We have had a lot of fun spinning lightsabers and using dazzling Force powers in our Star Wars video games, but Star Wars Outlaws swaggers into the cantina creeps into a booth with its holster clip undone, and declares that those are no match for having a nice blaster by your side. This open-world action game, or rather, open-worlds, has a degree of gunfights and unfulfilled promises appropriate for the myth that is Chewbacca’s closest friend. But in both positive and negative aspects, Star Wars Outlaws is fundamentally a Han Solo-like experience; it has a strong feeling of adventure and some attractive looks, but it is also a little rough around the edges and prone to disappoint you from time to time.
The real Han Solo is, of course, essentially on ice throughout the entirety of Outlaws, given that its fun space western plot takes place between the height of Imperial dominance in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Rather, we enter the worn-out space boots of Kay Vass, a crafty thief who was brought up in the hiveminds of vice and filth in Canto Bight, the epicenter of gambling. She rapidly demonstrates her skill with a hairpin lockpick and her voracious appetite for five-finger discounts, but she never quite emerges from Han’s shadow to become more than a stand-in smuggler with a golden heart, much like Dash Rendar and pre-Jedi Kyle Katarn before her.
But Nix, Kay’s lovely tiny pet, is always with her. He looks like he has six fingers growing out of his hairy little head, so he is very skilled at pinching things himself. The amusing duo is forced to crash-land their stolen ship, the Trailblazer, into the sands of the stunning but dangerous planet of Toshara, after their first vault operation goes wrong.
The next twenty hours are spent on a series of risky rescue missions and dubious underworld activities as Kay and Nix navigate around the four main planets and the pirate-infested areas between. Their goal is to bring together a group of like-minded criminals and return to Canto Bight to settle the unpaid debt and remove the bounty that the crime boss, Sliro, had placed on Kay’s head. Mostly maintained at a distance and only appearing in the occasional cinematic, this heartless casino owner acts as the main nemesis of the Outlaws. While threatening enough, he is neither as overtly malevolent as Emperor Palpatine nor as subtly menacing as Grand Admiral Thrawn.
Even so, the Outlaws’ story is a constantly entertaining adventure that leads Kay through both familiar and unfamiliar locations, such as the massive High Republic cruiser wreckage on Toshara and the impressively recreated dungeons beneath Jabba’s palace on Tatooine. Along the way, Kay makes deals with a plethora of colorful criminals, such as the surly Sullustan mobster on Akiva, who dares to give you orders while propped up on a desk made out of his carbonite-encased brother (a move that was recently proven safe after testing on Captain Solo).
Outlaws’ crime story feels novel, at least in terms of video games, even though Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) underwhelmingly explored similar ground on the big screen. This is because it is largely isolated from the godlike battles between light and dark Force wielders, and Kay’s profit-driven motivations mean it is primarily only adjacent to the Rebels vs. Empire conflict of Andor. Rather, this is a simple heist narrative that happens to take place in the expansive, fantasy sci-fi world that many of us loved as children, and it is been lovingly brought to life in this game as much as it has ever been.
Outlaws is similar to a Guy Ritchie caper in that sense, and by the time it was all over, I had seen enough shocking double crosses and crosses that the storyline began to resemble the mess of HDMI cords behind the TV I was watching. Outlaws culminate in a thrilling Rebellion finale, and Kay’s transformation from a self-centered villain to a sympathetic ally is fully realized.
Assassin’s Greedo
But being an outlaw involves more than just going from point A to point B. Along the way, Kay conspires with various underworld allies to break into and out of the offices of crime syndicates and Imperial bases. Since this is very much a Ubisoft game, each of these facilities usually has a variety of different in-points that you can choose from, such as swinging over a high wall with your grappling hook or finding and crawling through a subterranean air vent. You can tag such points of interest beforehand with binoculars.
The stealth mechanics of Outlaws rely heavily on their furry companion Nix, who serves as a kind of space cat drone akin to a Watch Dogs phone. Among his many other abilities is the ability to point him at switches to activate while you stay undercover, to momentarily divert the focus of security cameras to allow you safe passage, and to claw at the faces of guards to allow you to rush in with a somewhat soft-looking but surprisingly effective melee takedown. Nix is undoubtedly a very good and obedient boy, so I did not think twice about treating him to entertaining dinner date minigames at street vendors during the breaks between each job. This was especially true because these games were not only enjoyable to play but also provided me with special dishes that improved Nix’s abilities.
My furry buddy Nix is essentially a drone space cat that works similarly to a Watch Dogs phone.
Kay possesses a unique set of abilities that enable her to surreptitiously enter every high-security establishment. Though you can convert the symbols to numbers if it is a little easier on your brain, I was not too fond of the slicing minigame that you have to play through to turn sentry turrets against enemies and disable cameras, a la System Shock. This symbol-based challenge feels as intuitive as trying to solve a Wordle puzzle in a foreign language. The rhythm-based lockpicking, on the other hand, never got old to me. It is a surprisingly easy yet effective game of Simon Says, and it has to be one of the fastest and most enjoyable ways I have played in a long time to open locked doors and boxes.
