Star Wars Outlaws Review – A Massive Effort

Star Wars Outlaws on PlayStation 5

Star Wars Outlaws marks a couple of recent milestones for the legendary sci-fi franchise that are impossible to overlook. To start, this is the first mainline console and PC release in recent generations not to be developed by an EA studio, as the Jedi series is. Instead, Outlaws is developed by Massive Entertainment – who’ve made the Division games and 2023’s Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora – and published by Ubisoft. 

Secondly, this is the first modern single-player action-adventure Star Wars game to not have a Jedi as a playable protagonist – instead putting gamers into the shoes of Kay Vess: a scoundrel who’s landed herself in hot water. 

Finally, Ubisoft has been pushing Outlaws as one of the most ambitious in the franchise with it being the first open-world game.

As we suspected in our Star Wars Outlaws preview, after getting much more time to dive in, this is indeed a fully-fledged Ubisoft game – which can be a positive or negative depending on your stance. 

Nevertheless, Star Wars Outlaws is a joyful and unique combination of ideas that carves out its own identity in the plethora of media set in the galaxy far, far, away. 

Anyone who has been able to keep completely in the dark about Star Wars Outlaws up until now will be in for a pleasant surprise. That’s because its strong opening act quickly introduces you to its entertaining premise. 

Set between the Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi movies, you play as Kay Vess: a young scoundrel, who’s keen on the art of thieving with her creature partner Nix – a member of a new species to the Star Wars universe called a merqaal. After biting off more than she can chew by robbing the ruthless head of the Zerek Besh crime syndicate, Sliro, Kay and Nix go on the run and are thrown into the deep end of the galaxy’s underworld. 

To pay off her debts, she’s ultimately tasked to assemble of crew of expert renegades to rob Sliro’s vault for the perfect score. To do this, she must start shooting, sneaking, and dealing her way to building a network of contacts among the syndicates across distinct worlds, to buy her freedom while becoming one of the galaxy’s most wanted. 

As for the crew, Kay Vess is an all-around solid protagonist, which is good because you won’t meet other members for a while. She’s a flawed human being, as you’d expect from a young naive scoundrel, being brash, reckless, and good-hearted in equal measure.

But that naivete makes for a good player perspective as we’ve never had such an immersive dive into the criminal underworld in Star Wars games. This makes it all the more interesting a journey as we learn through Kay’s eyes while she’s developing her network and skillset. 

The campaign’s narrative isn’t groundbreaking. It instead hones in on having a good time with some heartfelt moments layered in between, along with some nice twists we won’t spoil. Sliro himself is a menacingly fun villain – giving off the over-the-top tone of a crime boss bad buy from films of the 1980s and ’90s. 

Each crew member meanwhile adds something new to the team dynamic personality-wise, along with their own skillset. The droid ND-5 is a competent yet no-nonsense enforcer with a funny straight-man back and forth with relationship with Kay. There are also lovable members like Ank – who has both a big personality and a morbid sense of humor that throws others off-guard. 

As a space-faring adventure across the stars, this crew and the premise are engrossing enough to be a blast of a sci-fi story in its own right even without the Star Wars label. In fact, even though the in-engine cutscenes are a noticeable quality drop compared to the polished CG ones, it has enough cinematic appeal to justify its own film or $180 million series. That’s if Solo and Andor don’t mind sharing the heist-genre Star Wars spotlight.

Nix is the second-biggest star in Outlaws, however, as part of Outlaw’s signature double-act. Not only is Nix an adorable partner that’s sure to sell a lot of Star Wars merch, but he also makes for a brilliant companion thanks to stealth being such a core part of the gameplay.

Beyond sneaking through enemy strongholds to steal loot and shoot gang members with an upgradable blaster, the open-world element of Star Wars Outlaws lies in Toshara. This is the hub world Kay & Nix first land on in the opening act. From there, you get introduced to more of the local galaxy’s criminal syndicates like the Pykes, Crimson Dawn, the Hurts, and Ashiga Clan – and the gigantic web of sandbox adventure mechanics that come with them if you want to make a name for yourself, which is both a pro and a con. 

The additional gameplay hook at the core of Outlaws is the Reputation system around these syndicates. Almost everything you do affects your relationship with each criminal faction, both within the campaign and the many, many, side activities you can do. As a reward for an improved reputation, you can enter a syndicate’s territory as you please to listen in for new intel on potential quests, get discounts with their merchants, and get additional contracts to take on for them.

The more you do for each syndicate, the better your reputation. The better your reputation, the more rewards you get.

With that, there’s also the decision-making of which faction to side with on missions. Suppose you rip off one syndicate in exchange for another. In that case, your reputation may go from “Good” to “Poor” – missing out on certain benefits – adding to the fun of customizing your own criminal enterprise.

There’s also a plethora of extra activities you can do, like trying out arcade mini-games such as a first-person version of Asteroid, playing Sabaac – which is essentially if blackjack had a baby with space poker – or spending time playing about in space on your Trailblazer ship having dogfights with pirates or enemy syndicates. The latter is especially entertaining if you love the space combat from similar Star Wars games like Squadrons or Battlefront 2. No matter which way, Outlaws offers multiple playgrounds’ full of things to do. 

