Star Wars is a pretty well-known franchise for video games and these past few years, we have seen some really good Star Wars titles whether they were shooters or proper Jedi-focused action RPGs like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. However, nearly all past Star Wars titles were either focused on Jedis, generic shooters, or hero battle titles. Our craving for a proper Star Wars was left to be filled because while Survivor featured large levels, it was a linear title nonetheless and gave little to explore apart from completing missions. When Ubisoft announced Star Wars Outlaws and showed us an open-world adventure game set in this iconic universe, we were really looking forward to how it turns out. This is our review of Star Wars Outlaws on the PS5 in which we explore some beautiful worlds and try not to double-cross everyone that comes our way.
The main story of Star Wars Outlaws begins with our introduction of Kay Vess, an outlaw who is already in trouble. Upon reading some datapads around her apartment and meeting some people in the first location, we already know that Kay Wess is struggling to pay off her debts and her debtors are getting impatient with her tactics. Following the mantra of down but not out, Kay decides to take one final job in Cantonica but manages to screw it up as well forcing her to look for a quick way off the planet with her life. Before she manages to get off the planet, she pisses off the biggest cartel member on the planet who puts a bounty on her head and now Kay has to explore the universe and try to figure out a way to come back to her home planet and fix things to remove the death mark on her head.
Throughout the story, you will explore four gigantic worlds which are unique and different from each other. Each world offers you a great chance to stretch your wings and try out different things. The main story is separate from Key’s escapades in these worlds, but you can only gain access to them by progressing in the main story. This is a little bit of an issue because once you enter a world, you are sucked into everything that it has to offer, and you completely lose track of the main story unless you are focused only on it. This is what we loved about Star Wars Outlaws because there is so much else to do in these worlds that you just forget about going back to the main story. After completing Cantonica, we ended up on Toshara which is the first proper open world in the game, and we spent over 12 hours on it before coming back to the main story and we still had tons of stuff to complete.
Apart from being on these worlds, you will also spend time exploring the space and orbits around these worlds. These sections are highly detailed as well and you will need to fend off pirates, factions, and the wrath of the Imperial forces in space as well to complete your contracts, missions, and exploration bits. On the planets, you will zoom around in your speeder which is sadly your only way of navigation but out in space, you will fly the Trailblazer which is a big ship and is capable of going up against anything that comes in its way. The planet landings and take-offs are automated when you are in the Trailblazer but once you are out in space, you are free to fly around in your ship and engage in any sort of activity.
Most of the story missions take place in special locations that are otherwise inaccessible. These might range from huge mansions of faction leaders to the Galactic Empire facilities deep in space. Most of these missions also require you to complete them in stealth. This means that you will often miss some areas in these locations since you will be beelining towards the next objective while trying to avoid the plethora of enemies and cameras trying to spot you. Apart from the story missions, you will spend your time doing different tasks for four of the main in-game factions and try to win them over to gain access to special perks and rewards from them. Each faction has its agenda, and you have to somehow find a balance between all four to make sure that you are benefiting the most from their ongoing turf wars.
The story on its own is pretty decent and has its ups-and-downs but overall, it is fairly entertaining and will have you wanting to play it in its entirety. One key role that shapes the world around Kay is how she behaves with different factions. Star Wars Outlaws features an in-game Reputation system which is unique for each of the factions. As you complete favors for these factions, they will trust you more giving access to their special perks and items apart from other benefits such as opening their areas for you and giving merchant bonuses. Naturally, since the factions are at war with each other, often completing one mission and making one faction happy will cause another faction to become angry with you and you lose your good reputation with them. You will need to find out what works best for you and either stick with a favorite faction or keep all factions in your good grace to make the game somewhat easier for you.
