Star Wars projects are always ambitious undertakings, and in more recent years, have become a truly diverse collection of stories. Once only known as huge action-focused space operas, Star Wars properties can now be anything from an animated series to a cinematic spy drama – but most of them are focused on a specific set of themes. The Star Wars universe outside of the jedi/sith dichotomy – a battle between ‘light’ and ‘dark’ sides – is relatively untouched territory, at least in games. That’s what makes Star Wars Outlaws such an interesting prospect – a Star Wars game with barely a mention of The Force, focused on those on the fringes of society. The smugglers, bounty hunters, and criminal masterminds – those who (for Australian readers) would feature in a series of Underbelly. The game is about crime and shenanigans, and is at its heart an underdog story – and its protagonist, Kay Vess, is one I was very happy to root for.
The game itself is quite ambitious. It’s ‘open world’ in the sense that there are a lot of different threads and leads to follow, collectibles scattered throughout the maps on the various worlds, and a host of side characters ready to give you quests to interrupt your main journey. On her speeder, which can be upgraded and customised, Kay can traverse large planets new and old, and travel back and forth between them in her (stolen) ship, the Trailblazer – a new addition to the Star Wars world. But despite that, the game doesn’t feel that big. Not ‘big’ in the sense that an ‘open world’ evokes. The scale feels large, with endless skies visible from the surface to remind you that you’re in space, but there aren’t really that many places to go – at least without exploring just for the sake of it. You can wander off the beaten path and quickly find yourself with a new objective, but there’s only so far you can go. For me, a person who feels an inherent need to get every collectible and clear every part of a map, this was a big win. But that experience might not be universal.
For Kay Vess, however, the world is huge. After growing up as a street thief, she’s ready to take on that one big score that will allow her and her best friend/partner/pet/adorable companion Nix to live a quiet life away from the pressures of the worlds she’s used to. She’s done doing it tough on the casino planet of Canto Bight (though she’s very good at crime, generally) and she’s ready to kick back – but she needs someone to take a chance and send her on that big, life-changing job. It isn’t long before it presents itself – a heist, involving a complex, team break-in into the vault of the filthy rich Sliro. Shenanigans ensue, and there are some more details that I obviously won’t mention here, but from this point on the game becomes something of an Ocean’s style montage, with Kay being sent to recruit the best criminals in their various fields and convince them to help procure the obscene amount of money in the vault.
But of course, it isn’t as easy as that. Along the way, Kay crosses paths with the wrong people, earning herself a ‘death mark’ that means bounty hunters from across the world are after her. She also wants to make a name for herself in a somewhat more positive way in the criminal underworld (a girl’s gotta have dreams), which means plenty of liaising with the main criminal syndicates across the galaxy, earning their favour (or their ire) as she tries to make it big – which is where the main gameplay focus lies. The overarching story is compelling, and it does hit some fun and unexpected beats, but the real heart of the game lies in managing factions and deciding where to pledge your allegiances. Or, if you’re me, becoming obsessed with making every single criminal in the galaxy appreciate and respect you.
The game is designed so that your reputation with the four factions will fluctuate throughout the course of your playthrough, with approval ratings with each rising and falling in some way after basically every mission. A mission to steal some intel for sophisticated spy syndicate Crimson Dawn (run by Lady Qi’ra, who is an absolute badass) might turn into an opportunity to double cross them and give the intel to the smuggling-focused Pykes, for example. The game will give you a reminder of your standing with each group when you’re making a decision, but things can ebb and flow in ways you don’t expect pretty easily. Things rarely go to plan, as is (I presume?) true for all crimes, so you’ll need to do a lot of constant reputation management.
Beyond having to live with the knowledge that somewhere out there doesn’t like you, having a bad reputation with a syndicate can mean the group is less likely to let you roam free around certain parts of the map, which can be a massive pain when trying to complete objectives. There are some jobs that will only be available to you if you have a high enough standing with a particular group, but even the ones that don’t might have hidden difficulties if you try to take them on when the gang is basically waiting to attack you. Dropping off cargo in the Hutt district of a city becomes a lot easier when the Hutts will just let you walk most of the way there in the open, rather than trying to sneak around corners and through long grass. You’ll also lose reputation if you’re spotted in areas you aren’t supposed to be, so your reputation can quickly go from bad to worse if you try to sneak in, have a bad rep so are attacked, and then lose more reputation for ‘brawling’ or ‘disruption’.
