Year: 2024
Platform: PlayStation 5
Developer: Ubisoft
Genre: Action/Adventure
Review Date: 3/2/25
Rating: ****

"It's not crude. It's vintage!"

Kay Vess is a street rat living in the slums of Canto Bight. She gets mixed up in an operation to steal from a major crime syndicate, which results in betrayal, a death mark, and a stolen ship. With a bounty on her head and the Zerek Besh hunting her down, Kay makes a deal with a smarmy crime lord to clear her death mark by committing the biggest heist in the galaxy. This involves assembling a crew of experts and making friends with a number of competing crime syndicates.

It's an interesting take on the "Star Wars" universe, focusing on the criminal underworld rather than the exploits of the Galactic Empire. However, the Empire is still a constant presence and a threat to the Outer Rim, and is not to be taken lightly. Even the crime syndicates are wary of them and keep their distance. The Rebel Alliance is also lurking in the background, but for the most part they're treated as a nuisance and are just a bunch of annoying activists with no credits. The story takes place between "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return Of The Jedi," and there are no references to the Force, the Jedi, the Sith, or lightsabers. Kay has never even heard of Darth Vader, which shocked me at first since he's a central character to the entire mythology. Although upon further analysis, it makes perfect sense. Why would she know or even care about the Empire's organization and power structure? To most people, they're just a bunch of faceless Stormtroopers who bully locals and exploit natural resources. That said, the game does a good job of presenting the Empire as a force for law and order in the otherwise dangerous and lawless Outer Rim territories, while also depicting its officers as greedy, corrupt, cruel, elitist, and power-hungry.

Unfortunately, the game does not give a good first impression, and did not receive great reviews when it launched. Kay is neither a likable, interesting, or charismatic character and the gameplay is simply no fun. She has a pet merqaal named Nix who can fetch items, spot enemies, and distract people, but he's kind of creepy and hard to control. Stealth missions are stressful, unintuitive, and needlessly difficult, and combat doesn't fare much better. The learning curve is especially steep at the beginning because Kay is so weak and her reputation is so low. It wasn't until 20 hours into the game when I got the hyperdrive repaired in Kay's ship so that I could leave the planet that I finally started to enjoy and appreciate what the game had to offer. Unless you're a diehard "Star Wars" fan, that's a pretty large concession to make, especially since I usually give up on a game after an hour if I'm not getting anything out of it. It also took me that long to realize that I could manually save my game so that I could replay sections that I messed up. That proved to be a game changer and a life saver, especially when Kay's reputation was on the line. "Outlaws" is also unusual in that the game becomes considerably easier the longer you play, which ultimately made it much more enjoyable for me.

The reviews I read for the game said that the story could be completed in 30 hours, but it took me a whopping 175 hours to get to the end, even playing on the easiest difficulty. That said, I found the story to be the least interesting part of the game, and I was constantly getting distracted by side quests, which were a lot more fun than the main quest. They are also crucial for upgrading your abilities and building your reputation with all of the major crime lords.

What "Outlaws" really excels at is world building. The game looks and sounds FANTASTIC, and my favorite moments were just exploring every nook and cranny of the various environments. Every planet feels vibrant and alive, with dynamic weather, day/night cycles, blowing snow, wafting grass, drifting sand, bursts of pollen, and various species of (mostly harmless) wildlife. The terrain is rugged and varied, although repeated patterns become noticeable the more you explore. The music is excellent and incorporates classic "Star Wars" themes and sounds, which gives the game some nice emotional hooks. Spooky music is also used as a helpful cue for upcoming danger. The sound design is superb and does a great job of reflecting and honoring the "Star Wars" legacy. The only oddity I noted was that Kay's blaster sounds a lot more "Battlestar Galactica" than "Star Wars," which was a constant mental hurdle for me.

Possibly the most annoying aspect of the game is that even though it's a single-player offline game, you have to create an Ubisoft account and log into it every time you play. I suppose that's how they collect player and gameplay statistics for future development. That said, I have to give Ubisoft credit for constantly revising the gameplay and improving the user experience after the initial bad reviews and player feedback. I'm sure that waiting a few months to play it gave me a much more rewarding experience than if I had started it as soon as it came out.

Another sore spot in the game is the reputation meter, which affects Kay's relationships with the various crime syndicates. Often times, Kay is forced to make morally vague decisions that usually end up betraying one faction or another. These moral dilemmas are crippling, which made me realize that I don't actually enjoy playing as a scoundrel. I hate making bad decisions and the game is full of them. Regardless, most of these decisions don't have a major impact and it's usually not super hard to get back into someone's good graces even after you've stabbed them in the back. In fact, sometimes they don't affect the game at all. For instance, after breaking into a Crimson Dawn stronghold, stealing an artifact, killing her men, and betraying her trust, Qi-ra still offered Kay a job without being bothered at all. Reputation can also be boosted by accepting smuggling and infiltration contracts, but they're annoyingly flaky. Sometimes a contract would be available on a certain planet, and by the time I got there it would be gone. I could also perform the same contracts multiple times, which broke continuity.

