Star Wars Outlaws is unusual, but without any special features. Review

Played on Xbox Series S

In most cases, Star Wars games are spectacular shooters and action games, where you either swing a lightsaber or fire blasters. The authors of Star Wars Outlaws took a different route – they won’t give us a sword at all, and it’s best to avoid shootings if possible, although the main character always carries a weapon with her. We control a thief-adventurer who prefers to remain in the shadows. The problem is that it’s not enough to just throw a couple of stealth-related mechanics into the game and hope that it will last for dozens of hours. It’s obvious that the new project was created by Star Wars fans, but even the biggest fans of the universe can quickly tire of the weak development of some important elements of the game.

Best friends

The main character is Kay Vass, a new character in the Star Wars universe. She is accompanied by a funny little creature named Nyx, reminiscent of Stitch from the Disney cartoon. They travel everywhere together – the strength of their duo is indicated not only by the claw marks on Kay’s jacket, but also by how much Nyx helps during missions. He distracts enemies, presses buttons, and pushes back covers behind which levers are hidden – without a companion, the heroine would not be able to do much.

By default, black “cinematic” stripes are enabled even outside of in-engine cutscenes—fortunately, they can be disabled

Unfortunately, there’s not much more to say about Kay. The protagonist turned out to be very flat and boring, although at first you feel sympathy for her. There is no character development – in the process of passing there is no feeling that she has learned something or understood something new for herself, there is not even an ultimate goal for her journey. There was a similar problem in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (and they tried to fix it in the sequel), but there the situation was saved by minor characters. Here and among them there is no one memorable – even the main villain, in the “best” traditions of Ubisoft, sometimes appears for a couple of minutes and immediately disappears.

In the Outlaws universe, the Death Star has been destroyed and criminal organizations have spread their wings while the Empire’s attention turns to the Rebels. While performing one of the tasks, Kay crosses the path of Sliro, the influential leader of the Zerek Besh group, who sets a reward for her capture, which is why the girl has to steal someone else’s ship and fly away on it. She crash lands on a moon called Toshara, meets a mechanic and other characters there, and soon learns that Sliro has sent several thugs after her.

The compass at the top of the screen tells you when there’s something interesting nearby

At some point, the heroine is saved by the ND-5 battle droid, which accompanies the experienced criminal Jaylen Vraks. Together with Kay, the trio decides to put an end to Sliro’s actions and empty his treasury – rob the crime lord’s vault so that he has no funds left to pay for the services of hired killers. However, for this we will need assistants, to recruit whom we will visit several orbits: cold icy Kijimi, evergreen Akiva and – of course – the orbit of desert Tatooine. In the case of each orbit, you can either simply fly and shoot with other spaceships, or immediately land on the corresponding planets, where large open locations with all kinds of entertainment await you. Besides Kijimi, there is only a city there, outside of which you cannot walk.

⇡#For those and for those

The most interesting feature of Outlaws is related to crime syndicates – since there is competition between them, serving one group can ruin your relationship with another. It’s worth saying right away that the storyline has nothing to do with your decisions – there are no dozen endings that change depending on your relationship with the syndicates. There are gameplay changes – for example, if the Hutt cartel hates you for stealing some things or killing its representatives, you won’t be able to simply enter its territory. You will have to move either secretly or through combat. And vice versa – if you actively helped the Crimson Dawn cartel, its guards and soldiers are always happy to see you – no one will open fire if you rush on a speeder near its base.

For the sake of such a prize I am ready to do whatever is asked.

Of course, it would be more interesting if relations with the syndicates influenced the story, but the owners of the rights to Star Wars were probably against this – the plot should have a canon ending. In such conditions, Massive Entertainment, it seems to me, squeezed the maximum possible out of this idea. Different factions give you access to exclusive items of equipment with unique passive bonuses, send you cosmetic items by mail like decorations for your animal and coloring pages for your blaster, and merchants in their territories give you discounts. You cannot quarrel with someone forever here – no matter how crazy it may look, by completing several orders you can quickly make peace with someone who not so long ago declared his desire to destroy you. But this is even better – you don’t have to start the walkthrough again if you want to exchange the Hutts for rations.

If we talk about real gameplay shortcomings, they are connected with the fact that the developers of Outlaws – at least in the story campaign – not only copy existing games, but do it not in the best way. We play as a thief who is often tasked with infiltrating somewhere: stealing a valuable item, finding data on someone’s computer, and so on. Therefore, story missions often involve secret passage – get ready to climb stairs, climb walls, move in a first-person view through ventilation shafts… But the locations here are not branched, and the path from one point to another is always the same, so completing such tasks resembles a series QTE. Especially when, as is usually the case, important objects are painted in bright colors – some even have arrows drawn next to them so that you don’t get confused.

Some locations will especially delight Star Wars fans – for example, the opportunity to explore a crashed cruiser

Interaction with enemies in stealth is also done so-so. This is not Assassin’s Creed, where you can jump on top of enemies and immediately climb back – here you can’t even drag bodies. But they allow you to hide in the tall grass, although you can’t whistle. To distract the guards, Nyx is used, which at such moments strongly resembles the spider robot from Watch Dogs 2. You can order him to attack someone or simply lie on the ground so that the enemy will approach him. It’s funny at first, but new options don’t appear, and all these maneuvers with Nyx turn into a routine – you do the same thing every time.

