I am a fan of all things Star Wars and when Ubisoft invited me to go hands on with Star Wars Outlaws, I made the run to them in under 12 parsecs. Heading into this hands on session, I did have concerns that the game wouldn’t deliver what I was after, but thankfully those fears were put to rest early on.

While the preview build of the game didn’t start right at the beginning of the game, because story spoilers, it did begin soon after. Kay and Nix, that is her furry little friend, have crashed on Toshara and apart from being a little banged up, they are ok. Things of course on a planet where syndicates rule, take a turn for the worse as Kay is attacked by a Rodian named Waka, who in turn is being chased by a number of bandits. After that situation is resolved, Kay and Nix head into Mirogana, a town that houses many Syndicates and the Empire, but for some reason is not a constant warzone. While Kay’s plan to get noticed by the leader of the Pyke Syndicate doesn’t go to plan, she is approached by a Broker named Danka, who gives her a mission to acquire some intel from a Pyke base. These opening moments are more story focused than gameplay, but it help set up the ground rules for what was going to happen later on.

One thing that was explained to me was that I could do any missions I wanted to on Toshara, the world was my palm tree. Now I did follow the main story thread for a bit, just as I wanted to see who Kay would meet in her adventures, but after a bit I just walked around the market of Mirogana. Here there were Stormtroopers and Imperial Officers walking around being annoying, but there were also vendors hawking their wears, as well as folks just trying to get a bite to eat. While I did get lost, I was trying to avoid using the map, I heard someone demand the return of their droid and the voice sounded real familiar to me, so I doubled back to see if they would speak again and they did, but more importantly this was not background talk like most of the market, this lead to a mission. I didn’t actually undertake the mission though, as I didn’t want to spoil it for myself later on, but I found it purely by walking about the place, which was something I found to be quite cool.

Now as far as playing the game goes, I made a mention in my preview for Ubisoft Forward that the game is basically Uncharted in Space.. sorry, Uncharted in SPACE!, but as that was a hands off preview, I couldn’t be sure if it played that way and turns out I was right. If you think of the game like a meal, part of the plate is Uncharted, but just as much is the exploration, which felt very much like Far Cry. A meal is not two ingredients though, so the rest of the plate was made up of dashes of slicing terminals, spiking access ports and conversations with folks. Ok, so that might not make a lot of sense, so what I am saying is that while there are parts of the game the feel like Uncharted, climbing up the side of a destroyed High Republic cruiser being one of them, there is a lot more going on, so the Uncharted in Space analogy only really covers one part of the game. A great example of this is while speeding around the fields around Mirogana I did get a distress call from some farmers, who were being raided by bandits and I thought, why not help. So speeding over to them, I got caught up in a shootout, and upon claiming victory, I was rewarded and then left the farmers so they could do their own thing.

While spending time on the planet was a great thing, as someone who can claim that the Star Wars Rogue Squadron series is easily one of their favourites, in all of gaming, I was eager to take flight and see how the game handled a crucial aspect of Star Wars. Now I am sure if I wanted to, I could have taken off without a mission, but as I had one waiting for me at the ship, it made sense to do them together. What I was not expecting was a chill down my spine as I took off, now this was not Microsoft Flight Simulator, I pressed a single button and the ship took off into space. While I would have loved a few more options, I can understand the simplicity of how it was done here, but regardless of how, once the music kicked in and along with the visuals, the end result was previously said spine tingling. Actually in space was even more amazing, flying the ship felt like a combination of the Rogue Squadron series and the Star Wars Squadrons game from Electronic Arts. I was able to pick up the controls fairly easily, but later on when combat was involved, I found that you can’t just pew pew without pulling the left trigger down. This move was very much a “lock x foils in attack position” move, as pulling the trigger down actually moved the engines closer into the ship and pulled the camera in close, it felt like the ship was transforming from a freighter to a fighter.

After spending a few hours on and around Toshara, it was time to venture to a new planet and this one was as new as you could get, Kijimi. This planet was first introduced in Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker and is home to Poe Dameron. While it is possible they might have more looks than what I got to see, this visit was very much that of the movie, snow falling onto a Tibet-inspired town. The reason for the visit was simple, to recruit a bomb maker, the why was not explained but as always, things were never going to be as straight forward as you might like. The bomb maker was taken in by the leaders of the Ashiga Clan and in order to have any hope of finding them, I had to break into another syndicates hide out, in order to steal back the item that they stole from the Ashiga. I won’t explain how many times it took me to locate them first, as I discovered when you are spiking a lock, the game doesn’t pause, so you need to be aware of your surroundings at all times. Eventually I got through that pesky door and was able to move forward, which of course meant that the mission was a success and I was able to move the story along, which felt very good.

Sadly that is where my time with the game came to an end, time really does fly when you are having fun. In my 4 or so hours with the game I snuck into multiple syndicate bases, stole many times, helped a few folks who were a little out gunned and I took down many Imperials, which is always fun. Coming into the game, I figured that I was going to enjoy it to some degree, it looked great, but I honestly didn’t expect just how much fun I did have. It could have easily been phoned in, lord knows there are some Star Wars games that are not that great, but this one was full of so much detail, you can tell that the developers really care about it. The story of Kay and Nix has a lot more to see and I can’t wait for it, so if you are like me and a big Star Wars fan, then rest easy knowing that you won’t have a bad feeling about this one.

Star Wars Outlaws is set to release on August 30th for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 and PC. If you are looking to pick up the game, you can check out our Bargain Guide, in order to save yourself some credits.