Star Wars Outlaws – Star Wars amusement park

Ubisoft knows how to create incredible worlds – beautiful, exciting, real. The setting doesn’t matter, Ubisoft succeeds in creating realistic modern cities and even entire regions, as in Watch Dogs: Legion or The Crew Motorfest, as well as historical reconstructions in Assassin’s Creed games, for example, in the same Assassin’s Creed Mirage. Even fantasy and sci-fi worlds like those we saw in Immortals Fenyx Rising (actually a very underrated game, one of the best Ubi games of the 21st century) or Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. So we had no doubts that Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft would cope with the construction of the fantastic world of Star Wars Outlaws, but as for the gameplay… We have some questions about the gameplay.

Welcome to Star Wars

Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft came in with a trump card – Star Wars Outlaws takes place in the interval between the events of The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983), the most famous and fan-favorite parts of Star Wars. Luke has already found his father, but lost his own arm, Han is packed in a piece of carbonite, the old Death Star has been destroyed, but a new one is already under construction. The Empire is losing power over individual planets, and the Rebels are about to strike a decisive blow.

In this muddy water, crime syndicates flourish, controlling individual cities and entire regions, trying to get along with the still powerful empire. The player, in the role of petty criminal Kay Wess, who, due to her own stupidity and impudence, was in the wrong place at the wrong time, will have to maneuver between the interests of various syndicates in an attempt to save her own skin. Kay has annoyed a very powerful man and stolen something dear to him, so now, in order to get off the tail of a bunch of bounty hunters, she has to fulfill the tasks of the syndicates and try to survive.

And of course, somewhere on the edge of our vision, the confrontation between the Empire and the Rebels always looms. How can we do without it? And it seems that Vess, who seems to be “not interested in politics,” will eventually have to choose a side.

Kay and Nix

It is clear that Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft tried to make Kay Wess a kind of Han Solo in a skirt, sorry, skirts in the Star Wars universe seem to have never been invented, that is, Han Solo, but a female. She, like Han, will have to deal with the Hutt Cartel (yes, even Jabba himself), the Pike Syndicate, the Crimson Star organization and other figures who do not get along with the law. Of course, you’ll have to deceive, cajole, and change sides.

But there is a problem: Kay Wess sorely lacks Harrison Ford’s charisma, his confident smile that can disarm anyone. Kay can’t be called unsympathetic, although sometimes the game camera manages to show her in the spirit of the protagonist of Mass Effect: Andromeda before the patches. And it’s not just her looks. Kay is brash, self-confident, and arrogant, but… the way she throws herself into any business regardless of the consequences, setting up friends, changing sides, and “dumping” customers… it’s a little disappointing. It’s hard to empathize with such a person.

Yes, then, through childhood memories, through interaction with Nix (sharing meals together is something), attitudes towards some characters, Kay gradually reveals herself. But it’s a very slow process, it takes more than a dozen hours before you start to feel attached to the character.

And this is surprising, because Ubisoft has vast experience in creating strong, charismatic heroines who instantly win your heart. Just think of the Assassin’s Creed series – Avery, Cassandra, Aya, Leila Hassan, Evie Fry. But something went wrong here.

On the other hand, it is Massive Entertainment that has always had problems with heroes. Having played hundreds of hours of Tom Clancy’s The Division 1/2 and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, I can’t think of a single character in these games right now.

Part of Kay Wess’s lack of charisma is compensated for by her companion, Nix. A rare and seemingly almost intelligent beast from an unknown planet, Nix looks like a lizard-cat hybrid with a bunch of buns on his head. He is incredibly cute and very useful. Nix can bring a blaster in the middle of a firefight, steal a grenade from the belt of an imperial stormtrooper, press a button, distract a guard with his funny tricks, and even look into the opponents’ cards. In general, he’s cute, and it’s worth playing Star Wars Outlaws at least for this character. We all wish we had a Nix like him.

Star Wars amusement park

We will have fun on five planets and moons, several space stations and in space around the same planets. Some of them are very well known to Star Wars fans, such as Tatooine, some have been seen in Star Wars comics and books, such as Cantonica, Akiva, and Kijima. One of the planets, Toshara, was created specifically for the game and it turned out better than the others, a large savannah with strange crystal mountains and hurricane winds.