And you will be spotted – often. While there’s a lot to love about this game, like a stellar performance from Humberly Gonzalez as Kay Vess, and the instant charm of Nix, a super useful companion when it comes to pretty much any (mainly stealth) scenario, the game isn’t without its problems. The best way to describe it is ‘kinda janky’, in most senses of the word. While zooming across the plains at high speed on her speeder, Kay will often hit an imperceptible rock that sends her flying, or a tree that doesn’t load in until the last second. Sometimes enemies will spot you even when you’re behind cover and a hundred metres away, but then won’t see you approaching when you basically walk straight up to them. Objectives are unclear, Kay will clip through the environment, and sometimes quest markers won’t trigger. Checkpoints are also wildly inconsistent, and while sometimes a death will actually respawn you further ahead in your mission, it’s equally likely to send you back further than you expect and lose you a ton of progress.
The thing is… I didn’t really feel bothered by any of this. Many of these are bugs that I imagine will be fixed in a patch in the not too distant future. Some of them, like HUD and objective icons that were too small or unclear, probably could have been fixed with better utilisation of some of the game’s many accessibility features. Others do feel like they’re down to some less than great quest design, but when you remember to use things like Nix’s sense that reveals hidden objects in the world, you can usually figure out where to go. As far as companions go, Nix is actually one of the less buggy ones I’ve experienced – at least, he was for me. He’ll mostly do what you tell him to, whether that’s attacking or sneaking into a vent to open a door, and he’ll rarely go rogue – even if sometime his sprite does pop out of nowhere when loading into a new screen, or trying to navigate a tight area. Despite the game looking amazing for the most part, there are also some jarring differences between gameplay and strangely rendered cutscenes that killed the immersion a little, along with some audio sync issues with animation, but these are all small things to me.
There’s a lot to do in this game if you’re willing to just abandon your objectives and explore a little, but you have to be willing to mess around. You can take things at your own pace, and probably spend hours playing Sabacc (it’s a card game – you’ll hate it, then get weirdly into it once you understand it), or seeking out some of the game’s ‘experts’, each of whom has their own quest and will teach you valuable new skills to use on your adventure. Some of these tie into main quests, but not all of them, so if something seems like an interesting lead to follow, you should probably follow it – it might lead somewhere important. I can’t imagine what this game would be like if you weren’t willing to just chase after tiny pieces of intel (the game will catalogue them for you and show them on your map) but with them, it leaves you with plenty to do. There are also lockpicking and slicing minigames that take the form of a rhythm game and a take on Mastermind, but your mileage with these will vary. Personally, I loved the slicing game, but I’m a Mastermind nerd.
If you tire of the planet surface, you can always take to space, but I didn’t find myself wanting to do much of that unless a quest required it. The icons for what your ship can do (fire cannons, jump to different systems, barrel rolls) are a little unclear and I did find that these sections got a little repetitive – zoom through asteroid fields, shoot down ships, repeat. There is a nice touch in that the game asks you to ‘punch it’ when you’re about to jump to a different system, which feels particularly Star Wars-y.
All in all, this game does a great job of what I believe it sets out to do – which is focus on the ‘outlaw’ experience. The syndicates are distinct enough even if their quests aren’t, and I did enjoy the new addition to the world that this game brings – the Ashiga Clan, based out of the cold planet Kijimi. For fans of the series, there’s plenty of ‘Star Wars’ in every part of the game, including some cameos from familiar faces. I want to give a special shoutout to the soundtrack, too, which sounds exactly like a Star Wars movie score and provides the perfect backdrop to the experience. Gameplay-wise, it has some issues, but none that broke the game, and none that provided more than mild annoyance – though I do wish the stealth mechanic was a little more consistent.
If you like Star Wars, you’ll like this game. If you’re particularly jazzed on heist films, you’ll probably also like it. If you enjoy Ubisoft’s general open world formula, you’ll also probably have a good time. There’s a lot to enjoy here, if you’re willing to be a little forgiving of some kinks. I, for one, had a great time rooting for Kay Vess, the underdog thief with a heart of gold, and her little axolotl-esque friend. Most importantly, I also want to note that there are a ton of animals across the game’s various worlds, and yes – you can pet them. They all have unique pet animations. And yes, it does make Nix jealous if you do.
Player 2 reviewed Star Wars Outlaws on PlayStation 5, using a code kindly provided by Ubisoft.
