After Electronic Arts’ (EA) exclusive deal to create Star Wars video games ended in 2023, it gave a glimmer of hope to many fans who wanted to experience a universe created by different video game studios. Ubisoft and a few others like Quantic Dream and Saber Interactive got approved projects to develop a Star Wars game.
Despite Respawn Entertainment’s critical success of its Star Wars Jedi franchise, it was too late for EA to prove its worth after the huge Star Wars Battlefront II pay-to-win controversy surrounding its micro-transactions. Ubisoft’s upcoming Star Wars Outlaws is dubbed as the first-ever, open-world single-player Star Wars game in history and Massive Entertainment leads this project.
Star Wars Outlaws doesn’t involve Force-sensitive characters, nor focus on the Skywalker story despite its event unfolding between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Its narrative focuses on the adventures of Kay Vess and her merqaal companion, Nix. After getting a death mark following the results of her heist at Canto Bight in a mansion owned by one of the most ruthless crime syndicate leaders, Sliro, she needs to come up with a plan to escape from the situation she got herself into, to a life of freedom and luxury.
Outlaws‘ plot isn’t special nor groundbreaking, however, it’s everything we could have hoped for, for a Star Wars scoundrel story. If any of you remember the 2018 Solo: A Star Wars Story film, you could say Kay’s adventures are more exciting than Han Solo. Star Wars Outlaws is full of plot twists and surprises; while the story does lack tear-jerker moments, you will get to witness a lot of character development that will lead you to love Kay and her ragtag of misfits especially with ND-5, the mysterious BX Commando Droid. I loved the consistency of the writing and you get to appreciate the narrative direction Massive took for Outlaws. It’s fun, elegant, and quite charming.
World-building is the pinnacle of every open-world game, and I am happy to say that the team over at Massive has outdone themselves by creating Outlaws‘ open-world engaging and filled with lore and activities that every Star Wars fan is craving for, from randomly racing with people in the outskirts of Toshara or helping out a random stranger look for their relative to infiltrating Imperial outposts and space stations.
There are sorts of activities and people to interact with to keep you distracted when you explore the world in Outlaws. Kessel Sabacc is one of my favorites. I have always wanted to experience the official space gambling of the Star Wars universe and I’ve seen myself playing Kessel Sabacc when I stumble on a playing table in every cantina and parlor I’ve ever been to in the game. There are also people who either scam you for credits or give you half of their gambling winnings if you give them some spare change. High-risk, high rewards as they say in the real world. You either take the chance or be conservative, and in Outlaws, it pays to be a risk taker, even if it fools you to get a VIP ticket to meet a crime boss by giving them 100 credits. I got scammed, and it was honestly amusing.
I got my review copy five days ago, and while I finished the main story and a handful of side-quests and intel missions in just under 20 hours, there are still a lot of things to do. I still have yet to fully learn ND-5’s past, and discover more secrets in the sands of Tatooine and Toshara and I’m excited to get back into the game after publishing this review.
To even expound on the world of Outlaws, there are four planets to fully explore. Toshara is the newest planet in the block. It’s a savanna moon with strong winds and sandstone mounds and a planet governed by the Galactic Empire with the criminal underworld thriving to survive by making deals with Imperial officers. It’s a lovely planet brimming with life, and holds a lot of secrets. The planet covered in snow, Kijimi first appeared in The Rise of Skywalker and while its area isn’t as big as the other explorable planets, there are still secrets to find.
A planet that doesn’t need any introductions, Tatooine, is one of the most iconic places to set your foot in. Its sand-filled locales offer you to explore a popular spaceport settlement, Mos Eisley, and Jabba’s Palace. Akiva, the lush-filled planet with thick forests highlights some of the most beautiful flora and fauna in Outlaws. While Akiva isn’t entirely a new planet, it first appeared in the book Star Wars Aftermath. The attention to detail from Massive is no doubt impressive and their team brought Akiva and its capital city, Myrra, to life in Outlaws perfectly.
Massive created these planets with the utmost detail possible and they have impressively achieved something spectacular while creating Outlaws‘ open world, teeming with life and activities to do. Massive made every possible planet as engaging and fun to explore, with hardcore Star Wars fans, such as myself, appreciating the nooks and crannies we discover.
Combat leans towards shooting, with no lightsabers and Force powers in sight, and it’s honestly a breath of fresh air. Lightsabers are not bad, no, in fact, I love playing Star Wars Jedi, wielding a Jedi/Sith weapon, but playing a single-player experience that ditches those overpowered laser beams and prefers blasters instead is enjoyable at best. Kay isn’t a Force-sensitive individual, she is a scoundrel, who grew up in the worker’s district on the planet Cantonica. She relies on her wits, thievery, tools, and shooting skills. Kay is armed with a very unique blaster pistol, the VM-19. It’s a flexible weapon that can switch to different modes depending on the need. Kay can switch blaster modes from Plasma, Ion, and Power. Plasma being the standard of them all, with Ion to disable front weapon shields and great against battle droids, and Power, well, being a powerful blast that could knock back enemies with a huge punch.
While in combat, the recoil of the blaster is rough, you really feel that kickback when you fire the blaster pistol; and I believe that’s part of the experience, especially coming from a modified blaster pistol that packs a lot of power. Overall, the combat is smooth, and it feels like Massive took notes from DICE’s Star Wars Battlefront II as they both handle blaster fire recoils perfectly for each weapon.
