3/5 ★ – UpwardBoss's review of Star Wars: Outlaws.

Ah, Star Wars. You've had a bit of a rough few years, haven't you? It's no secret that Star Wars has had some struggles in the past few years. The Battlefront II loot box scandal, the divisive Last Jedi, the relatively well received but financial bomb Solo, the atrocious Rise of Skywalker, a KOTOR remake in development hell, numerous cancelled films, and a deluge of Disney+ shows of mixed quality, including the recent The Acolyte that was a massive bomb. To say it's been a turbulent time for the franchise would be a massive understatement. There's been a few success stories, like Respawn's Jedi games, The Mandalorian, or Andor, but on the whole, Star Wars feels like a franchise adrift, struggling to find consistent quality, and beginning to lose its identity. Which brings us to Star Wars Outlaws, coming from Ubisoft, which has had its own turbulence in the past few years. Assassin's Creed and Far Cry are still doing well, but many of their recent releases, including Rainbow Six Extraction, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Skull and Bones, XDefiant, and even the excellent Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown have been commercial flops, and public animosity towards the "Ubisoft open-world formula" has spread massively. It's safe to say that for all involved, the stakes were huge on Star Wars Outlaws being a hit. For me, I entered Star Wars Outlaws... interested but cautious. Outlaws comes from Ubisoft Massive, the developers of the fantastic Division games, but also the developers of the absolutely atrocious Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. Now, the team that worked on Avatar is not working on Outlaws, as Avatar entered development while The Division 2 was in production, and Outlaws is what The Division 2 team made after the release of the Warlords of New York expansion, but I remained skeptical. Was it wise to split into two teams? How much DNA from The Division is being retained here? Would the writing be better than Avatar (very low bar)? Star Wars Outlaws had a lot of potential, but is ultimately an uneven, messy game. The visuals and world design are excellent, the open-world is much more focused on exploration than typical for Ubisoft, and Kay Vess is a likable protagonist, but the combat is extremely basic, the stealth is downright atrocious, the technical state is a mess, and unfortunately despite some potential, the narrative devolves into typical Star Wars cliches by the final act. It's not a bad game by any means, and it's a huge improvement over Avatar, but it's one that is ultimately hard to recommend. Let's start off with the technical side of the game, just like I did with Avatar. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora was one of the best looking video games ever made to this point, with drop-dead gorgeous environments that were, frankly, the only good aspect of that game. Star Wars Outlaws doesn't look *quite* as good as that game did, but it still looks extraordinary, with the planets in the game being incredibly well realized, with a visual design that screams *Star Wars*. The Snowdrop engine continues to be one of the best engines in the industry today, and Ubisoft Massive's environment artists are some of the best in the business. Massive's games consistently look incredible, and that continues here. Another excellent aspect of the presentation is the music, which, while taking inspiration from the iconic John Williams score, differentiates itself enough to feel unique, but still distinctly Star Wars, which is a tough balance to achieve. One thing that Snowdrop has consistently struggled with, however, is facial animations, and good *lord* do these look bad. We're talking Mass Effect: Andromeda levels of unpolished here. There's been a lot of discourse over Ubisoft making Kay Vess "ugly" on purpose, and while I definitely don't think that's true (more on that in a bit), the facial animations certainly do not help. If you think that Ubisoft intentionally made the facial animations bad, however, you are an idiot. It's been a consistent problem with Snowdrop games. Unlike almost any console game, Star Wars Outlaws has the option to play the game in 16:9, or 21:9 ultrawide, even on console. In reality, however, I found the ultrawide version much better realized than the 16:9 "fill screen" mode, as the environments are framed for ultrawide, and the 16:9 version just feels like a zoomed-in version of that, even when it's not always true. In addition to that, Star Wars Outlaws on PS5 and Series X has your typical performance or quality mode options. I played on PS5, in performance mode, almost entirely in ultrawide, and performance was generally solid albeit far from perfect. Noticeable frame drops were rare but they did happen, particularly in enemy bases, given the amount of enemies on screen. Bugs, however, were a much bigger issue. The first half of the game was (relatively) bug-free, but by the second half, things were very different. Combat animations not playing properly, frozen enemies, enemies stuck under floors, the camera being fixed on the spaceship, bugged intel, and