Star Wars Outlaws review: Is this the open-world game you're looking for?

^{Image: Ubisoft}

Star Wars Outlaws’ campaign lacks emotional weight, but its open world is dazzling.

Star Wars Outlaws begins with a down-on-her-luck criminal named Kay Vess stumbling out of a messy room with a price on her head, broken tools to fix and a rundown cantina to call home. Outside, a fireworks display whizzes to life above Canto Bight, a casino paradise that lures interstellar tourists in with its hedonistic facilities, but leaves its workers trapped in a grimy town below. While these people work and steal to survive, the wealthy occupants of Canto Bight do all of their thieving right out in the open.

In just five minutes, Ubisoft’s new open-world Star Wars game gets you to understand its protagonist's plight. Few people are absorbed into the seedy underbelly of this galaxy by choice. The Empire has simply cast a shadow over the galaxy so dark that hope is dead and murder has become synonymous with survival.

The potential for drama and strife becomes immediately apparent in this opener, which finally sees Star Wars trade in its lightsabers and high-stakes adventures for a grounded story with a luckless protagonist.

For a brief minute, Star Wars Outlaws had something meaningful to say about the franchise at large. However, the game goes on to keep a puzzling distance from the morbidity of its criminal underworld - choosing instead to portray its criminals as simple goons and Kay as their Nathan Drake-like carefree vanquisher. This robs her of personality, the story of emotional weight and even the campaign of truly compelling setpieces.

Fortunately, the game’s gorgeous open-world, exhaustive fidelity to the Star Wars franchise and new additions to the canon pick up the slack where its narrative falls flat.

Kay and Nix against the world(s)

In a time where we already have access to a solid third-person Star Wars action adventure series - Electronic Arts’ Star Wars Jedi - developer Massive Entertainment sets Star Wars Outlaws apart by exploring the criminal underbelly of this faraway galaxy. Here, lightsabers and Jedi mind tricks can’t save Kay Vess, a scoundrel struggling to pay off debts with her partner-in-crime - an extremely adorable axolotl-like merqaal named Nix. Together, the two become involved in an ill-fated plan to rob a budding crime lord named Sliro only to end up with a death mark on their heads.

To get rid of their death mark, Kay and Nix must assemble a crew of rogues to hit Sliro with another heist and this time, actually succeed. The campaign takes players to four planets in total besides Kay’s home of Cantonica: the wild savannahs of Toshara, jungles of Akiva, snowy mountains of Kijimi and familiar sand dunes of Tatooine, the latter of which seems to be a location this franchise simply can’t bear to part with.

Each planet serves as a pit stop for Kay to find and recruit a new member of her heist team, and players may tackle any planet except for Toshara and Cantonica in the order they prefer.

Star Wars Outlaws quickly builds up a colourful ensemble cast of aliens, droids and humans, but it’s clear that the game has no real machinations for anyone except for Kay and Nix. ND-5, a droid with a mysterious past, is Kay’s closest friend throughout the main story - despite being strapped with a restraining bolt forcing him to kill her the second she deviates from the plan. An uneasy alliance like this one would be the basis for some juicy drama in a better game, but Outlaws saves all of that for a rapid-fire final mission. With so much focus on allowing players to chart their own path forward, the story has to adapt. We don’t get to see Kay and ND-5’s relationship solidify over the course of their shared adventures, because each of those adventures must be swappable without affecting continuity.

A choice was made here to prioritise player choice over meaningful story content, but I think it was made in error. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild also allowed players to shuffle main objectives and pursue whatever they find interesting first, but its story is thin and back loaded as a result. Star Wars Outlaws suffers the same fate, but it does not offer nearly as much satisfaction in the form of exploration to balance things out.

If the order in which players explore these planets doesn’t matter, then why make them choose at all? A more linear progression through this galaxy would’ve allowed for more organic development for these characters.

None of these problems sting nearly as much as the wasted potential of Kay Vess. Outlaws’ protagonist sees a strong performance from Humberly González, who does her best with the barebones material she’s given. The way she delivers a specific line during one of the game’s most - and perhaps only - compelling missions had me genuinely tear up, and become invested in seeing her quest through. Other minigames, like a lovely little minigame that sees Kay and Nix spend time together by trying food on different planets, serve as reminders that the bond shared between these two is the star of the show.

Kay becomes a much more interesting character when she’s freed from the trappings of this sluggish campaign, and that’s no coincidence. The game would have us believe that she’s a scoundrel like Han Solo and Lando Calrissian, two ne'er-do-wells who risk everything for the wealth they think they deserve. However, Kay rarely acts as hardened or savvy as her circumstances would have forced her to be. She stumbles into betrayals and dire situations and still chooses to do the right thing no matter the cost.

It’s not like she grows into heroism like Han did, either - the game simply forgets from the jump that she was meant to be a criminal at all.

Tatooine again? Say it isn't so

Like any Ubisoft game, the best part of Star Wars Outlaws is its open world. In this case, it’s open worlds - multiple - as the game has three open-world planets while the rest of its environments either comprise linear set pieces or small towns. Each planet stands on its own as separate distinct biomes, and it’s interesting to see what Ubisoft comes up with when it can't just replicate real-world objects and locations to populate these large open spaces.

Sure, Toshara resembles wild savannah plains and Akiva looks like a massive Amazonian jungle. However, all of their animals - from the rats that scurry below Kay’s feet to the dragonflies whizzing about in the sky - are unmistakably alien in nature. Its buildings might appear manmade, but their inhabitants beg to differ. Droids and unearthly creatures go about their daily tasks in densely packed towns and settlements, where every inch of ground appears lived-in and furnished with detail.