Aside from the VM-19 pistol, she can also pick up enemy weapons such as the A300 blaster rifle, the Imperial-issued E-11 blaster rifle, and a ton more. However, there’s a caveat when using these weapons. They have a limited number of shots and Kay can’t holster them in her inventory. I would classify them as “temporary” weapons that would give Kay a slight boost during battles. I do get the point where she can’t just bring around blaster rifles since there are a lot of things to consider such as where would Kay place the rifle, how can Kay climb on walls and mountains with a blaster rifle, or how can she operate a terminal or slice a door if she has that blaster rifle on hand, at least a pistol can be holstered compared to a rifle.
Massive wanted to handle the blasters consistently with canon lore. For those who are used to Battlefront II (2017) having unlimited ammo and cooling down before making another round of shots, these are not canon-accurate. Blasters in the world of Star Wars have power cells that would give the rifles a limited number of shots. Like the E-11 blaster rifle, for example, can fire at least 100 shots before replacing its power cell. I appreciate how Massive did their research and I liked the limitations they placed for the blaster rifles.
Space combat and exploration are also some of the greatest feats in Outlaws. With the Trailblazer starship, Kay gets to explore the stars and engage enemies in dogfights. The controls are amazing, and it’s easy to maneuver the Trailblazer during dogfights and it seems like Massive took a lot of notes from Battlefront II’s space combat; it’s arcadey, entertaining, and exciting. What’s even noteworthy is when you take off from the spaceport or when you land from space to the planet, the seamless transition makes Starfield look dated.
You also get to encounter secrets, and random events in the space where crime syndicates are fighting, you could either help one of the parties to increase reputation, or you can even loot from destroyed ships. There’s a ton of fun when you explore space with the Trailblazer.
I also mentioned reputation. There’s a reputation system across the crime syndicates in Outlaws. You’ll get to do jobs for the Hutts, Crimson Dawn, the Pykes, and the all-new Ashiga Clan. In the criminal underworld, Kay needs to work with these crime organizations to get special offers and discounts from merchants, and rewards that benefit Kay such as high-tier equipment. While the reputation system does not affect the overall narrative of Outlaws, you get to reap the rewards that benefit Kay instead. You get to discover interesting dialogues, especially when facing a double agent who wants you to give them the data discs or pin the blame on another crime organization. It’s a system that works well if you’re looking to take advantage of the rewards you get from them.
When there’s a morality system, there’s also notoriety in Outlaws. The Galactic Empire rules the entire galaxy, and it’s their job to put law and order. The Empire is the policing faction and if you commit crimes near Stormtroopers or Imperial Officers, you will become wanted and they will arrest or even kill you on the spot. It thematically works, especially when the events of the game are set in between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. When the notoriety level reaches max, the Empire sends out their best, Death Troopers, to deal with you and that’s when everything becomes chaos and wildly challenging. The black armored troopers seen in the 2016 film, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, are hard to put down.
Abilities aren’t unlocked through skill points or leveling up. Massive took a different approach to Outlaws‘ progression system. Instead of grinding for experience points, leveling up, and getting skill points, you will be doing challenges for specific Experts to unlock an ability. Let’s take Bram, for example, he’s the person who looks after Kay and he’s one of the experts who gives Kay abilities such as the Armored Undershirt perk that increases Kay’s overall health and Fast-Talk wherein Kay gets the option to react to nearby alerted enemies, delaying their reaction.
I love this idea that you only need to do challenges instead to unlock abilities and perks to make the game feel less grindy. These challenges include stealthily taking down enemies while Nix distracts them or kill enemies without aiming down sights. These nuanced challenges give Outlaws a cool and smooth way of unlocking Kay’s abilities.
Star Wars Outlaws looks excellent and I love how Massive they made Toshara visually appealing. I always watch the meteor showers at night in Toshara every chance I get. The dunes of Tatooine look authentic, and the level of detail in every bit of polygon in the game is incredible. Let’s not overlook the spectacular soundtrack. Wilbert Roget II, and his co-composers Jon Everist and Kazuma Jinnouchi, took a lot of references from John Williams’ score from both The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi to compose their amazing soundtrack for Outlaws. You can hear the tunes are inspired from the two films and there’s even that little flavor of Ludwig Göransson’s The Mandalorian theme.
Let’s talk about Star Wars Outlaws‘ overall performance on PC and PS5. We all know that Ubisoft games are notorious for bad optimization, especially on PC. With Outlaws, it’s a huge surprise that with its scale the game performs impressively on PS5, especially on PC. I haven’t gotten any frame drops yet, it’s been consistent on 1440p at 60fps with the graphics option set to High, both with and without Nvidia’s DLSS upscaling feature. I have not yet encountered any game-breaking bugs or horrible loading textures, everything is greatly optimized. I’m hoping that Ubisoft studios learn from Massive’s care of how the game performs on hardware.
Star Wars Outlaws’ impressive characters, staggering world-building, hooking story, amazing soundtrack, and engaging gameplay, make this the first authentic open-world experience that every Star Wars fan deserves. Massive Entertainment outdid themselves and it paid off.