Tatooine, Kijimi, and Tosharu are open maps with a bunch of activities in the spirit of other Ubisoft open-world games. Akiva is just one cold, medium-sized city. And you will see Kantonika only at the beginning and end of the game’s storyline.

In fact, as we mentioned at the beginning, Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft know how to create worlds, and this time they have created a real amusement park for Star Wars fans. We’re not even talking about the races, shapes, languages of the inhabitants of different planets, equipment, and technologies familiar to us from the movies; there are plenty of direct references to the films.

Here is the cantina on Tatooine where Luke met Han. And here is Han Solo himself, frozen in carbonite. There’s Boba Fett, receiving his reward from the Gatti. And here’s a dead sarlacc, would you like to take a walk to its second mouth? Or, for example, smash a podracer like the one that young Anakin Skywalker used to drive. Or here is Lando Calrissian himself, help him. And there’s not just a lot of this stuff, there’s a lot of it. Some of it seems to be made exclusively for fan service, some of it plays well to flesh out the world and establish connections between the game and the movies.

Thief to thief to thief

Star Wars Outlaws is primarily focused on stealth. Stealing something without being seen by representatives of the enemy syndicate, secretly installing a bug, helping someone to escape, or vice versa, catching a defector. Kay Vess and Nix can, and sometimes must, engage in direct confrontation with enemies in the story, but shooting is not the best part of the game, so if you have the opportunity, it’s better to complete levels in quiet mode.

And that’s where the first big problem with Star Wars Outlaws comes in. If this story mission is designed for stealth, then it’s a pleasure to go through it in stealth. You can jam enemies with a stunner, knock them out with a good hook (how a girl knocks out stormtroopers in armor is a separate issue, but movie characters have done it too), distract them with Nix, sneak and hide in the thick grass… The only big problem is that you can’t hide corpses and unconscious enemies here, so very often a stealthy infiltration can go down the drain when someone finds the body you left behind. And most often this happens in non-story missions that are not prepared for stealthy passage.

If it’s a covert infiltration mission, you’ll have to start from the beginning, but if not… then a real circus begins with endless respawning of enemies that will come, for example, from the building you just blew up. Right after each other, endlessly, until you get bored.

The situation is almost the same with the clan reputation system. If you fall into the category of scoundrels from the point of view of any organization, you won’t even be able to drive past their territory without getting additional minuses for “trespassing”. This will further deteriorate your rating, and very soon you will be chased around the planet by bounty hunter squads, confrontation with which will again deteriorate your rating. It is difficult to get out of this hole.

Things are even worse if you attack an Empire outpost, and sooner or later you will need to do so. Then the hunt is announced for the entire planet, checkpoints appear at intersections, patrols on the roads, TIE fighters and even a small cruiser in space. Any confrontation with the patrols further aggravates your situation and finally elite black stormtroopers appear. If you overcome them and reset your own status as an enemy of the Empire, you can play on, if not…

And this is where the fun begins… Because if you are killed by representatives of some syndicate or caught by the Imperials, you lose almost nothing. They will take off some credits from you and carefully put you in the same place where you were arrested. Then why all this pathos, all these chases? To do what?

By the way, the chases are a real nightmare. The scooter was controlled from the keyboard by some sadist, so you should keep a gamepad handy, it’s simply impossible to play Star Wars Outlaws without it. And shooting the pursuers during the chase is only possible with the help of a super ability, which you must first charge and then wait for those who are chasing you.

The battles in space seem to be good, similar to Everspace 2, but… the constant respawn of pirates makes staying in outer space uncomfortable, and you have to get into two or three fights with pirates to get to the planet. But special thanks for the planet landings, they look epic, it’s a shame to scroll through them. Starfield has a lot to learn.

But the card game Sabacc, despite the fact that it seems very simple at first glance, is actually a very interesting and gambling game, something like a mix of poker and blackjack. You can also cheat and use Nix’s abilities here.

In fact, Star Wars Outlaws has a lot of different activities, and if you don’t like one thing, you can do something else. The gameplay is well balanced, there are some glitches and conventions, but it’s really interesting to play, especially in the middle and end of the game. But we warn you, it’s better not to take delivery missions, they block fast movement, and you won’t even immediately find out what exactly set this block.

A special greeting to the author of the runner mission – this is literally the worst boss battle design I’ve seen in the last 20 years.

