Star Wars Outlaws Review: The Force Is Strong With This One

Let’s get this out of the way: Star Wars Outlaws has the impossible task of exceeding decades’ worth of expectations. It’s the first single-player open-world Star Wars game delivered to an audience who have imagined themselves in that universe since the ’70s. That audience is also deeply conflicted over what Star Wars should be, as we’ve seen from the vitriolic response to every new release from the franchise since the prequels. Outlaws will not — and was never going to — win everyone over. So instead of creating Fan Service: The Video Game to appease the masses, developer Massive Entertainment has opted to tell its own story in a planet-hopping adventure that embeds the player within the Star Wars universe.

Outlaws smartly starts off small. Protagonist Kay Vess is an unassuming rookie thief equipped with little more than a blaster, a scruffy ’70s haircut, and her cute pet sidekick Nix. You’re not filling the shoes of a Jedi-in-training or a renowned bounty hunter; you’re just another human struggling under the boot of the Empire. She’s not Force-sensitive, she doesn’t have a Sith fascist for a dad, and up until she finds herself embroiled in a heist-gone-wrong that places her on the galaxy’s most wanted list, no one really knows who she is.

This makes her a great avatar for exploring the galaxy; a struggling thief suddenly transported from her bedroom in a Canto Bight bar to a series of weird and wonderful planets. After stealing a starship, Kay is able to freely bounce between the five worlds that connect her story. Each has its own personality, from the ramshackle huts and sandy dunes of Tatooine to the lush jungle of Akiva, but all are equipped with similarly themed areas to explore.

Exploring the galaxy far, far away

Each planet has its own small-scale city or town with fun activities, from betting on fathier (those weird horse aliens from The Last Jedi) racing to playing a few hands of Sabacc. They have an expanse surrounding those cities and towns that you’ll zoom through on your speeder, where you’ll carry out quests, become embroiled in gunfights, or go hunting for valuable loot. Then there’s the space surrounding each planet, where you’ll fly around in your starship and take down TIE Fighters, dock cruisers, or dogfight pirates.

Outlaws does a tremendous job of tying all these elements together. In one memorable play session, I wanted to improve my slicing skills — a puzzle mini-game where the player matches a series of glyphs to hack computer terminals throughout the world. However, to do that, I needed to speak to someone in the crime syndicate Crimson Dawn’s headquarters.

Outlaws uses a reputation system where you carry out quests for its various syndicates to improve your reputation with them, which usually comes at the expense of your rep with a different syndicate. As Crimson Dawn didn’t like me very much thanks to my work with the Hutt Cartel, I could only access their headquarters by sneaking in or by improving my standing with them. I opted for the latter option, suspecting it would be the easiest — I was wrong.

Over the course of the next few hours, I’d find myself embroiled in a speeder chase on Tatooine with Stormtroopers on my tail, lying my way into a high-roller Sabacc game before being sent on a dangerous rescue mission by a very familiar face, then being pursued by a fleet of TIE Fighters and Imperial cruisers, and somehow ruining my hard-fought relations with the Hutt’s in the process.

Making your own Star Wars story

But in an alternate universe, I sneaked in, got the information I wanted, and headed out. There’s a great deal of player choice in Outlaws, and this only really becomes apparent the more you play. As you progress, you’re shown the options to upgrade your ship, speeder, and trusty blaster, to gain new abilities, or to get different clothes and equipment that will help those abilities.

But you don’t need to do all of that. For most of the game, I considered ship upgrades to be non-essential, until I began embarking on missions in my starship that quickly changed my mind. This would then send me on an interplanetary hunt for materials to provide those upgrades, leading to yet more adventuring and exploration. However, if you’re not interested in those missions, you can breeze right past them and use the game’s plethora of fast travel points to bounce between planets instead.