If your reputation drops below neutral, the factions will shoot you on sight, and in extreme cases, they will send hit squads and during your space excursions, hunt you down making things difficult for you. There are always missions that allow you to gain back lost respect for a faction and we tried it, it is entirely possible to have a good, working relationship with all factions at the same time. Story missions very rarely affect the reputation of these factions because sometimes you involve multiple factions in them as well. The reputation system is one of the biggest decision-making factors in the game whereas the story missions are mostly linear, and you have to follow what is happening most of the time. Apart from the factions, you are always on the bad side of the Empire or the bandits. The bandits will always shoot at you while the Stormtroopers act more like police from the Grand Theft Auto series. Do something bad in front of them and you will initiate a pursuit where they will try to hunt you down. Do worse and your bounty will keep on rising unless the Empire throws everything it has at you. You can bribe a corrupt Imperial Officer or hide until the bounty dies to get rid of the pursuit.
Throughout the story, you will form many alliances and expand your ragtag crew but your most loyal partner in crime is your cute little pet called Nix. Nix stays with us since the start of the game and plays a crucial part in the gameplay. Nix is not only cute, but it is extremely agile and helpful in nearly all aspects of gameplay. We can use Nix for opening locked doors, opening and holding locked panels, and fetching items as well. Enemies cannot detect Nix as it is sneaking around, and you can use this to distract enemies or even attack them as well. You can issue commands directly by pressing the LB button as the prompt appears on the screen and this quick-assign key makes it easier to incorporate Nix into different scenarios such as running and running or sneaking around enemies in tight areas.
For its gameplay bit, you will be sneaking, driving, shooting, and hacking your way through the galaxy in Star Wars Outlaws. Stealth plays a major role in gameplay and quite often, you will find yourself sneaking around in a high-profile area whether to steal something or destroy something. For stealth, you will find typical Assassin’s Creed mechanics like tall grass, smoke, and other hiding places littered around maps for convenient sneaking around. In these scenarios, you will also use Nix to your advantage as it will open doors, and distract enemies while you use your abilities such as smoke bombs and stealth takedowns to progress. Stealth can be quite difficult in some scenarios as well especially in Empire regions because they are present in large numbers, but you can always adjust the game difficulty to make different aspects of gameplay harder or easier.
If you are not sneaking, you are blasting, literally. You have your primary weapon, a blaster, with you at all times and while it is somewhat limited in its damage-dealing capabilities, you can upgrade it and add more modules to get the most out of it. Apart from killing enemies, you can use it to disable shields, charge electric devices, and much more. You can pick up many powerful weapons like assault rifles, grenade launchers, and more from the battlefield but you cannot store them. Even standard actions while you are holding a secondary weapon cause you to drop them such as punching someone or climbing a stair. This limits Kay’s arsenal massively and this is also one of my least favorite aspects of Star Wars Outlaws. It has tons of usable weapons, but you can only store a blaster which is the slowest weapon of the bunch. Overall, the combat is fairly decent, and you will enjoy blasting enemies with authentic sounds and effects that you can expect from Star Wars weaponry.
There is a pretty decent crafting system in the game as well which sees you looking for rare and common materials and buying upgrades for your gear. You can upgrade your blaster, gear, Speeder, and your main ship Trailblazer. For each upgrade, you will need to hunt down the required materials and also cough up enough coins to purchase them. We found in our review that griding for money is not very tedious if you are completing side quests, contracts and faction quests regularly while playing through the main story, you will always find your inventory filled with parts, materials, and the coin for these upgrades. As we mentioned earlier, there are plenty of things to do in the game to keep yourself busy for a long time and earn good coins as well. You can also meet different mentors while exploring the different worlds in the game and learn different special abilities from them. These abilities are crucial to survival in the game, and they add great value to the overall gameplay if you grind to unlock them.