even a bugged quest that required a restart. By far the funniest bug I had, however, was a dialogue prompt for a mission that repeated itself every time I respawned, long after I completed the mission in question. This even happened during sequences late in the game where the character that says the dialogue... would not be able to say that dialogue. Far less funny, however, were the three crashes I had while playing. Also of note is that the platinum trophy was completely unobtainable on release due to a collectible's interact prompt being broken. This seemed to be an issue specific to the PS5 version of the game, and it was reportedly fixed with a recent patch, but it's still noteworthy (as an aside, the trophy list is filled with tedious, luck-based trophies anyway, so I frankly wouldn't bother going for the platinum). Ultimately, your mileage will vary in regards to how tolerable these bugs are, but while the game is far from *unplayable*, the cumulative effect of these bugs did significantly hinder my enjoyment by the end of the game. There's two more technical problems I want to address before moving on. Firstly, the AI in this game is *terrible*. Enemies do not play strategically at all, they just either charge directly at you or stand there, making them an easy target. The Division games had some of the best AI in a third-person shooter, so it's very surprising to see the AI take such a massive step back. Lastly, the checkpoints. We almost never talk about checkpoint systems in games anymore, because bad checkpoint systems are rare these days, and when they work well, we don't notice them. This checkpoint system, however, is atrocious. Either the game will respawn you way, way too far back, or essentially right where you died, and it's very rarely anywhere in between. This even applies to open-world exploration, where you can die during a quest, and be sent back to the previous quest because a checkpoint never activated. It's an absolute mess. On a more positive note, the open-world is a delight to explore. From both a visual and gameplay perspective, the world design of the four explorable planets (Toshara, Kijimi, Tatooine, and Akiva) is excellent. Unlike essentially every Ubisoft game released over the past 15 years, Star Wars Outlaws does not have an emphasis on "box-ticking", and while collectibles are there, there are much fewer of them, and you don't get a marker on the map to find them. Quest design follows this philosophy as well, and Outlaws actually forces the player to navigate the world instead of following a waypoint the entire time. Waypoints are there, but they'll only take you so far, and you need to actually *explore* to find what you're looking for. This essentially replaces the "exploration mode" and "guided mode" options of basically every Ubisoft game since Assassin's Creed Odyssey. While in those games, the "exploration mode" simply felt like removing parts of the HUD, making exploration a chore, here the world design is much better, and playing without constant waypoints feels much more feasible. It's not perfect, and there were a few times when I got lost for too long, but those moments were rare, and it's a massive step in the right direction. Ubisoft deserve credit for listening to feedback that their open-worlds were becoming too reliant on waypoints and collectibles, rather than spaces that the player can discover naturally. It feels much closer to Ghost of Tsushima than Assassin's Creed, and that's a huge step forward. Star Wars Outlaws has a lot of issues, but the world design isn't one of them, and I hope Ubisoft carries forward the design philosophy here into their future games, because they're on the right track. The planets themselves usually feature one big city, and a few small settlements (Kijimi is the exception here, with just one city, and no settlements or wilderness to explore). The cities are quite varied and interesting, and typically packed with side quests or minigames. A highlight was Sabacc, the common Star Wars card game similar to poker, with the gambling to match (important note: you cannot gamble real money, only in-game credits. There are currently no microtransactions in the game, although I expect cosmetic packs will be added later as is usual for Ubisoft). This was incredibly fun, and while not *quite* as addicting as Queen's Blood in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, it's not too far off from that high level of quality. The downside of all this is that the planets outside of the main settlements are... pretty empty. The explorable area isn't huge (I suspect even combining the different planets, the open-world is a fraction of the size of Assassin's Creed Odyssey or Valhalla) but everything does feel a bit too spread out, which is a shame. It's nice not to have tons of meaningless outposts to clear, but there should have been more to actually *do* between settlements. Much of the open-world is just empty fields or deserts, which is a shame. What is ALSO a shame is the combat, which is, frankly, terrible. This is a shock, given that The Division 1 and 2 had some of the best third-person shooting *ever made*. In Star Wars Outlaws, you