In summary, it’s the kind of loop in sandbox games where you’re incentivized to put in more time in exchange for gear and buffs to improve your loadout and abilities. Still, you only have to engage with as much as you wish outside of the campaign. Even if rushing the story ends up feeling challenging, you can always turn the difficulty down with no consequence.

No matter what you wish to take part in though, the majority of Star Wars Outlaws is aesthetically pleasing in design. With detailed environments throughout all the planets you visit, natural landscapes on Toshara make for a cathartic experience as you ride your speeder across lush grasslands, magma-looking cliffs, and sparkling waters. It’s a lovely vibe if you don’t feel fast traveling all the time. 

On the other hand, despite the optional playground format of Outlaws’ gameplay, a lot of the side content comes down to formulaic busy work.

There are some solid missions worth the effort though, like ones that involve sneaking through an Imperial base to get an improved Slicing Kit for hacking or enhancing your speeder. Altogether though, much of it comes down to fetch quests along the lines of sneaking through a Syndicate base, stealing or shooting your way through to get a key item or intel, and getting credits plus rep in return. 

Nix’s role in this does make for some good creative manoeuvring throughout the campaign. You constantly need to direct the creature to distract and attack enemies, open shutters, set off explosives, and even steal items for you. Sadly though, a lot of this silver lining is hindered by issues with enemy AI.

Prompts to initiate stealth takedowns sometimes won’t appear or default to the wrong target – triggering whole bases to shoot you down or throw you out and make you start again. Some takedowns simply won’t work; if you’re on a mission where you’re infiltrating an enemy syndicate base, you’ll get thrown out and lose a portion of the positive reputation you previously gained.

Even key elements to sometimes get through a stealth mission, where the best solution to not get caught is in a bit of a puzzle format, won’t appear. Eventually, on an instinctive level, you may feel the need to start avoiding these whenever you can, just to dodge the chance of wanting to pull your hair out.

These side experiences are buttery smooth when all goes well, though. But whenever it doesn’t is the video game equivalent of getting knocked off a horse. A successful stealth section and getting extra rewards to please your syndicate friends is a satisfying trot every now and again between story missions, but not constantly if you’re getting knocked off all the time. 

Those turn-offs are a shame because a lot of love and care was clearly put into the ideation and implementation of other mechanics and aesthetic choices that add a variety of nice touches to the game’s various worlds. 

Across the different planets throughout the games; Cantonica, Kijimi, Tatooine, etc; each has been well made and features distinct natural landscapes, bustling cities of voiced NPCs with full conversations, and a detailed interpretation of the futuristic tech tone set in the original 70s to 80s movies – similar to the lived-in aesthetic the Rogue One movie excelled in. That era theme is emphasized with the colorful UI and neon tones in city districts.

Even the regular act of lockpicking, using the data spike to open doors and chests, is a pleasant flashing rhythm mini-game where you have to tap in sync with the beats, adding a unique twist to an already well-done mechanic. Slicing, the Star Wars term for hacking computer terminals to obtain data, is a decent trial-and-error puzzle of guessing the correct sequence that feels like it belongs in that universe and works from a gameplay perspective as well. 

There’s even a selection of diner quick-time events, where Kay and Nix share assorted meals together through quick-time events over several minutes at a time, that has no business being as delightful and endearing as it is. That’s considering the main purpose is just to give your creature companion a new combat ability depending on what leftovers you put in his food bowl on the ship. On paper, it’s totally unnecessary. In reality, it’s a dash of charm you can’t do without once you’ve had a sample.

Be that as it may, when a large portion of what’s on offer is sprinkled with bugs or even loading errors when launching the game – requiring you to close and restart it multiple times as is currently the case, it makes you wish Massive spent more time ironing out issues with key features before adding in more. A lot of what’s been added does supplement its charm, but the optional flair of Star Wars Outlaws may force you more often to pick around what you don’t like and ask for the rest to be sent back to the kitchen for more time in the oven. 

As a whole, Star Wars Outlaws is the video game equivalent of a theme park – one where the sweet ride of a fun, cinematic premise, with a lovable cast and interesting reputation system around the galaxy’s underworld syndicates – is worth the price of admission alone. 

When everything works and you feel like seeing more of its interestingly built universe, there’s an absolute plethora of entertainment to be had in crafting your own network of criminals, adding more variety to your adventure.

By shooting for the stars, however – trying to incorporate so many elements to make the first open-world game of the franchise – some of the execution falls flat by needing to resort to exhaustive Ubisoft tropes that take away a portion of allure from the whole package.

While that stops it from being an amazing game, it’s still a great time and a unique twist on the Star Wars video game adventure. 

If you’re someone who still loves the typical Ubisoft open-world fare of Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry, and don’t mind technical issues, you’ll absolutely love this game. Alternatively, if you love a good Star Wars story and aren’t bothered about side missions, you’ll feel the same. If you’re both, this is the game you’re looking for.