Star Wars Outlaws - Review

When it was announced that Ubisoft were going to make a Star Wars game, I will admit I had suspicions that they would mess it up, their earlier efforts within a galaxy far, far away were not spectacular. Given the developers at Massive Entertainment, the folks behind The Division series had some good will to spare from those games, I went in hoping for good, what I ended up with was outstanding.

Kay Vess is someone who has lived a less than stellar life, but she wants more, which is why she is always in trouble on her homeworld of Canto Bight. When a simple job goes pair shaped, her friend gives her the details to a major job, one that would result in her being free of the planet and let Kay live a life among the stars. However when that job goes sideways as well, a recurring theme for Kay, she steals a ship and makes a jump to the nearby moon of Toshara and comes in a little hot and crashes the purloined cruiser. Meeting Waka, a local mechanic who offers to assist in repairing the Trailblazer, as the ship is called sets Kay off on a host of adventures around the moon, as she makes deals with the syndicate in control and those that wish to be. Before long though, her exploits back on Canto Bight catch up with her and she finds herself roped into a heist crew, where the score will let her live the life she wants, but most importantly clear the death mark that Sliro, leader of Zerek Besh and former owner of the Trailblazer has issued.

While Kay is willing to commit to the job, the credits alone are worth it, she needs to assemble the crew first and that requires her visiting some other locations. Now for obvious reasons I won’t say anything about who you get on board for the heist, except for two members, ND-5 and Nix. Starting with the latter, Nix is Kay’s best friend and family, a Merqaal who has been with Kay for years. Nix is willing to get into the mix with Kay, helping out in fights, sneaking around barriers and locked doors, in order to assist Kay with getting into places she shouldn’t be. Nix is just utterly adorable and there are moments when you can sit down for a meal and just bask in just how cute he is. ND-5 on the other hand is a droid, specifically a BX Commando droid, though this one is no longer fighting in the Clone Wars. ND-5 is not a partner, at least to begin with, he is however a babysitter and one programmed to kill you, should you attempt to cross Jaylen Vrax, the man putting up the credits for the mission. Each member of the crew that you need to recruit will see you venturing to a new location and each time you do, you will learn more about them, the syndicates that control those locations and much more.

I figured that going into Star Wars Outlaws, the game would honestly tell a pretty narrow story, as the team were very focused on the outlaw life and for the most part they do. Honestly, if you are not a Star Wars fan, you can enjoy this game, but if you have any knowledge of Star Wars or are a massive fan like myself, there are going to be a lot of call outs and references that you are going to love. The story itself… well I won’t actually say, though I will say that it had plenty of surprises that caught even me unaware.

Of course, there is no point in playing a game where you are an outlaw, if the gameplay isn’t up to snuff and I am very happy to report that it is, it very much is. The contracts that Kay picks up, either those for the story, from a syndicate or even random people you encounter, will vary depending on their origin. Many of the syndicate quests will have you needing to gather intel, in order to source the main location you have to visit and some will hand you the details you need to know. As you won’t know which type of mission it is, until you accept it, there is always a sense of mystery to each one and that is fun. There are some that happen in the world, you might be speeding past a farmstead, only to see a syndicate or raiders attempting to take it over. There are also Imperial outposts and bases that can be attacked by people or creatures, you can ignore them or pick a side as well. The content of the missions will vary, from stealing some supplies to hacking a terminal for information and depending on it, the difficulty level will change.

That level though will also change based on your actions and the syndicates that you choose to align with, because the ones you upset will not be nice to you. The syndicates are actually one of the areas of the game I expected to be fairly basic, but I was wrong, there is more going on. There are four syndicates in the game, one is led by the iconic Jabba the Hutt, another is the Pykes who will be familiar to those who have watched The Book of Boba Fett and the other two are going to be mostly unknown. The Ashiga Clan is a completely original group, made for the game and while they have a hive behaviour to them, there is more going on. The other group that most folks won’t know is the Crimson Dawn, which is the group I ended up aligned with, as they are led by Lady Qi'ra. The character was first introduced in the Solo movie and has been bound to the written word since then, her group was lead by a familiar face during that movie, but with events from Star Wars Rebels resulting in a leadership change, she is now in charge. Each time you complete a contract, mission or even engage in a fight with a syndicate, your reputation will change with all of them. Take on a contract for the Pykes on Toshara, your standing with Crimson Dawn will go down, however side with the Crimson Dawn and you risk your standing with the Pykes.

Your standing is important, as if you are in a poor state, the syndicate will stop helping you, should it degrade into bad, they will actively target you when you pass near them, any worse and they will hunt you down. But if your reputation with a group moves in a positive direction, then you can start to take advantage of the services they offer, buying black market items, unique outfits or modifiers and more. Of course, there is also Zerek Besh and the Imperials to deal with, while those won’t help you at any stage, you can still cause problems for them, which will result in them coming after you. I can’t begin to state how bad it is to have the Empire after you, sure one little wanted level is nothing, but get it high enough and Death Troopers will come after you and if you don’t clear your name, usually by scrubbing records, they will keep on it. The first time that I encountered them, I was honestly decimated within seconds, they are tough.

