Star Wars Outlaws

I'm sure there will be a lot of critical reviews of Star Wars Outlaws, and with good reason. Quite early on, the press, influencers, various content creators and opinion makers, and the average consumer made it clear that the simpler gameplay formula and structural framework seemed flawed, even downright boring.

I'm not here to prove to you, dear reader, that all these hot takes are wrong, nor will I try to argue that Outlaws has far more to offer than what most others have already seen. I'm simply here to say that I enjoyed what Outlaws served up to me, and even though I could critically see that Massive Entertainment has designed a gameplay loop that is a little too simple here, it still managed to be a pretty great Star Wars experience for me personally, based on other elements like sound, visual design, voice acting, quest design and all the other aspects that also support an immersive gaming experience.

By that I mean that if you've already seen Star Wars Outlaws gameplay, it's pretty representative of what Massive has created, for better or worse. You mingle with the various relationships with the underworld's powerful cartels by doing missions big and small, you explore the wide open spaces on your Speeder, find resources that can be used to upgrade your Blaster, the same Speeder and your spaceship, you find 'experts' that act as a kind of dynamic Skill Tree and you engage in somewhat superficial but functional cover-based combat scenarios and Uncharted-like platforming. That's pretty much it.

But all the good stuff is in between, because while you engage in the simple gameplay, tons of little details work to create that ever-fragile immersion, and thanks to pretty solid scriptwriting and voice acting, well-crafted art design and music, and detailed worlds, you get perhaps the most Star Wars-like Star Wars gaming experience to date.

It's a slightly confusing approach, I know, so let's take a step back. You're Kay Vess, a blue-eyed, naïve but street smart woman from Canto Bight who has lived on the streets her whole life, from one disappointing rogue job to the next, from one disappointing result to the next. Lured into a trap, by the rebels actually, and given a so-called "Death Mark" by a new, ravenous and power-hungry syndicate, Zerek Besh, she must now navigate a life on the run, where the only real way out is to work for the other syndicates. Kay's journey is filled with twists and turns, and although the game has a so-called "Golden Path", it makes a virtue of throwing out a smokescreen where it seems slightly difficult to decipher what the next obvious step forward is until it becomes clear. The various syndicates have a Reputation system that constantly fluctuates based on your actions, and depending on who you have sucked up to, you gain access to new missions, which themselves vary in significance. One moment you're infiltrating an Imperial space base and the next you're holding off Crimson Dawn members to ensure innocents have time to escape a debt. It's not exactly that the model used to deliver the content is innovative, and you could even call it Ubisoft-esque, but the story is linear, there are clearer, established motives for the characters you interact with and it all works most of the time.

So how does it work in practice? Well, most of the time you'll be moving around various metropolises, with daring rumours of high-risk jobs, syndicates looking for a few experienced hands and Credits waiting to be stolen. You arrive, enquire with middlemen and introduce yourself to the heads of the syndicates, then carry out missions large and small, usually involving light platforming, a few stealth scenarios here and there and exchanges of fire with Pykes, Crimson Dawn, Stormtroopers - you name it. However, simmering on the surface is your reputation, and if you infiltrate a Pyke base to steal something for Crimson Dawn, it affects your reputation. As I said, these values fluctuate quite a bit, and that's the whole point, and while it's not quite as dynamic as it might seem, it's an exciting way to navigate the criminal underworld. Are you loyal, or an opportunistic turncoat? Are you in it for the Credits, or is it about building trust? It's truly your decision, and the game moulds itself accordingly.

At times, however, it can become too rigid. Star Wars Outlaws controversially revives instant-fail stealth scenarios where you not only have to start all over again if you're detected, but you actually fail the mission in question. Not only that, your reputation takes a hit too. It would be great if the game allowed for a more expressive and dynamic approach to stealth, but these linear, instant-fail sections are among the game's worst and show the Reputation system at its weakest.

Thankfully, most of the time you can get caught, and it transitions from a slightly simple wannabe Splinter Cell to a classic, bombastic Star Wars shooting gallery filled with J.J. Abrams lens flares, classic Star Wars music and nostalgic iconography. It works, despite its simplicity. I partly agree with those who find these shootouts antiquated, old-fashioned and, again, rigid. But it works, mainly because it manages to establish the illusion that this is your scoundrel story, and that you've really fallen foul of the Stormtroopers in one of the Empire's hangar bases. You can swap barrels on your Blaster to better suit Shields, there are Deadeye-like mechanics and there are other weapons to pick up, as well as grenades. But you've seen it with your own eyes and basically already know what it can and can't do. It's functional and it succeeds most of the time in maintaining your investment in the world and story.

The same can basically be said for platforming and control in general. Navigating as Kay is quite satisfying, and the same can be said for handling her Speeder, and for that matter the spaceship Trailblazer, although these space sections are arguably the game's weakest link. If there's one key criticism of the whole experience, it's that the connective tissue between all these components seems a little rough, and lacks a little polish. On the whole, there are aspects of Outlaws that seem a little unfinished, which is curious considering the game "went gold" so long ago, but whether it's animations, physics or just general "polish and finish" as they say, it's harder to forgive that a game that is so mechanically and structurally simple doesn't have Uncharted-like presentation quality, or even just something to match The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. That said, I quickly found a happy medium in the included Quality Mode, which delivers 40fps but with certain graphical detail levels turned up. Here the game remains responsive, but gracefully delivers some great vistas, effects and details. This is also where the Star Wars atmosphere is re-established, because although the technique can sometimes lag, the art direction, colours, contrasts and ingenuity behind the game's aesthetics are top notch.

Massive nails it here, but whether you're among those who can overlook simple structure and even simpler gameplay loops is hard for me to say. But maybe it's once again emphasising the fact that this is just my opinion of Outlaws, and I'm judging it based on the parameters by which I judge a game. Anyway, with that out of the way, the most important thing about a game like Outlaws is the atmosphere, and this is created using light, sound, music and exciting scenarios that feel like something out of a Star Wars film. This is where Outlaws delivers, and it becomes the game's absolute "saving grace", the ace up its sleeve if you will. I've had some epic moments in Outlaws, including infiltrating an Imperial base on Toshara and narrowly escaping a team of Deathtroopers. I've been in wild dogfights in asteroid belts on Akiva with Tie Fighters on my heels and the classic score pumping through my headphones, and I've talked my way out of tense situations with several criminal syndicates. All of these moments happened through simple but functional mechanics, and I chose to forgive that in the moment in exchange for the empathy the game so promptly established for me. If you can do the same, Outlaws is definitely worth your time.