In one of the Western reviews, it was written that the developers of Star Wars Outlaws destroyed the Ubisoft open-world game formula and that was a mistake. But it’s not true, if you look closely, it’s the same almost standard open world from Ubi, but with some variations. The same map with a bunch of marks. There don’t seem to be any towers or outposts to free, but finding treasure and completing missions requires climbing and doing acrobatics on the same towers from other games.

So, if you like Ubisoft’s open-world formula, if you like to “clear the map” to zero, and if you like to find your own entertainment, then you will like the slightly changed world of Star Wars Outlaws. Still, sometimes it is necessary to experiment, and this is exactly what we have been asking Ubisoft for a long time.

Not an RPG

Unlike many other Ubisoft games with an open world, such as Assassin’s Creed or Division 1/2, Star Wars Outlaws does not have a role-playing system and character leveling by completing quests and killing enemies. Kei can improve his skills only after he finds the appropriate masters, completes their quests, and then fulfills the conditions for obtaining the improvement. For example, kill a set number of stormtroopers, earn a set amount of money, shoot down a set number of ships, or find a set amount of resources.

In addition, Kay can get clothes with additional parameters and use amulets. In some ways, this is similar to the system we saw in Ghost of Tsushima.

By the way, Kay has only one weapon, a blaster. Over time, it can be improved by adding an ion shot against robots and to activate some mechanisms, and an explosive shot against powerful enemies and to pierce walls, of course, in strictly designated areas. During the battle, Kay can pick up enemy weapons, but they have limited ammunition.

On the one hand, such a limited range of weapons and upgrades is frustrating, but on the other hand, it’s at least something new.

Picture and sound

Star Wars Outlaws uses the same Snowdrop engine as previous Massive Entertainment games such as Tom Clancy’s The Division 1/2, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and XDefiant. And if in XDefiant it was deliberately simplified to make the game work on any calculator, then Star Wars Outlaws has improved modern effects, ray tracing, volumetric lighting, volumetric fog, etc.

In some shots, the game looks really stunning, and the local landscapes are begging to be used as screensavers and wallpapers. On the other hand, sometimes the game seems too simple, especially in the corridors of some stations and on rocks with frankly rectangular terraces.

As for the sound, the stylization of the music to the Star Wars standards was successful. The main melody is memorable, the cantinas have their own music, and there are even live musicians in some places.

Bugs, where would you go without them

I started playing Star Wars Outlaws a week before the release, and despite the fact that some reviewers complained about glitches, such as falling under textures, characters floating away, etc., my experience was quite pleasant. We seem to have gotten used to the fact that there are no games without glitches, but overall, everything was more or less decent.

But then, on August 26, 2024, the game was released in preview for owners of the Deluxe and Ultimate versions and a real nightmare began. The game started to crash every 15 minutes, textures and shaders sometimes did not load and the character got stuck in these holes in the textures. One time, hunters attacked me during a video insert and killed me before it ended. Another time, my robot partner floated off into the distance and I was talking to an empty space and couldn’t hear his answers.

On the other hand, I was lucky, because some people got a patch that came out a little later and broke their save files and had to start the game all over again.

The hotfix that came out on August 30 fixed the issues with crashes and textures, and now Star Wars Outlaws is running smoothly for me. But I can’t vouch for other players, because I still have a relatively powerful PC that allows me to play on Ultra settings, so I might not have noticed some performance drops.

Instead of a conclusion

The last episode of Star Wars – Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker was released in 2019. Since then, we have numerous series of different quality and a very good selection of video games: Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (2019), Star Wars: Squadrons (2020), Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga (2022), Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (2023) and now Star Wars Outlaws (2024). Somewhere on the horizon are Star Wars: Eclipse by Quantic Dream, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – Remake (unfortunately, from the Russians from Saber Interactive) and Star Wars Jedi 3 from Respawn Entertainment.

In fact, Star Wars: Squadrons looks good for this company, and the game even has a chance to get a sequel. In the meantime, Ubisoft has planned two major storyline DLCs. Star Wars Outlaws: Wild Card is due out in the fall of 2024 and Star Wars Outlaws: A Pirate’s Fortune in the spring of 2025. Am I personally going to buy these DLCs? More likely yes than no. Despite all the complaints about the game, I liked this Star Wars-themed attraction.