have one blaster, with a few different firing modes (one for standard damage, one for droids, and one explosive). You *can* change different attributes of these modes (for example, you can change the standard mode from what is essentially a pistol to more of an SMG), but you can only do these at specific workbenches, and in combat, you're stuck with what you have. The upgrades you get later on do make the blaster do more damage, but they don't make it much more fun to use. Gunplay just simply isn't satisfying. Part of this has to do with the weak animation and audio feedback, but it doesn't help that the enemies are dumb as rocks (see my AI complaints earlier). Spawns are also far too rigid, enemies infinitely respawn in imperial bases but they often spawn right in front of you, making them essentially cannon fodder. You can pick up weapons from *some* dead enemies, and these are much more powerful and fun to use, but they're only usable for a brief amount of time, since they... run out of ammo, somehow, despite being a blaster? In addition, you cannot take your acquired weapon with you on ladders, through vents, or shimmying to the next area. It's utterly bizarre that they thought this would be a good idea, it feels like a Halo game, and it ultimately serves the purpose of making your main blaster feel even weaker, which is what you're forced to use 80% of the time. The game is also *laughably* easy after a few upgrades on normal difficulty. It doesn't start off like that, but unlike almost every recent Ubisoft game, Outlaws does not have a level system, which on the one hand means you can complete the campaign with minimal side content, but it also means that they need to balance the campaign for that. What this means is that if you stop to engage with the world... at all, you'll quickly become much more powerful than the game is balanced for, removing any semblance of challenge. In theory, I think removing the RPG-based level systems that have plagued almost every recent Ubisoft game is the right decision, but the balancing needed to be better. More upgrades should have been given out as part of the main story, enabling a higher level of challenge. The stealth is somehow even worse. Star Wars Outlaws has a surprising amount of stealth, and much of it is instant-fail. Now, I love stealth, I really do, but I much prefer a more freeform style of stealth like HITMAN or Dishonored, and if you're going to do instant-fail stealth, you'd better have a large amount of options to complete it. Outlaws has some of the most restrictive stealth I've ever played. There is almost always only one path to succeed, with very few tools at your disposal to give you options on how to get there. You can knock out guards, you can use your pet Nix to distract or attack them, you can throw a completely useless smoke bomb... and that's about it. It's frankly boring, because you can't manipulate the environment in any interesting ways, nor can you vary how you take guards out. It's also weirdly inconsistent, with guards sometimes not being able to spot you right in front of them, and other times being able to spot you and immediately alert the entire damn city from halfway across it. You can't even fight guards in the cities, which is a weirdly restrictive choice given that you can do that in the rest of the world. It's just an awful stealth system that feels far too rigid and, frankly, not fun. Beyond that, Outlaws does have a wanted system, which functions identically to the same systems in Grand Theft Auto or Watch Dogs, where if you commit too many crimes, the Empire will hunt you down. That is until you reach maximum wanted level, where the Empire will... not do that, and while the game claims to send Death Troopers after you, the only way to clear your wanted level is to *hunt down the Death Troopers yourself and hack their computer*. This is a frankly baffling way to handle a wanted system, and I strongly suspect it's due to the AI being so terrible it can't handle a chase, so this was a last-minute "solution". There is also a reputation system with the different syndicates, and Kay will get the choice to either side with or against the different syndicates during the game, often pitting them directly in conflict with each other. It's an interesting system in theory, but regardless of your choices, the narrative plays out identically (with one very brief exception in the final mission that is so meaningless it might as well not have been there at all). The only real difference that the system makes is whether you have to sneak through their territory or whether you can walk through freely (along with some outfits you get if you get high reputation with a faction), but it frankly doesn't matter because almost everything you actually need to access in these areas is in a restricted area anyway that you can't access even if they adore you. It just reduces the amount of sneaking you need to do to reach that point, you can't just walk in there. Again, a promising system in theory, but one that falls far short of similar systems in other games. Lastly, there is ship combat, but not much of it, and 95% of this game takes place on planets