You will also find a lot of platforming throughout the world as you are sneaking around, you will open and enter vents, climb over platforms, and try to remain as much in the shadows as possible. For these platforming sections, you will notice that the yellow climbable items are back and while these can be turned off from the settings, they are present in the game by default. Since there is a lot of verticality in Star Wars Outlaws’ world, the platforming is not limited to just missions. You will climb rocks, find paths, and reach target areas by figuring out the way yourself. The mission just points you in the right direction and you have to figure out the path yourself. For this purpose, you can climb around, jump over obstacles, and use your grappling hook to tether hooking spots and move around areas that are otherwise unreachable. Certain areas are inaccessible until you acquire special tools as well. If you are wondering, there are no climbable towers to reveal the map this time around. All exploration has to be done manually.
Each world has a space section next to it where you will spend completing main story missions and some side missions. Here, you will find yourself flying around in your ship Trailblazer which allows you to fight enemy fighters, take down ships bigger than its size, and also collect resources from debris with its tractor beam. While these space sections act as mere side content and do not offer as much action as the actual worlds, it is still fun to fly around and fight with enemies. If you have a bad reputation with a faction and enter their space domain, you will find yourself fighting with an entire fleet of their spacecraft which results in some interactive battles. Shooting is satisfying and you can upgrade it further to make it even more powerful and take on nearly everything that comes in your flightpath. The space sections are beautiful to explore as well and there is always something going on for you to just jump into and blow up stuff.
While Ubisoft is known for creating massively open-world games that are filled with bloated side missions and extras, Star Wars Outlaws manages to keep things fun even if you are completing a simple task such as picking up and delivering some supplies. There is always something happening in the world, and you can simply just get lost in it. During our review, we spent over 10 hours in the first location before we had to progress in the story to complete this review in time. It does feel a little overwhelming at some point because the missions keep on coming in your journal as you explore the game, but you can complete everything at your own pace. True, certain mechanics are tied to the story’s progression but after a few hours into the story, you can just take your speeder and explore the beautiful worlds the game has to offer. It is worth spending hours on.
At this point, the PS5 version is suffering from some technical issues that may or may not break your game depending on the glitch that you encounter. During our gameplay, one of the most annoying issues we ran across was the Speeder getting stuck in smaller rocks that you would not even notice while zooming around the map. Instead of jumping over them, it just slams into invisible walls and comes to a standstill while you are sent flying. The entire game froze and crashed for us on two separate occasions. The Performance mode plays well but it sometimes makes Kay’s hair look like a muddy mess. Apart from this the AI also showcases weird behavior sometimes like dropping their guns mid-fight and then magically spawning them back in their hands, the bandits running into rocks and getting stuck there, and sometimes Kay getting stuck in surfaces while sneaking around. We are expecting an update patch to arrive soon so it should remove most of these annoying bugs.
This might be the most fun we have had with a Ubisoft title in a long time, Avatar was good, but this is better because it balances out the huge world with activity. True it is based loosely around a typical Ubisoft-style open world and Massive is known for developing The Division titles, but it feels more alive and better in all aspects because it seems to combine gameplay mechanics from different titles and brings them together to form an enjoyable title. You have multiple factions to work for, tons of exploration to do, treasures to find, Speeder races to complete, horses to bet on, arcade games to play, and cool space areas to explore in your ship. The freedom to do things at your own pace is also great and it gives you a chance to become the outlaw that you always wanted to become in the Star Wars universe. Nostalgia alone is enough to pick it up and give it a shot, the game does the rest to hook you to it.
Final Verdict:
Star Wars Outlaws is a brilliant open-world action game in one of the most iconic universes ever made. It combines all of the best from Ubisoft, brings it inside one game, and delivers it in a package that is fun to play and amazing to view. The worlds are beautifully designed, and the gameplay mechanics are fun and solid. Technical flaws aside, Star Wars Outlaws is a solid attempt by Ubisoft to really show how good they can make open-world titles. Massive Entertainment has delivered a world that feels alive while sticking true to the franchise’s tone. If you love Star Wars, this is a dream come true but if you are simply a fan of open-world games that offer tons of exploration and solid gameplay mechanics, you should definitely give Star Wars Outlaws a shot.
Final Score: 8.0/10
