Since the announcement of Star Wars Outlaws, I’ve been cautiously optimistic. As a fan of the original trilogy of films and a handful of sequels, tie-in series and games, anything set in the Galaxy far, far away will always open my eyes. However, following my disappointment in some of the later instalments – like the cobbled-together mess Rise of Skywalker, poorly optimised Jedi: Survivor and that brain rot of a show Ahsoka, I’ve been getting my fingers burnt lately. But when you show me that I can play a Star Wars game that looks like a mix of Uncharted and Days Gone, with space travel that isn’t entirely a loading screen… then I’d say that I have a good feeling about this.
Set in a period between the Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, you’re thrust into the boots of Kay Vess, a scrappy outlaw trying to make some credits and get off her world of Cantonica. Accompanied by her loyal companion Nix (a cute alien-cat-lizard-thing), Kay joins a group of unknown thieves to pull off a massive heist and make the score of her life. Things soon go sideways, and she ends up face-to-face with Sliro Barsha, leader of the Zerek Besh crime syndicate. Kay ends up escaping with one of his spaceships and a Death Mark. This means that wherever Kay Vess goes in the known galaxy, somebody will always be hunting.
After crashlanding on the planet Toshara, you’ll get a sense of what Outlaws has to offer. You can set out on your Speeder and travel around the (impressively) large map, which is built up of settlements, areas occupied by crime syndicates, Imperial bases and smaller sections that may be dedicated to side quests. Whilst travelling around the more barren areas, you may encounter the odd travelling NPC, wild creature or hostile bandit. Of course, time spent in these larger open areas can be reduced using fast travel options as the game progresses. Still, I enjoyed riding around, exploring and often hunting for secret activities or easter eggs between missions.
Following your primary mission marker will bring you to the planet’s city, Mirogana, where the game started coming alive for me. This is where you can not just progress the story but also pick up new quests, spend your credits in stores, interact with the locals, bet on the Fathier races and even try your hand at a game of Sabacc (which is now possibly my favourite time sink in all of video games). Here, I became very excited by Outlaws as although the story had initially interested me, this environment kept me hooked.
From this point, you will be introduced to the game’s central mechanic, navigating the galaxy’s seedy underbelly of crime syndicates and trying to get into favour with them, depending on your chosen path. You’ll first be introduced to the Pyke Syndicate, a spice dealer group that seems friendly with the Empire. Along the way, you’ll find Crimson Dawn, who has appeared all over Star Wars’ spin-off series. Then there’s the Hutt Cartell – who I doubt need any introduction. Once you know who’s who in the underworld, you can start running missions to increase the progress meter with each of them. This might be included in the main story, side missions or picking up bounties from brokers found in settlements. The more you do, the more points you get, and you can bring your ranking up to an excellent level, unlocking perks along the way. However, if you work against a syndicate, fail a bounty or decide to screw somebody over at the last minute, you’ll see your score lower, and the negatives will start to show.
Missions rely on a run-and-gun style, stealth-based gameplay, or a mixture. As a fan of the Uncharted series, this all feels very familiar, but that’s not a bad thing, as ever since the announcement and cancellation of LucasArts’ 1313 and Visceral’s Project Ragtag, that is precisely what I’ve wanted.
Shooting focuses on cover-based combat and firing with a Blaster Pistol, which can be modded to include new functions and attacks. You can also pick up temporary weapons along the way – take down a Stormtrooper and grab their E-11 Rifle, for instance. This helps mix up your tactics and even the odds against groups of enemies, but once that weapon is depleted, it’s gone. Then there are environmental traps like the trusty exploding Barrel (of the Big and Red variety), gas canisters that provide smokescreens for extra cover, and electrically charged batteries that can stun opponents, giving you some breathing room. Kay also has an adrenaline ability, basically Dead Eye Targeting lifted from the Red Dead Redemption games – slow down time, highlight a few targets and shoot them all in one go.
Your companion Nix isn’t just along for the ride and acting adorable; they also have handy uses, like highlighting enemies, fetching items, interacting with switches, and activating objects. In combat and stealth, you can get them to run off and detonate environmental traps for when you’re pinned down or need to cause a distraction. You’ll find that Nix is an essential part of the stealth experience, which primarily consists of sneaking in a crouched position and attacking a foe without raising any alarms.
Another thing I praise Star Wars Outlaws for is the process of travelling between planets. Ever since feeling slightly let down by Destiny’s bobbing ships on a loading screen and being blown away by No Man’s Sky’s free-roam style, I’ve wanted something similar to that in other space adventures. Jedi: Fallen Order looked like it was building to that until a loading screen was revealed from inside the ship. Outlaws provides a take-off/landing sequence that hides a loading screen and gives you a whole space area to explore. Although smaller than the larger planet maps, you’re presented with an area to fly around, scavenge downed ships for scrap materials, and get into dogfights with enemy crafts. It’s not too dissimilar from Starfield’s take on space flight, albeit at a higher frame rate for consoles at launch.
My chosen platform to play Star Wars Outlaws on was the PlayStation 5, partly for convenience and mainly for a hefty discount on pre-ordering a physical copy of the game. Early on, during my first steps onto Toshara’s open land, I started to see the same issues that damaged my enjoyment of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth… hardware limitations. It’s becoming more commonplace that these ambitious games don’t perform to the level I think they should – possibly because of poor optimisations or new hardware revisions being around the corner. After tweaking graphic settings in the options (switching off motion blur and film grain), I found the experience much smoother.
For this review, I switched from Performance mode to Quality. Other than a significant dip in framerate that my travel sickness could not handle, I didn’t notice many changes in fidelity that would be worth the struggle.
I’ve now spent over fifty hours in Star Wars Outlaws to finish the primary campaign and get easily distracted by many side quests. However, I still have much to do in the base game and more Sabacc to play. To say that I’ve enjoyed my experience would be an understatement, as I’ve gone from the aforementioned quiet optimism when starting to this now being one of the best games I have played this year.