But all in all, Outlaws’ stealth is a little inconsistent. Sometimes it is much too easy. For example, I was able to lure enemy after enemy to my hiding place in the same tangle of long grass by using the tried-and-true Assassin’s Creed distract-and-dispatch technique, stacking their lifeless bodies like kindling. Sometimes, though, it was completely random. For example, there were occasions when I would set off an alarm and carry out a covert takedown even though it did not seem like anyone else was nearby. Rather, my attempts to stay quiet would oftentimes backfire, things would become noisy, and a host of additional issues would surface.
Smuggler’s Run ‘n’ Gun
The action in Outlaws has some good cover-based shooting with realistic sounds and powerful smoke and spark effects with every blaster bolt contact, but it offers very nothing in the way of novel concepts; it is more basic bitch than Bad Batch. In every combat arena that Kay enters, it always seems to be “red barrel delivery day.” I used these explosive targets in nearly every encounter to thin the hordes of Stormtroopers and scumbags before eliminating the survivors and controlling the heat of my blaster with an antiquated active reload mechanism. Though effective, it does not make Outlaws’ battle stand out because it is always difficult to know when to detonate them to take down the most adversaries. We have been doing this for decades.
Kay’s Adrenaline Rush move, which charges up while under attack and allows her to slow time and then mark and execute multiple targets in one rapid hip-firing burst, can also end these straightforward shootouts faster. This movie is almost exactly like the Dead Eye targeting from the Red Dead Redemption series. For the most part, it is helpful and enjoyable, although sometimes Kay would fire stylish, slow-motion blaster rounds right into the cover in front of her instead of the target I had chosen.
The fact that Kay could only ever have her blaster and grenades in her inventory felt a little restrictive. However, weapons dropped by opponents, such as A300 blaster rifles and the Z-6 rotary cannon with a shield, could be picked up, used, and then abandoned when they ran out of ammunition. Nix can be dispatched to gather these weapons for you, like in a firearm fetch game, which is a clever touch. The way Outlaws handles secondary weapons, though, really pisses me off because of how much effort it puts into forcing you to ditch them. Drop your weapon and launch a melee strike. Leap inside a vent and put down your weapon. Let go of your weapon and scale a wall or a ladder. RoboCop, who programmed this?
It seems reasonable to think that if I pick up a sniper rifle, I should be able to carry it with me to a high enough vantage position to make the best use of it. It irritates me particularly because of how frequently enemy snipers in high places have struck me and instantaneously murdered me when I was hiding behind cover. Why do I not have access to sophisticated carry-weapon-up-ladder technology while those Imperial jerks do?
Even though the combat is straightforward and usually reheated, I found myself becoming more accustomed to it as time went on, especially after I was able to upgrade my blaster to include additional shot modes like Ion, which allowed me to temporarily disable enemy shields and turn droids into spark showers, and Power, which allowed me to unleash charged-up blasts that destroyed the heavily armored Gamorrean guards. Even though they are all coming from the same barrel, you now have three weapons to choose from.
I also liked how Outlaws replaced the traditional skill tree with in-game challenges to evolve Kay’s ability set. These challenges included some worthwhile bonus objectives to accomplish, like hitting a certain amount of melee kills to get access to a useful move called False Surrender, which you can use to surprise enemies who are already aware of you. Except for the occasional run-in with a rancor, which adds even more massive red barrels to the mix, and the infrequent encounters with probe droids, this combat system never felt as dynamic or enjoyable as the best games in Ubisoft’s own Far Cry series.
I Like Big Hutts and I Cannot Lie
You have certainly played several Star Wars games previously, but one of Outlaws’ most intriguing and unique elements is its syndicate system, which made me think of The Outer Worlds’ reputation system. Throughout the campaign, you essentially can not finish a task without hurting the feelings of one of the four major crime families to appease another. Joining forces with one cartel can help you receive better deals from a merchant you support, but it will also prevent you from moving freely within the headquarters of another gang that you may have unintentionally or intentionally wronged.
It is a cunning mechanism that makes choosing which tasks to take on feel like a more meaningful decision than simply crossing things off a list before eventually finishing the rest, since carefully selecting which clan to sell your pilfered items to can significantly advance your game. Once, I had such great standing with one syndicate that I could just about bully one of its affiliated store owners into giving me a rare item for free. This was in exchange for a promised favor, which, of course, I already had plans to break because I was already planning to doublecross them.
Verdict
Given that Star Wars Outlaws essentially contains few original ideas compared to previous action and open-world adventures, it is odd that Kay’s ship is named the Trailblazer. Rather, it resembles the Millenium Falcon: a reused piece holding a bucket of bolts together, prone to malfunctioning, but when it works right, it can send you into a Star Wars fan’s hyperspace. Almost every work you choose to do has significant weight because of a brilliant syndicate system; some tasks even have unique quest designs that often result in some truly breathtaking blindsides. Kay’s very typical smuggler character has a new dimension and a more valuable set of powers when she has a friend like Nix by her side the entire time. However, despite his best efforts, the combat and stealth aspects remain unnaturally stiff and monotonous, and there is a 3,720:1 chance of encountering serious technological problems before launch. I am sure you did not want me to tell you the odds, though.
