Are you a Star Wars fan dreaming about exploring the Star Wars universe in an open-world game and interacting with the Hutts, Imperials and Jawas? The highly anticipated action adventure third-person shooter, Star Wars Outlaws, lets you experience that in the rich Star Wars universe.
It plays like a blend of Assassin’s Creed and Cyberpunk 2077, with a heavy emphasis on stealth, shooting and exploration and the freedom to take on side quests and gigs while walking the fine line between rival factions.
Big, big girl in a big, big world
You play Kay Vess, a blaster-toting thief from the mean streets of the Workers’ District in Canto Bight, a casino town in Cantonica that was featured in Star Wars Episode VIII – The Last Jedi. Kay is accompanied by her partner in crime, Nix the merqaal, who is an adorable axolotl-like creature with tendrils on his head.
After messing up on a theft, Kay has to escape the Zerek Besh crime syndicate on a stolen freighter spaceship known as the Trailblazer and ends up in the windswept savanna moon of Toshara. With a little help from her friends and by building new alliances, she plans to pull off an ambitious and daring heist.
Set between the events of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, the universe of Star Wars Outlaws is under control by major crime syndicates. At that time, the Galactic Imperial forces are everywhere, and the general populace across the galaxy are fearful and resentful of Imperial control.
To traverse the wide open worlds, Kay has a speeder for ground transport and the Trailblazer for space travel. Both vehicles can be upgraded with credits and parts, if Kay can earn the coin.
With a fully functional spaceship, Kay can hyperspace jump to different locations far, far away, including the desert lands of Tatooine, the lush forests of Akiva, the windy savanna moon of Toshara and the snowy city of Kijimi.
Thankfully, space travel, landing and hyperspace jumping are highly simplified and can be executed by the press of a button, but some piloting skills are required for dogfights in space and treasure hunting in space.
Conversely, riding on the speeder is not quite as enjoyable. Kay can be thrown off from the speeder from seemingly minor bumps, and she is unable to shoot while riding.
Star Wars Outlaws’ worlds are lively and well-populated by plenty of non-playable characters (NPCs), although not many can be interacted with. Eavesdropping on NPCs’ conversations is a lucrative activity, where hidden treasures, side quests and secret Sabacc parlours are revealed.
In addition, there are random events happening on the map, such as Imperials fighting bandits or bandits attacking civilians, that Kay can take part in to score some loot and goodwill.
Star Wars Outlaws makes exploring the worlds and interacting with characters we see in the movies and series enjoyable, and I find Star Wars Outlaws much more immersive and more rewarding to play than Starfield, which is an open-world space title released last year.
One aspect that I feel could be done better is that the game has the opportunity to expand more on the rich Star Wars lore and the threat of the Galactic Empire. The scope feels rather limited with Kay running jobs constantly for the factions, and the NPCs’ characters and story arcs are not as well developed as, say, the Horizon series,
Fans of the original series, like myself, will be thrilled to meet Jabba the Hutt himself, see Han Solo frozen in the carbonite slab, and drink at the Mos Eisley cantina on Tatooine. Kay can also visit the Lars homestead on Tatooine, where Luke Skywalker grew up but it is burnt and vacated during Kay’s visit.
Faction action
Star Wars Outlaws features four main rivalling crime syndicates that Kay needs to strike a careful balance in allegiance or opposition, as she will be evicted from their territories on sight if she has a bad reputation with them.
These are the Pyke Syndicate, Crimson Dawn, Hutt Cartel and Ashiga Clan, all with their distinct crimes, strongholds and sense of style.
Completing quests for different factions can gain their favour and improve Kay’s reputation with them, which will give her access to their territories, special items with affiliated merchants and more lucrative quests with affiliated brokers.
To balance things out, Kay can also take on a variety of optional freelance contracts, which include smuggling, theft, raiding and infiltrating that can help out certain factions. It takes some careful planning to ensure that certain factions are friendly before undertaking contracts that require access into their territories.
If Kay creates too much of a ruckus, she will be on the Imperials’ wanted list and they will escalate their forces to take her down, kind of like the law enforcement in Grand Theft Auto games. But with the right connections and the right price, Kay can remove herself from the wanted list.
Sneaking, shooting, treasure hunting
Unlike other Star Wars games like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, you can’t use the Force or engage in lightsaber combat since Kay is not a Jedi. Instead, she is armed with a blaster and grenades, and can use other firearms temporarily.
With sufficient credits and parts, Kay’s trusty blaster can be upgraded and kitted out for different functions, such as stun, plasma, ion or power modes. Apart from putting down foes, these modes are also critical in puzzle-solving and treasure hunting.
For instance, the ion mode, which damages droids, can also be used to power up switches to open doors, and the power mode can blast apart specially marked rocks for unveiling hidden treasures.
Upgrades and parts are expensive, which means Kay has to hustle intensively to get money from completing side jobs and contracts, selling items and treasures, placing bets on races or playing Sabacc, a card and dice game of chance.
