Some of the more interesting Star Wars content in recent years has nothing to do with Jedi and Sith. While their iconic push-and-pull of good versus evil has been a great framework for games like the Star Wars Jedi series, honing in on the life of a scoundrel gives us the opportunity to see life in the galaxy from a different perspective. That’s the impression I got after getting hands-on with an hour’s worth of gameplay with Star Wars Outlaws, the upcoming third-person action shooter from Ubisoft and developer Massive Entertainment.
It’s rough around the edges as of however old this build was, but exploring the galaxy as protagonist Kay Vess and getting into dirty business in this three-part demo was refreshing, even though a lot of its gameplay felt familiar. The best representation of this was a mission that started inside an Imperial base and sent me to sneak my way around to activate controls to move a cargo shipment, opening the way to steal a ship for a getaway. After knocking out some guards and hacking into some systems, I got into a shootout with Stormtroopers as I waited for the cargo to move into the ship I was going to steal.
Kay isn’t exactly a force of nature and has to get scrappy, which meant well-placed shots, using cover, and commanding her little merqaal companion, Nix, to lend a hand were required to make it out alive. Kay’s blaster has a lethal and EMP-style modes, plus a one-shot knockout on cooldown, but she can also pick up enemy weapons for more firepower. Putting this all together was pretty challenging, but after making the escape I was then in control of an Imperial ship and getting into dogfights in space, channeling some of that Star Wars Squadrons energy into Outlaws.
I then returned to the desert planet Toshara in the city of Mirogana, where the criminal underworld thrives, for the finale of this story mission. All of this happened seamlessly, moving from one thing to another at a brisk pace and encompassing all the aspects of what it takes to be a successful scoundrel in the Star Wars universe. Although I didn’t get to spend much time poking around Mirogana, it seems to be full of side content to give Outlaws that open-world feel to complement the linear story-based missions.
I do think Outlaws sometimes relies too heavily on the design conventions of an Uncharted or Tomb Raider. For instance, another part of the demo had me platforming and climbing structures to retrieve a relic tucked away deep in this abandoned reactor. It seemed like every other room had the ground falling under me in an attempt to create tension, but we’ve seen this rug-pull trick far too many times for it to be a surprise. And the controls aren’t quite precise enough to make jumping gaps, scaling walls, or shimmying across ledges feel natural – this is something action-adventure games of this kind have figured out in years past so it’s a bit disappointing that Star Wars Outlaws struggles here. Hopefully that’s on the fix-it list for the last few months before launch.
The third segment of the demo had me infiltrating a base run by thieves on the dark and snowy planet Kijimi, and this had an emphasis on stealth and hacking mechanics. Although staying out of sight is all you really need to do, I wish the stealth mechanics were more robust. Kay struggles to stick to cover and Nix isn’t super helpful as a companion in this scenario, but once everything breaks into a shootout all of that becomes a moot point. The hacking minigames became more prominent, and I actually quite enjoy the rhythm-based lockpicking and the Wordle-style icon-matching one, which are clever little breaks in the traditional action. Especially when you’re in the middle of a hostile encounter frantically trying to hack into systems or past doors, these add a neat wrinkle to round out the gameplay flow.
I wasn’t able to get the full context for the story happening in this mission, but Kijimi is a fascinating and more recent planet in the Star Wars universe that’s also deep with crime syndicates. Seeing Kay tip-toe around allegiances and get into sticky situations with competing factions makes me excited to see how Star Wars Outlaws presents that scoundrel fantasy. It’s like having a fully realized game based around the idea of being Han Solo, but having a new character in Kay Vess gives it room to breathe and create a new fiction within Star Wars, divorced from the canon or expectations that often puts pressure on the franchise.
So at this stage I can say that Star Wars Outlaws shows a lot of promise, but as usual we’ll have to wait and see how many of the things that struck me as a little off can be smoothed out ahead of launch. (Never tell me the odds!) Even though it’s borrowing a lot from what we’ve seen in games like Uncharted and Tomb Raider, the Star Wars universe is ripe for that style of game. More stories outside of the Jedi-Sith framework are also appreciated, especially ones that dig deeper into the criminal underworld and the implications it has on the rest of the Star Wars world. Gameplay may not be as fluid or satisfying as the games that it’ll be compared to, or even the Star Wars Jedi series, but there’s a good variety of mechanics and systems that meld really well.
Hopefully it all comes together in the full game, which we won’t have to wait for very long for: Star Wars Outlaws releases on August 27 of this year on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
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