rather than in space. The ship combat is... fine, but fairly basic. Now, you may be thinking at this point "combat is bad, stealth is bad, the wanted system is bad, the reputation system is bad, so is the entire gameplay just bad"? And... kind of, yeah, apart from the exploration. I'm glad they didn't simply copy Assassin's Creed or Far Cry, but the core gameplay here just simply... isn't good. Which would then lead you to ask "why did you say at the start that it's 'not a bad game by any means' then? Surely if the core gameplay is this bad, then it's a bad game"? To be honest, this was something I wrestled with while playing. I wondered to myself at numerous points "why don't I hate this"? Ultimately, the world-building and exploration carried this game a lot for me, so much so that I could ultimately overlook so many problems that the core *video game* actually has. A lot of excellent video games do not have great gameplay (Death Stranding, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, Uncharted, the list goes on). Video games are an interactive medium, but they do not always live and die by their actual *gameplay*. Oftentimes, gameplay is only part of the overall experience, and other parts of the experience can compensate for weak gameplay mechanics. I'd say that Star Wars Outlaws is another example of this. In fact, if this game had a satisfying narrative, I would be recommending it to you right now. Unfortunately... Star Wars Outlaws starts off quite promising from a narrative perspective. It's never high art, but it does have a (mostly) likable cast of main characters and its initial focus on syndicates rather than the Empire and rebels is refreshing. Kay Vess herself is honestly an endearing protagonist, I don't like how some of the writing leans too hard into "MCU" quips, but she feels different enough from Han Solo to stand out. Regarding the *ridiculous* discourse over Kay Vess being "ugly"... first off, who gives a shit. She's a video game character. Secondly, apart from the aforementioned facial animation issues at some points of the game (which is a technical issue rather than a design choice)... she looks fine, honestly. She doesn't look like a supermodel, but she certainly isn't "ugly". She doesn't look out of place at all in the 70s inspired world that the original Star Wars trilogy is. And that is the only thing I have to say about what is possibly the dumbest discourse in video game history. Regarding the rest of the main crew, they're fine. Not particularly memorable, but likable enough. None of them will win any awards for complex, three-dimensional writing, but they're fine. I didn't like Sliro as a villain though. He's your typical Far Cry villain who solely exists to try to kill the player. Completely uninteresting. The narrative itself is pretty basic, as I mentioned before. The first two acts are your typical heist story, with not much to set it apart. Without delving into spoilers, however, the end of the game is a complete disappointment, crawling back to the regular comfort zone of "Rebels vs Empire" with the most generic tropes imaginable. It was kind of refreshing to have a Star Wars story that felt different from the hundreds of samey Star Wars movies, TV series, games, books, etc, so it's really disappointing to see the game abandon that in favour of simply rehashing familiar ground. Before release, Star Wars Outlaws got a lot of comparisons to Bethesda's Starfield, and while these games are similar on the surface, ultimately their strengths and weaknesses are very different. Starfield's open-world is much, MUCH bigger, but felt empty and uninteresting, whereas Outlaws' is much smaller, but denser. Starfield's biggest strengths were its combat and writing, whereas those are underwhelming in Outlaws. Both games were very buggy, but Starfield was much worse in this regard. I think these games are very similar in terms of *overall* quality, but the strengths and weaknesses of the two games are so different that it's ultimately not worth comparing. I think I *enjoyed* Outlaws a fair bit more, but a lot of that is down to the technical state of Starfield, and it's hard to say which game is *better*. So that's Star Wars Outlaws. A very interesting game to talk about, to be honest. I had a lot more to say than I thought I would heading in. Outlaws gets a lot of important things right, but unfortunately gets just as much wrong, and that's why I ultimately can't recommend this to you. However, I'm not saying "avoid this", either. Ultimately, I'm leaving it up to you. I recommend reading/watching other reviews, deciding what strengths and weaknesses of this game matter to you more, and make your own purchase decision. I'm just here to provide my take, which is that... while I enjoyed a lot of this game, the overall weight of this game's problems did, in the end, significantly hinder my experience. I didn't *dislike* it in the end, but I do leave a bit disappointed because there was a lot of potential for something better. But there is a lot to like here, and if you can overlook some serious problems (and preferably wait for some patches), you might get more out of this than I did. 6/10.