Thankfully across your adventure, Kay can become tough herself, as you can learn skills from a number of folks who have mastered selected disciplines, if you can find them. Learning them will require you to complete a number of objectives, some of them are easy, others require quite a bit of effort like taking down 10 Death Troopers in a row, or getting 10 Imperial kills with a wanted level of 3 or higher. Once you start to unlock them, the skills Kay can use grow, like being able to slice more objects than just terminals or being able to make bigger jumps on your speeder. This does change up the gameplay potential, letting you adopt that run and gun life or embracing the life of a sneak thief. It does however showcase a design flaw with the game, there were a number of times that I was told I had to sneak into a place, without raising any alarms. Now while I was more of a cautious player, if you have spent more time shooting everything you can, this is going to be quite a challenge. The challenges, from that and elsewhere, can be negated by Nix of course. Being able to send him out to distract an enemy, flip a switch, sabotage an alarm or even grab something and bring it back to you never gets old. I mentioned earlier that there are some food stalls you can visit, doing that will unlock different options for Nix. Once such option is the ability to kick back grenades, whereas another lets him cause a bigger distraction. Combining that with how you play does mean there is a lot of potential to become the outlaw you want and I haven’t even mentioned the customisation options.

I recently got to hear from some of the developers making the game and one of the aspects they talked about was authenticity, ensuring that Star Wars looked like Star Wars. In this area I have to say they achieved their goal, as the game not only looks great, it feels like Star Wars. While Nix and the Trailblazer are original designs for the game, when you see ND-5 standing inside the ship or have Nix hopping across a gap in an Imperial base, they look like they always belonged. Kay herself is fairly generic, as far as a design goes, you only really see her face in cutscenes, but she is a human and wears a slew of outfits, if you opt to change them. Being able to sit down with a Mon Calamari and have a conversation or be a player at a game of Sabaac with a Sullustan, a Trandoshan and even a Zabrak, fully cements that this is Star Wars. Each time I took off from a planet, I was able to skip those moments, I did once for testing purposes, but every other time I watched and enjoyed, because it felt right.

There are some issues with the visuals of course, it is an open world game after all. One common issue I spotted is just with the folks out in the world, in the cities they are generally fine, but out on their speeders they tend to behave very weirdly. In one instance, I had just landed on Toshara and was I was walking out of the back of the ship, I saw an Imperial Scout Trooper and two farmers, all attempting to ride through each other. There were other things, like folks walking through other folks, objects warping into place and the occasional audio issue. The only real annoying issue I had was that towards the end, my controller would just not stop vibrating, so much so that I had to quit the game to get it to stop. I did encounter an audio issue where the music coming from a band on Rapalli Station just stopped playing after I left a menu, but the band kept on rocking out.

That is a good segue into the audio of the game, which is honestly incredible, the acting across the board is great, even with characters who are speaking another language. Humberly Gonzalez shines as Kay, the character is cocky, but not quite able to match the words at times and Gonzalez brings that across. Jay Rincon does a great job as ND-5, they could have made the voice be nothing more than a robotic performance, but there is enough life in this droid that truly feels special. I have to give a special call out to Dee Bradly Baker, a Star Wars icon at this point, he voices all of the clones in the animation and more. Here though he voices Nix and there were times with all those chirps, growls and squeaks that I forgot it was a human making the noises. Jaylen is brought to life by Eric Johnson, a returning actor for Ubisoft having voiced Sam Fisher in a game, but here there is a charm and you just can’t help but want to sign up. Sliro’s actor Caolan Byrne has an edge to his performance, one that implies you will be hurt if you cross him, they did a great job across the board.

The music was perhaps even better than the voices, the main theme was one I loved to listen to when I booted up the game. The epic music that Star Wars is known for plays a big role here, it kicking in when you get into a fight, always made the encounter feel more dangerous. But the music truly shines when you visit any of the cantinas, space stations or syndicate hideouts. As someone who has spent time within an actual Star Wars cantina, I have a love of the music from those venues and I adored everything I heard here, so much so that I want a soundtrack to be released.

I am a Star Wars fan, there is no argument from me that I am and apart from the movies, the joy of Star Wars for me, comes from videogames. As I grew up playing countless games from Star Wars, this always had to hit all the right notes to be a success for me and they didn’t hit the notes, they blasted them. From the locations to the characters, the music to the story, everything feels like Star Wars and it just so happens to be playable. Ubisoft could have phoned in the game, hitting the basics and calling it a day, but the team behind this one have managed to craft, what I think is one of the best Star Wars games ever made and I don’t think it will lose its place among the best for a long time.

The Score

9.5

Review code provided by Ubisoft

The Pros

Everything here feels like Star Wars, so much so that its hard to know what is new for the game and what has been around before

Nix is just delightful, from a gameplay perspective and that he is just so cute

The Cons

Missions requiring stealth may be more of a challenge for those players who prefer to shoot first

There are some weird visual and audio bugs that do pop up, but nothing game breaking