Star Wars Outlaws
Review
Bits and pieces
by JackCarter
reviewed on PC
A galaxy far, far away
Star Wars is nothing if not divisive. For some reason, people who love Star Wars seem to love to hate Star Wars. I'd be remiss to say all this vitriol started when Disney bought Lucasfilm. No, in fact Star Wars fans have hated Star Wars as long as I can remember. I was alive for the release of the prequels and the pure hatred spewed from those that claim to love it is etched in my mind. Of course, it's completely fine to not like something, even if that something is part of your favorite thing, but the "fans" can sometimes take it too far. I haven't liked everything that has come out of Star Wars, and I agree that the Disney Trilogy fumbled the bag, but I've never been compelled to send death threats to the cast and crew. Star Wars Outlaws is not unfettered from such division, finding the ire of internet critics and Star Wars fans alike, but is it warranted? Lets find out.
When I first started Outlaws I was struck by it's sheer beauty. Walking out into the dirty cyberpunk slums of Canto Bight, surrounded by beggars and merchants trying to get by while it's gaudy gold and ivory casino standing in the distance, a garish monument to the excess of consumption by it's most wealthy, really set the stage for the journey we were about to go on. Playing as Kay Vess, a down and out thief just trying to make (or steal) a living, we're thrust into the seedy underbelly of Canto Bight's crime syndicate, called Zerek Besh, led by vicious Sliro Ruback. After a heist gone wrong, Kay finds herself narrowly escaping imminent death at the hands of Silro by stealing his prized ship and making her getaway. From here you're on the run, bouncing around planets and picking up odd jobs for various factions of the galaxies most notorious gangs. Soon enough you get recruited by Jaylen Vrax and his droid (and arguably the best character) ND-5 to help them build a crew to steal millions of credits from Sliro. That goes about as well as expected.
Ubisoft standard
As much as Outlaws is a Star Wars game, it is also a Ubisoft game. If you're at all familiar with how they work, you'll be right at home here. The usual Ubisoft staple of climbing up walls with off-colored strategically placed ledges and grip-able objects will feel like a quaint throwback to a time before Breath of the Wild changed the market and made everything climbable. Similarly, it's cover based shooting feels ripped right out of the 2010's, and feels like means to an end, seemingly serving to exist only because AAA games need shooting nowadays. A lot of Outlaws gameplay reminded me of another developers game, the first Uncharted. Uncharted was heavily inspired by another Lucasfilm property, that of the roguish archeologist played by Harrison Ford, Indiana Jones, so it makes sense that a Lucasfilm game inspired by another Harrison Ford character, that of Han Solo, Ubisoft would take inspiration from the Uncharted series. Back when Uncharted first game out, it was a revolution for gaming. Never had we have a game that felt and looked so much like an action movie, at the time it was mind blowing. The game, however, hasn't aged well. The original Uncharted has uninteresting shooting segments, dumb AI (compared to today's standards), and an unforgiving autosave that can have you repeating the same area ad nauseam. Luckily enough, all of these kinks were ironed out in it's phenomenal sequel Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. However, all of these kinks are present in Outlaws, yet I don't hate it. In fact, and in despite of all I said previously, I mostly liked the game.
Star Wars Outlaws brings to mind the old adage, "A jack of all trades but a master of none." Do you want a rhythm game to unlock chests? Outlaws has that. Do you want a hacking mini game where you have to link up images in a row? Outlaws has that. Do you want a Splinter Cell style stealth mission to infiltrate an imperial base to steal secret documents? Outlaws has that too! A lot of the bits that make the whole are quite fun when working as intended. When you're zipping around a large open field on a speeder bike, narrowly avoiding Dewbacks as Stormtrooper's fire their blasters at you, the game is exhilarating. When you enter a new town and sit down at a cantina to play a game of Sabacc, it feels truly immersive. As a fan of Star Wars I found myself wanting to go back to experience it's worlds again.
That's not the droid you're looking for
Outlaws encapsulates Star Wars as a whole at the moment, trying to be something for everybody but at times missing it's mark. I honestly want to see Ubisoft take another crack at the galaxy far far away, because with a more refined scope this can easily be the Uncharted: Drake's Fortune to it's better sequel. Or, to put it in Ubisoft terms, it's Assassins Creed to Assassins Creed II. There's so much potential here, it'd be a real shame for this to be Kay Vess's last hurrah.
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8.0
fun score
Pros
Beautiful visuals, fun locations, world(s) building, playing Sabacc!
Cons
Boring combat, dumb AI, glitches