Star Wars Outlaws’ missions and side quests are well-designed and elaborate with a great variety of gameplay and activities. These include jumping, climbing, hacking and timed puzzles mixed with stealth and shooting, as well as dogfights in space and racing on the speeder. Some treasure hunts are deliberately obscure, which makes finding the treasures both challenging and rewarding.
Hacking mini-games include lockpicking using a rhythm-based mini-game, and slicing data terminals using deduction to break the access codes. There are some fetch missions, but with enough twists, double crossing and suspense thrown into the mix, one doesn’t feel the tedium.
Star Wars Outlaws does not have a traditional skill tree or levelling up with experience points. Instead, Kay unlocks new abilities by upgrading her gear, tools and vehicles, as well as gaining skills from experts by completing certain actions or fulfilling certain criteria.
Kay is a proficient thief and acquires several useful tools as the game progresses. These include a data spike that serves as a lockpick, an electronic hacking/slicing kit, a grappling hook for climbing, and electro-binoculars to survey enemy outposts.
She can heal by injecting herself with bacta vials but her health takes a while to regenerate, which makes a full-on assault dangerous for her.
Stealth is usually a safer option for Kay. Like in Assassin’s Creed games, guards can be lured by whistling and knocking them out, although there is no way to hide the bodies — literally a dead giveaway.
Unless the mission criteria is for Kay not to get caught, Kay can still get out of a sticky situation by running and gunning, or even hiding until the guards give up on the search.
Partner in crime
My personal favourite aspect of the game is Kay’s cute merqaal accomplice, Nix. Not only is he super adorable and expressive, he is extremely useful in helping Kay out in her thieving endeavours.
With his acute senses, Nix can help Kay sense enemies behind walls and objects that can be interacted with, which is indispensable for stealth missions when Kay needs to stay hidden.
During a shootout, Nix can also fetch items such as healing bacta vials or weapons for Kay, which is critical when Kay is pinned down by enemy fire.
His small size and agility means Nix can access places out of Kay’s reach to fetch items or activate switches. He can even distract and attack enemies, and even protect Kay during combat.
Nix can also steal items off others, such as keycards that allow Kay to access locked rooms and stashes. In addition, Nix can sense treasures nearby and lead Kay to obscure locations to unearth rare loot and cosmetic upgrades.
Kay’s affection for Nix is apparent, and she often talks to him, strokes him and even shows him her cards during Sabacc games, where he can also help by peeking at her opponent’s cards.
Although Nix can’t speak, he replies to Kay with cute chirps and purrs. Their close bond is extremely heartwarming, and there is even a mini-game for Kay and Nix enjoying meals together, which is totally unnecessary but is so sweet to see.
Nix’s abilities can also be enhanced with food that they shared, such as kicking grenades away from Kay or distracting more than one guard at a time. Apart from Nix, there are also plenty of friendly alien creatures that let Kay pet, although this can make Nix jealous!
Lively scenes
With so much activity in such a large and open world, Star Wars Outlaws is a demanding game in terms of hardware. The recommended specification for the graphics card is either an Nvidia GeForce GTX 3060Ti with 8GB VRAM or an AMD 6700XT with 12 GB VRAM, and running off a solid state drive with 65GB for installation.
My gaming rig with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 3070 graphics card and 8GB VRAM was struggling to render the game at times, with severe drops in FPS (frames per second), as well as stuttering and blurry textures, especially when Kay is riding on the speeder or when entering a new area with lots of NPCs and activity. Thankfully, the game offers plenty of tweaking and customisations that can help improve performance.
I also encountered plenty of bugs in Star Wars Outlaws, unsurprisingly for an open-world game as big as this, but this was not as bad as Cyberpunk 2077 when it first launched.
Some bugs are pretty serious on Star Wars Outlaws, such as Kay getting stuck floating in mid-air or inside walls, forcing me to restart the game. Fortunately, the autosaves are frequent enough so not too much progress is lost.
Another plus is the game’s grand soundtrack inspired by the majestic score from the Star Wars movies, which is perfectly fitting for an epic adventure. There is even a jazzed up version of the iconic Mos Eisley cantina music, which will make any Star Wars fan smile.
TL;DR
Star Wars Outlaws Is a delightful action adventure game for fans of the epic space opera, and has plenty of thrilling missions and optional activities to offer.
Although it feels like it could have done more with the Star Wars lore and NPC interactions are rather shallow, it is nonetheless an extremely satisfying experience for fans of Star Wars and gamers who enjoy the thrills of exploring, dealing with criminal syndicates and hunting for hidden treasure. The lack of lightsaber battles is a little disappointing, but there is so much that the game offers that makes it a memorable experience nonetheless.
If you love Star Wars and open-world games, don’t let the negativity surrounding the game deter you, as I personally found Star Wars Outlaws a blast to play.
However, if you’re running the game on a PC, do check your system specs and be prepared to do some tweaking on the graphical settings in order for the game to run smoothly, unless you are already using a top-of-the-line gaming rig.
Star Wars Outlaws is available on PC from the Ubisoft Store at S$94.90, for the Xbox Series X|S from Microsoft Store at S$98.25 and for the PlayStation 5 from the PlayStation Store at S$97.90
