I love a good open-world action RPG.
Back in the day before open-world was a thing, RPGs was where it was at, and Knights of the Old Republic was one of the best games I ever played. I loved that game. However, there has not been a Star Wars game since that one that has even come close. The releases within the franchise have been mostly miss than hit. With the release of a brand-new game titled Star Wars: Outlaws, is it good enough to make an impact within the tough category? I grabbed it on PC for a review and played using my PlayStation 5 controller.
Developed by Massive Entertainment with support from Lucasfilm Games and Published by Ubisoft, Star Wars Outlaws is a unique look into the Star Wars universe. Set after the events of the Battle of Hoth, a new crime syndicate Zerek Besh and its leader Sliro Barsha murders the leaders of his rivals in a bid to consolidate power.
Meanwhile our main character, Kay Vess, is on a mission to escape from her home world, finds herself stealing a ship known as the Trailblazer, and ends up on the planet Toshara. Landing in a big city called Mirogana, Vess finds herself looking for work as an outlaw contractor. However, with two major crime syndicates in residence, Vess must choose her allegiance or find a healthy balance to play them off each other for her own gain.
Rather than towing the classic Jedi character storyline, Star Wars Outlaws is a very different game compared to other Star Wars RPGs I’ve played in the past. It is somewhat refreshing not having the abilities of a Jedi and having to rely on your own technical and physical abilities to succeed in each mission. Plus, to assist along the way is Kay Vess’ pet companion, Nix. Nix is a four-legged mammal of the Merqaal species. He has a with a wide variety of different abilities, long fluffy ears, a long fluffy tail and is cute as hell.
The gameplay is a mixture of stealth, platforming and classic shooter, all from a third-person perspective. However, whilst I was in enemy territory within the main city, you kind of have no choice but to operate in stealth for most of the time. Whilst in stealth mode, Nix is your most important companion to help you get by.
You can send Nix to distract your opponent whilst you sneak up behind them to take them out. If there are two side-by-side, you can ask Nix to attack one whilst you take down the other. Nix can also be sent to fire off distractions like smoke cannisters or fuel containers. However, the thing I found the most frustrating was getting almost to the end of an area having taken out most of your enemies, only to get caught and be forced to start all over again. This somewhat ruined the fun of a good stealth mechanic and turned it into more of a chore.
Another thing I love about a good open-world game is loot. There is plenty of it in Star Wars Outlaws from picking up scraps as you wander around, to stealing from the syndicates themselves, and even the dedicated missions to breaking into the syndicate vaults to steal their best wares. But be careful. If you get caught stealing too much from any of the syndicates, it will tarnish your reputation.
Reputation is your allegiance to each of the three criminal syndicates: The Pykes, Crimson Dawn and The Hutt Cartel. Each mission gives you various opportunities to push your reputation to good or bad. For instance, if you receive some intel, you can either give it to the syndicate that sent you on the mission, pushing them further into the good side. Or you can betray them and hand it over to their rival, putting you in the good books with them, but giving you a bad rep with the one that sent you on the mission. The better the reputation, the more freedom of movement you have in their controlled territories. It also leads to better treasure opportunities and unlocks faction aligned traders for the purchasing and selling of loot.
Eventually, I made it out of the city of Mirogana and found myself in the open world region of Toshara. You can ride a speeder across the land and eventually, after making some repairs, can unlock the ship you arrived in. With the ship unlocked, the remaining planets within the game slowly become available. The flight mechanics are similar to what I experienced whilst playing Star Wars Squadrons a couple of years ago, with full 360-degree movement and fighting controls. The travel between planets is fun with the ability to jump into hyperspace with visuals straight out of the films.
Other aspects of the game include an upgrades system that not only garners new abilities but allows you to customise the look of your character, ship and weaponry. Unlock enhancements to your kit, including weapon functionality and upgrades to your speeder and ship.
There are plenty of tools in your kit to help you throughout the game. Like the Slicing Kit to hack into and unlock computer terminals to bring down shields and shut off alarms. You can even pick locks by completing a rhythmic sequence to open loot crates and locked doors.
There are various mini games too. From finding an arcade with a speeder run challenge to trying your hand at the gambling game, Sabacc. Essentially a two-card draw played over multiple rounds. The aim is to get the lowest possible pair to win. There are different ability tokens you can use to make your opponent lose tokens, give yourself an extra token or even use Nix to cheat and check out the other players’ hands. Each round you either stand or spend a token to draw a card. As soon as a player loses all their tokens, they are knocked out. With the aim to be the last player standing, I think I spent a good hour playing this at one point, just having fun and earning more and more credits to use to buy goods later in the game.
What did really impress me was the music and sound design. With three composers at the helm consisting of Wilbert Roget II, Jon Everist and Kazuma Jinnouchi, the Star Wars Outlaws score is some of the best music I have heard in a game for a long time. It felt like I was in a Star Wars film. Star Wars Outlaws also has a large list of voice actors with Humberly González as Kay Vess and Dee Bradley Baker as her companion, Nix. Whilst Nix doesn’t actually speak, it’s cool that someone actually voiced the character and it’s not some AI generated animal sound.
The games greater sound design is just as fantastic as the score. From the sounds of the markets as you wander through Mirogana, to the side conversations being had by the NPCs. The weaponry, speeder and ship sound design are also great. But for the ASMR fans out there, you will love the menu navigation sound. I could listen to that thocky clicking sound all day!
Overall, I enjoyed my time playing Star Wars Outlaws on PC. Although, with a well-built rig, the game did struggle. I had to turn down most of the settings. For those that are wondering, I run an RTX 3070, i7 5.0 GHz and 32GB 3600MHz RAM and I had to turn most of the performance settings to medium or low. The game didn’t look as pretty, but the gameplay performance increased significantly.
Technical performance aside, I have barely scratched the surface of this game. Having only unlocked the ability to travel to other planets, there is so much more to discover in Star Wars Outlaws. Whilst the stealth component of the game can get tiresome, I loved being able to jump onto my speeder and just hurtle across the land. There is even the Galactic Empire in the game with various checkpoints and bases across the planet of Toshara.
If you are coming into this game thinking it is going to be the best thing since Knights of the Old Republic, then you are going to be disappointed. However, if you approach it as a brand new, standalone action RPG with a Star Wars vibe, then it might just surprise you. It certainly surprised me!
What sets Star Wars Outlaws apart from any other recent Star Wars games is that it is by a brand-new studio with a different take, new mechanics and gameplay. Star Wars Outlaws feels new, is unlike any Star Wars game I’ve ever played before, and it is mighty refreshing to not have the classic Jedi tale that has been done over and over again.
Star Wars Outlaws is out now on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. I think I might just pick it up on PlayStation to experience a better visual. But whatever platform you have, Star Wars Outlaws is well worth your time. I certainly cannot wait to play more and see what else Star Wars Outlaws has to offer.