books and TV series, but it’s rarely the focus, especially when it comes to the games. To be honest, it’s a little refreshing to experience the colourful universe Star Wars has to offer without it being all about the Force, Jedis and lightsabers. Outlaws isn’t a perfect game and comes with some open world flaws but it gets a lot right while managing to capture the look, feel and sound of Star Wars.
In Outlaws you play as Kay Vess, a fast talking, quick witted thief that lives on Cantonica, the planet that houses Canto Bight, you might be familiar with the place if you’ve seen The Last Jedi. Yet Outlaws takes place between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi so we get to see a glimpse of the planet long before the events of episode 8 here. After a less than ideal run in with a gangland style faction leader, Kay finds herself on the run, forced to steal a ship and head off world to ensure she gets to see another day while working on getting the power and crew required to be able to take on the enemy factions head on and take her home back from the grips of evil. Well, greater evil technically. As mentioned before, you’re playing as a thief yourself, a refreshing take from typically playing the morally right Jedi characters all the time. This not only provides an interesting point of view, it allows you to play out the scoundrel Han Solo fantasies we’ve all dreamed of ever since seeing him shoot first back in A New Hope.
Your journey through the story of Star Wars: Outlaws will take you to numerous planets and let you travel between them in open space in your stolen vessel. It appears pretty obvious that there’s some clever loading going on as we fly through the atmosphere when travelling in and out of planets, but I did like that the process of travelling from world to world is pretty much seamless and helps build that immersion and sense that you are travelling the galaxy. I also loved that of the numerous planets available to visit, they each look and feel different, are interesting to explore and are packed with main and side objectives to do. The lush jungle planet of Akita for example offers very different landscapes, flora and fauna to what the dusty wide plains of Toshara or the frozen snow planet of Kijimi offer. And with the ability to travel the worlds at just about any time, you’re able to keep things visually interesting whenever you need to change it up, as there’s always plenty of side objectives and world events to engage with at any time when you’re feeling like taking a break from the main quest.
Some open world games fail to make the world interesting and often pad out the main questline with a bunch of meandering and uninteresting side objectives just to pad out the playtime. Thankfully, that’s not the case with Outlaws. I liked that there were always interesting things to do at just about every turn. And it offered side content that would pull me away from the main questline in a good way, due to them often dropping hints at what the rewards on offer would be, such as new blaster components or parts to go towards a new speeder upgrade for example.
A key aspect of Outlaws that is a core mechanic almost right from the get-go is its reputation system. This system tracks your alignment levels with the game’s various scum and villainy factions and comes with all the perks and consequences of doing so. This faction alignment system and the choices you make at key points throughout the story shape how cutscenes and interactions can play out, how merchants and the wider world interact with you and even the places you can get into without having an instant target on your back. This is a fluid system as your actions will increase and decrease your standing with the game’s various factions, and based on how high or low your relationship is with them, dictates how much you can or can’t get away with when you cross paths with them as well as perks such as discounts with their merchants and being granted access to use their bases of operation. For example, choosing to side with the Crimson Dawn early in the game will grant you the ability to use their base of operations without being instantly kicked out and opens up the opportunity for new quest lines but you’ll burn your relationship at that point with the Pyke Syndicate to do so.
This system, along with Kay giving off the impression she’s fairly new at this whole scoundrel thing lets Outlaws have that real sense of working your way up from the bottom. And thanks to the relationships you form along your journey, the impact that has on your alliances as well as near constant gear, vehicle and weapon upgrades you do have a real feeling that you’re becoming a better and more respected scoundrel the more you play. And that’s also reflected by the world and how other characters treat you. The late game Kay Vess feels like she’s come a long way compared to the character you were when the journey started.
But the game very much is a bunch of bad people working with or for other bad people. You quickly learn that it’s very hard to trust anyone. In a world like this you do get the sense that anyone would double cross anyone to be able to further their own quests or just live to see another day. Which isn’t too far from exactly what Kay Vess has to do to get by thanks to the high value death mark on her head.
There was a lot that I loved about Star Wars: Outlaws, some of the main things being it’s wide array of character designs that have you feeling like you are really living in a Star Wars space opera and also it’s diverse planets and set pieces. But as I mentioned in the intro of the review, it isn’t perfect and does come with a number of notable issues. In a game that is so character driven, it was a bit of a letdown to see how poor the facial animations were at times, noticed more so on the human characters, which in turn affects Kay Vess the most. Quite often appearing stiff and dated, and ended up limiting the emotional scenes from landing as well as they had the potential to. I also felt that it took too long for me to care about why I was doing what I was doing as there was little story setup or explanation for why I should care about Kay Vess until much later in the game. For a big chunk of the game’s length it seems just like it’s about a character that got in too deep with the wring crowd and was forced to run away.
From a gameplay perspective, I had issues, especially in the early game with Kay’s speeder. It’s the most efficient way to cross the vast distances that need to be travelled on each of the planets, but it handles poorly. Not terribly, but it just feels off, something that becomes more apparent when navigating through tighter areas or during chaotic combat encounters when you find yourself under attack. It does thankfully get better as you manage to increase the capabilities of your speeder. But that doesn’t begin to happen until you’re a good chunk into the story. Given the type of game it is, stealth sections pop up fairly frequently, and these can be incredibly frustrating due to them having unclear objectives, instant lose scenarios and really slow down the pacing of progression when you have to try them over and over, getting nowhere and having to do it all from the start when you get caught.
Overall, Star Wars: Outlaws delivers on the goal of giving the player the opportunity to live the life of a scoundrel in the Star Wars universe and shows that the story doesn’t need to have Jedis at the forefront to tell an interesting tale. It’s full of colourful and interesting characters, races and locales and the worlds are pact with things to stumble across to keep to busy for many hours. While it’s not without some notable issues, the game well and truly looks and sounds like the Star Wars universe millions of us have grown up loving and the pros it offers certainly outweigh the flaws and jank. Ubisoft Massive have shown once again they are capable of blending engaging gameplay with large scale worlds. I’m keen to see what the team come out with next.
A PS5 review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
If you want to see more content like this and never miss one of our frequent gaming and anime giveaways come and Follow Ani-Game on Twitter.