In some missions, it is forbidden to catch the eye of enemies – this will immediately be followed by failure of the task, and you will be thrown back to the last save point. Fortunately, such episodes are few and far between – more often they are allowed to start shooting, you just need to prevent your opponents from raising the alarm. The shooting in Outlaws is quite fun, but it also has its fair share of weirdness. For example, you carry a single blaster with you, and although it is possible to pick up someone else’s weapon in the levels, the character throws it away when starting a cutscene on the engine or trying to climb somewhere.

The ion module also briefly stuns the target

⇡#Dangerous planets

There are no complaints about the blaster itself – over time, modules are unlocked that make shooting fun. A standard plasma module is suitable for ordinary purposes, an ion module is needed to destroy shields, and with a power module you charge each shot and when it hits a target, the projectile explodes. When new and varied opponents begin to be encountered, the battles become more interesting: first you turn on one module, then another – droids, for example, practically do not react to the plasma one at all, it is better to blow them up. It’s a pity that the artificial intelligence is stupid, but many locations are literally filled with exploding barrels – if the stealth passage does not work out, arrange an action with special effects.

In general, the combat system is not surprising, but the open world is surprising. In Ubisoft games, we are accustomed to numerous “questions” and endless maps; here, since there are several large regions, the familiar formula has been changed. In Outlaws, you find points of interest yourself, racing on a speeder from one place to another – these can be abandoned buildings where you solve simple puzzles in the spirit of Far Cry, or small settlements. There are no signs hanging over the characters’ heads – you approach them yourself and can either talk or eavesdrop on someone else’s conversation, thus obtaining intelligence. Someone, for example, tells a friend about a treasure hidden behind a waterfall – being a thief, the heroine immediately goes there to pick up the treasure. He arrives, and there is nothing there – someone has already hidden this thing. Such mini-stories fit very organically into the world and make it come alive.

In Outlaws, you will sometimes have to participate in the local equivalent of Wordle. You can’t lose in it

Leveling up is also unusual – the heroine does not have a skill tree, and the experience bar at the bottom of the screen does not fill. You get all the abilities after meeting the corresponding characters and passing tests, and most often you pass them by accident. I accelerated on the speeder and made a big jump, hitting the ramp – now the speeder can jump low at any moment. I followed Nyx several times, who smelled some kind of buried object in the open world – then the companion would prompt with sounds if he found a container with consumables nearby. The speeder itself is clumsy (reminiscent of a motorcycle from Days Gone), and there are a lot of empty spaces in the locations, but in general the open worlds are not annoying, including because it doesn’t all boil down to driving from one marker to another.

A few words should be said about space shootouts. They’re not very surprising either. Most of all in these episodes, the game resembles Starlink: Battle for Atlas – as if Ubisoft took all the mechanics from there and transferred them to a new project: you fly in the same way, turn and roll in any direction, aim and shoot at other people’s ships in the same way . Nothing unusual at all – a standard action game in space, even more casual than even Starfield. Speaking of Starfield, in Outlaws you fly from planets and land on them without loading screens. It is immediately clear that the engine is not so decrepit.

There is a feeling that it is no longer possible to make flights on spaceships bad – in all such games everything is approximately the same

***

The easiest way to describe Star Wars Outlaws is “okay.” Not terrible, not boring to the point of yawning, like Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, but not great either. The boring main character, who sometimes does equally boring things in story missions, is one of the main drawbacks, and in some places you can see how difficult it was for the developers to come up with interesting situations with her. Outlaws is much better revealed outside the main story, when you explore regions, meet new people (and not only people), take part in a local mini-game and just immerse yourself in the atmosphere. At such moments, I want to praise the game, albeit with reservations.

Advantages:

• The atmosphere of “Star Wars”, perfectly transferred into the game format;
• An interesting idea with syndicates and how relationships with them affect free access to certain territories;
• Fun shootouts thanks to different blaster modules and exploding barrels placed everywhere;
• Open worlds offer independent exploration of the secluded corners of planets and conversations with everyone you meet.

Disadvantages:

• Boring main character, although this can be used to describe almost all the characters in this game;
• There is a lot of crawling through ventilation pipes in the plot;
• Very primitive stealth mechanics, which is strange for a game that often asks you to complete missions secretly.

Graphic arts

Although the locations often look beautiful, everything is spoiled by facial animations – many characters seem to have none.

Sound

The audio is done superbly – it’s like you’re in an interactive movie in the Star Wars universe with the sounds of blasters, droids and everything else familiar from childhood.

Single player game

An action game in which you either travel through open worlds or crawl through ventilation shafts so that no one notices and raises the alarm. The side activities are more fun than the storyline.

Estimated time of completion

25 hours if you just follow the story. About 50, if you explore open worlds.

Collective game

Not foreseen.

General impression

Not exactly an ordinary game for both the Star Wars franchise and Ubisoft. There are some interesting ideas here, and while not all of them are executed in the best way, for the most part Outlaws is fun enough for Ubisoft to be embarrassed about. Although we expected, of course, more.

Rating: 7.0 / 10

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