Even ardent fans of this franchise, like myself, who decry the constant reapparance of Tatooine in every other new piece of tie-in media can’t deny how much of a treat it is to see the location expanded upon here. Not only do we get to explore the entirety of Mos Eisley, but we get to venture beyond its boundaries into Jabba’s Palace, the sand dunes and so much more. Grubby cantinas, lavish casinos, neon-lit towns and forests packed with foliage - the world Ubisoft has built here is extremely impressive and often enthralling, even when its open worlds fail to portray the illusion of life contained within its smaller towns.

The magic of this game’s environments is only marred by its poor miscellany of activities, which failed to hold my interest for very long.

Most quests that take you outside of towns involve killing or escorting people, conforming to a formula that gets tired quickly. Other ‘live events’ will pop up as you explore the open world, but again, they involve you either shooting or robbing people. The game’s best sidequests typically involve its Specialists, a group of NPCs who can give Kay access to special abilities in exchange for a lengthy favour. At least these quests feature interesting missions, unique cutscenes and juicy rewards. Other activities like treasure hunts (which reward collectibles) don’t seem nearly as worthwhile.

Playing peek-a-boo with the Empire

One thing cleverly hidden from Star Wars Outlaws’ early marketing material is that it’s a stealth game. While Kay has plenty of tools at her disposal to blast through bad situations, she isn’t powerful enough to take on the might of the Empire on her lonesome. Most of the game’s missions give players the option between taking on a group of enemies stealthily or with guns blazing, but far too many of them will end in a fail state if Kay gets spotted. During these missions, she has to manoeuvre through Far Cry-like enemy encampments without setting off alarms.

Failing players for breaking stealth in an action-adventure game is a puzzling choice, considering that they’re given so many tools like weapons, reputation points, and vehicles to get themselves out of a bad spot.

Star Wars Outlaws promises players the freedom of exploring large open spaces and tackling story missions in any way they like, but then takes this cultivated sense of player agency and hurls it out of sight during the missions themselves. The second I begin a mission and see the dreaded ‘Don’t raise the alarm’ objective, I know I’m in for a bad time.

Metal Gear Solid, this is not. Outlaws’ enemy AI is absolutely atrocious and thoroughly dated by modern standards, such that players can cheese most stealth encounters with a bit of elbow grease. Kay can straight up get into a gunfight and kill four stormtroopers in a row, but the three grunts standing at an elbow’s length won’t notice a thing. Kay’s stealth tools are also very limited, making for samey encounters across the game. You either whistle to get an enemy’s attention or use Nix to distract them from afar.

I’m not expecting Hitman levels of complexity, but at least games like Far Cry and Assassin’s Creed allow you to loop in outsiders to distract enemies, lay down unique traps, and create new points of entry.

You can't please everyone, but you can bribe them

Star Wars Outlaws sets itself apart from Ubisoft’s other existing franchises by incorporating its criminal factions into gameplay. Four different criminal factions exist in this game for Kay to rub elbows with, ranging from familiar organisations like the Hutt Cartel and Crimson Dawn to the all-new Ashiga Clan. As Kay explores the galaxy and meets each of these factions' shady leaders, she’ll unlock contracts to earn favour with them.

The tricky thing is that one can never keep favour with a specific clan for too long. All of these clans are constantly vying for power, forcing Kay to pick a side during the game’s story missions.

While the game’s factions mechanic does feel a little underbaked here, given that it has little impact on the main story and Kay’s relationship with faction leaders, I did like how difficult it was to stick to a single faction for too long. Oftentimes, a story event will introduce what might be perceived as a moral choice, forcing you to side with a different faction than you're usually inclined to. Other times, you’ll lose reputation points by being caught trespassing in faction bases, or getting in a brawl with their goons.

Kay is always losing favour with one faction when she gets into bed with another. Constantly double-crossing relationships or staying fiercely loyal to a group of criminals for money and power is exactly the stuff this game should have more of.

I played Star Wars Outlaws on the PlayStation 5, and found its technical performance to be just a tad uneven. Players can either choose a 30fps mode for better visual fidelity, a 60fps mode for better performance or a 40fps mode as a compromise between the two.

While I personally stuck with the 60fps mode for the most part, I did find that its framerate frequently dipped in the game’s bigger cities, and its visuals were noticeably more blurry. 40fps seems like a good option here if you want to really soak in the game’s environments, but 60fps is far from unplayable.

Also, bugs! Many bugs. While I didn’t encounter a game breaking bug, I did see a few too many in-game animations play out desynced from the sound effects tied to them. I also had ‘Access computer’ prompts haunt me every time I tried to interact with something that well and truly wasn’t a computer. In-game dialogue cutscenes can also appear janky due to Outlaws’ poor facial and movement animation work, which gives every character including Kay an uncanny robotic quality.

However, the game also boasts an impressive range of accessibility options to help with motor, vision and hearing impairments, among others. It's nice to see options like these slowly become the norm among bigger game publishers.

Verdict

Star Wars Outlaws is rife with potential, but nearly every one of its features feel shallow and insufficient in their execution. Stealth encounters lack imagination and good enemy AI, open-world locations lack engaging activities, and the story itself seems confused and poorly plotted. On the other hand, its environments are truly dazzling and packed with detail, its reputation system is interesting and fun to manage, and its minigames tend to be the best in-game activities available.

This game is a melange of good and bad experiences, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to embarking on another adventure with Kay and Nix someday. There’s a solid foundation for a great game here, and Star Wars Outlaws almost made it work.