Overall, I found "Star Wars: Outlaws" to be an enjoyable and engaging experience, but given its massive scope and open world design, it's easy to nitpick. Naturally, if you play the game out of sequence (as I have a tendency to do), cracks appear in the narrative and events that haven't happened will sometimes be referenced. For instance, the very first time I arrived in Sashin, which was literally five minutes after I landed on Akiva, people were telling Kay about how they'd seen her around and how well she handles a speeder. Some areas are only available in the main quest, but mysteriously disappear if you try to visit them earlier or later.

The speeder controls are finicky and difficult to master, and speeder combat is a lost cause. Whenever I was being pursued by bandits, it was far easier to just get off my speeder and shoot down the pursuers on foot. Similarly, space combat is overly difficult, and you spend nearly all of your time trying to track enemy ships, which are almost always behind you. However, even with the Trailblazer's sluggish controls, it's a cool ship and sturdy enough to handle most attacks.

Lockpicking involves a minigame that is so annoying and unintuitive that there's an option to bypass it altogether, which I immediately enabled. Other minigames include data-slicing security systems, arcade machines, gambling machines, fathier races, and the galaxy's favorite card game, Sabacc. You can even challenge Lando Calrissian to a game! "Outlaws" uses the Kessel Sabacc rules, which include shift tokens, imposter cards, chance cubes, and chips. It can be tricky to get the hang of, but winning a game is very satisfying. Ironically, the high stakes games are considerably easier to win than the low stakes games (which I almost always lost).

In general, the voice acting is good, but not great. It's interesting that the battle droid ND-5 has more personality than the rest of the cast, which also raises a lot of difficult questions. In many ways, ND-5 is just as "human" as every other character, with actual feelings, opinions, morals, and a conscience. So where do we draw the line with droids and their rights, since they're effectively just treated as mechanical slaves? I think the game gives ND-5 too many human traits and too much agency to make him a believable character, but I understand it in the scope of the story. The voice acting for the other NPCs is inconsistent at best, and it's odd hearing various races having different accents. For instance, one Rodian will speak with an Irish accent while another Rodian speaks with an Indian accent. The accents are literally all over the place with no particular rhyme or reason. However, Imperial officers ALWAYS have British accents and Stormtroopers ALWAYS have Midwest American accents.

Another disappointing design decision is that all of the characters you meet in the game (except for Jabba The Hutt) are humanoid, and much like the movies, they basically look like people in masks. Rodians, Transoshans, Weequays, Quarrens, Ithorians, Sullustans, and Chadra-Fans are all bipedal beings with two arms and two legs, and all roughly the same height (although Chadra-Fans are notably shorter). And while sexuality and orientation are well-represented, gender characteristics for all races basically boil down to either two breasts or no breasts. And let me tell you, seeing Bossk with boobs or a well-endowed Weequay is a bit unsettling. But from a technical implementation perspective, I totally get it, as it's a lot easier to manage a cast of characters that share similar physical attributes and movements.

Similarly, much of the architecture in the game looks the same. Working with the visual language of "Star Wars" is difficult because it has to be recognizeble. You want to please the audience with nostalgic hooks, but not alienate them with too many variations and new ideas. The game starts out on a bad note by being set in Canto Bight and dredging up memories of the awful "The Last Jedi," and my first thought was, "Why does the architecture look like it belongs on Tatooine, which is a completely different environment, culture, and climate?" I understand why all Imperial ships and outposts look the same, but does EVERY cantina have to look the same as Chalmun's in Mos Eisley?

Your enjoyment of "Star Wars: Outlaws" will likely depend on how much of a "Star Wars" nerd you are. The world building, visual design, and sound design evoke classic "Star Wars" vibes and offer a wonderful space to explore and interact with people and places. Despite my numerous criticisms, the fact that I played it for close to 200 hours means that I kept coming back to it and definitely got my money's worth. It has TONS of references, callbacks, cameos, and tie-ins to existing lore, and I loved snooping around for treasures and collectibles. I eventually warmed up to Kay, and her exchanges with ND-5 provide the most rewarding dialog in the game. Perhaps the game's biggest weakness is that it offers too much: stealth, combat, exploration, minigames, relationship management, treasure hunts, card games, racing, costume collecting, etc. It can definitely be overwhelming and it's difficult to excel at every aspect.