Outlaws tailoring the player’s experience with the game to their style of play is reflected in its progression system. Although Ubisoft is the publisher, you won’t find skill trees or a traditional leveling system like Far Cry or Assassin’s Creed. Instead, Kay unlocks new abilities depending on how you play. If you’re a sneaky player, quietly infiltrating Imperial bases and taking down enemies stealthily will unlock more abilities to complement that playstyle. If you’re an all-guns-blazing type, there are a range of Gunslinger abilities you can unlock that will benefit you, such as increasing the number of enemies you can kill with Adrenaline Rush — the game’s copy-and-paste equivalent to Red Dead Redemption’s ‘Dead Eye’ mechanic.

These abilities can also only be unlocked after meeting with the people who can teach them to you. Outlaws boasts a varied cast of characters, from your militant droid companion ND-5 to crime overlord Sliro, and much of the game is spent meeting new faces and learning about their story. Your blaster abilities will be helped by a surly sheriff who has you shooting bottles, while an illusive hacker can be found infiltrating her way into an Imperial fort.

This is not only a more engaging way to progress than spending ability points to unlock a new move, but it also makes sense for Kay as a character. She isn’t a Skywalker, or a Palpatine, or any other highly-trained power fantasy; she’s a struggling scoundrel trying to carve out a living. Particularly in the early game, much of your time is spent crouching and taking down unsuspecting enemies, as a handful of Imperial eyeballs on Kay will usually mean death. Only after she’s traveled the galaxy and met with those who can help her on her adventure does she start being able to handle herself.

But this progression system also has its imperfections. Without fully kitted-out investment into Gunslinger abilities, shooting feels ineffectual and imprecise. Enemies aren’t quite bullet sponges, but repeatedly plugging them with laser bullets to little effect isn’t very satisfying. This isn’t helped by the lack of variety in gunfights. Kay is only armed with her blaster and throwables like grenades, with other weapons available to be picked up from the ground but only available for a limited time. I’d have preferred access to a full inventory of weapons, and to have then been able to upgrade my abilities with those weapons as I saw fit, as just having the blaster alone feels like an unnecessary limitation if other weapons are still occasionally available to use.

Stealth also feels basic. Kay’s options are mostly limited to walking behind an enemy and taking them down, though sidekick Nix adds a layer of synergy, with her able to send him to distract or attack enemies in her field of vision. Nix can also fetch items with a click of a button, or pull levers and open doors, though he’s usually slower at doing this than just having Kay do it herself. It wouldn’t make sense storywise for Kay to approach Batman Arkham levels of takedown abilities, but considering much of her time is spent quietly maneuvering through buildings, I would have preferred more tools at my disposal than walking behind a guy and hitting him in the head.

A few technical issues also plagued my experience. Some of these problems were noted as known issues that will hopefully be resolved ahead of launch, such as a medium-to-lengthy play session on PC bizarrely resulting in textures becoming low-resolution, but other problems, such as an inconsistent frame rate on my 4060, had me in the settings menu for longer than I’d have liked. I also encountered a number of bugs, from NPCs disappearing mid-mission and even a couple of hard crashes straight to desktop.

But performance issues aside, Outlaws is a gorgeous game, and I’m pleased to report that concerns over its visuals raised due to pre-release gameplay footage are unfounded. Each planet boasts a vastly different biome to the last, and there are a ton of “wow” moments. I don’t care how jaded a Star Wars fan you are, watching the two sunsets on Tattooine dimming the lights across Mos Eisley as sand kicks up across the ground will teleport you back in time like that scene with the food critic from Ratatouille.

Star Wars Outlaws Review: Final Verdict

Star Wars Outlaws rewards exploration and investment in your playstyle, letting you explore the galaxy far, far away as you see fit. Some technical issues and problems with its progression system don’t hold back a great experience, that will hopefully be the start of many more open-world Star Wars games to come.

SCORE: 8/10

As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 8 equates to “Great.” While there are a few minor issues, this score means that the art succeeds at its goal and leaves a memorable impact.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a digital PC copy for our Star Wars Outlaws review.