Developer – Massive Entertainment
Publisher – Ubisoft
Initial Release Date – August 30^th, 2024
Available on – PS5/PS5 Pro, Xbox Series X/S & Windows PC
Reviewed on – PC
PC Hardware – Windows 11, Nvidia RTX 4080, Intel i9-12900k, 32GB RAM

2024 has been a tumultuous year for Ubisoft to say the least. In September, the company confirmed in an investor call what many had already suspected; Star Wars Outlaws has been a massive financial failure for the company. With a budget somewhere between $200 and $300 million, the game only sold around a million copies in the first month after its release, despite garnering generally positive reviews from critics. Outlaws currently sits at a 75 on Metacritic with the user score being notably lower at 5.3 out of 10, which does include some critical reviews from users claiming the game was another part of the “woke” agenda from Disney’s cash cow franchise.

Developer Massive Entertainment has committed to continuing support for the game with a major title update that was released on November 21^st, 2024, coinciding with the game’s release on Steam as well as the release of the first major DLC, Wild Card. This is also the first update after the developer announced Drew Rechner as the new creative director for Outlaws, an unusual move for a game that has already been released. The most notable changes the update includes are improvements to combat, stealth, mission checkpointing and character controls. Feel free to check out the full patch notes for title update 1.4.0 here.

Ubisoft is often a prime target for criticism when it comes to players waiting for major updates versus buying new games at launch, and the rocky start for Outlaws is not helping their reputation. The poor launch was so impactful that Ubisoft decided to delay their next entry in the Assassins Creed franchise, Shadows, with promises to rethink their strategy when it comes to battle passes, paid early access, in game monetization and game optimization at launch. To my knowledge, no Assassins Creed games have ever had any significant delays, at least publicly.

My experience with Outlaws has been a bit of a mixed bag. As a lifelong fan of the Star Wars franchise as well as their past work with The Division series and even Avatar Frontiers of Pandora, I was very excited to see what Massive could come up with when given the Star Wars license. Early rumors that sprouted up before the game was fully unveiled hinted at a huge open world experience where you would create your own character and experience the story how you wanted, with player choices impacting the narrative. What was delivered was a much…tighter experience from a narrative perspective with players taking control of Kay Vess, a young and inexperienced scoundrel on her journey to nab the biggest score of her life, alongside her faithful and adorable companion Nix and a crew of other rapscallions that you assemble over the course of the game before the big heist with several large open “worlds”, or areas, to explore. A premise that holds a lot of potential with the Star Wars license in hand. I began writing this review prior to the 1.4.0 title update and have put some additional time into the game to experience the new content as well as get a feel for the changes, so the following is based on my most recent experiences.

Performance and Visuals

I am primarily a PC gamer, and this instance is no different. My review is based on the PC version of Outlaws, so I won’t be able to speak to console-based performance, however I would recommend watching the outstanding Digital Foundry video on console performance if you are curious.

In the words of a good friend, I am a huge graphics whore, so when it comes to tinkering with visual settings, my first instinct is to max everything out and see how it runs. With Outlaws, that was a bit of a mistake. The ray tracing options proved to be a bit too much for even my pretty decent computer to handle and I ended up turning down the direct lighting options to medium to balance out performance. With everything maxed, roaming the world is mostly solid with some random frame drops from the 90’s down into the 50’s and occasionally lower. These moments always seemed completely random, with the frame rate suddenly tanking while looking in a mostly devoid-of-stuff direction and would last until I either moved the camera to look in a different direction or moved myself to a different area. Reducing the direct lighting options did improve this issue with little noticeable change to fidelity, and my frames tend to stay in the 100’s with dips into the 90’s in the more crowded areas. I will note that the game does still stutter randomly in the open world areas even with the direct lighting setting turned down, but it is not as pronounced.

Visually, Outlaws is absolutely stunning and the Snowdrop engine really shines here. The vistas and landscapes that Massive have created are legitimately incredible, and each planet that you visit has its own unique environment. It’s a shame that the open areas are relatively empty, but we will get into that in a moment. From a graphical perspective, Outlaws really delivers what feels like a “next gen” experience. The ray tracing and direct lighting really stand out in the city environments and Empire bases that are full of reflective surfaces. If your computer can handle it, I would highly recommend enabling ray tracing. Walking through cantinas and the more densely populated city areas is a cool experience, and Massive perfectly nailed the Star Wars vibe.

There’s also a lot of movement incorporated into the environment, from grass and vegetation blowing in the wind or under your speeder, to dust and other particles blowing around in the air. This is something we have seen in some other titles as well, such as Ghost of Tsushima, and it makes the world feel much more alive and helps natural environments feel more believable and realistic.

There are still some issues with the visuals however, particularly muddy looking textures, missing sand textures on Tatooine and over the top depth of field effects, as well as way too many lens flares. Unfortunately, and strangely given the plethora of other settings, you are not able to fully disable depth of field or lens flares in the game settings. I’m not aware of any specific mentions from Massive, but I’m optimistic that these could be added in future updates. Our eyes are not cameras, and we should always have the option to turn off lens flares if desired. I understand it from a stylistic approach to make it more “futuristic”, but we’re talking J.J. Abrams levels of lens flares here which is a major annoyance for me.

Lip syncing and character facial animations can also be lacking but are serviceable, particularly in the non-cinematic dialogue moments. Audio also seems to be a bit de-synced from the facial animations at times. This isn’t really anything new for Ubisoft games however, as recent Assassins Creed titles have also suffered from poor facial animations. I know it’s not the same development team or game engine, but still noteworthy as something that hasn’t been majorly improved with the Snowdrop engine.

Overall, the game is very impressive to look at and decently optimized which has my inner graphics whore excited for future titles, particularly with Ubisoft indicating that Snowdrop will be their primary engine moving forward. There were initially some other visual bugs such as pixelation of Kay’s hair and a rather terrible texture loading issue, but both seem to be fixed with updates that have come out since the games launch in my recent play sessions.

Audio and sound design

Audio is another area where Outlaws really shines. The music is often relatively subtle during gameplay, or maybe I just don’t notice it much, but the soundtrack is overall very solid. The main theme music is fantastic, and I never mind the extra wait when booting up the game to get to the main menu simply due to the music. Sound effects overall are classic Star Wars through and through; TIE fighters, blasters and speeders sound like they are straight out of a Star Wars movie. The sound of Kay’s speeder is particularly meaty and satisfying when you punch the accelerator or use the boost ability.

Voice acting quality is good for the most part and the main cast of NPCs are all pretty good, however my main complaint related to audio has to do with Kay. Her voice actor, Humberly González, does a fine job, but for a reason that is beyond my tiny brain’s comprehension, Kay is written as a very novice, unsure and not at all confident or suave character. You’re playing as a scoundrel, obviously reminiscent of Han Solo complete with a critter side kick, but nearly every single line that Kay delivers is full of “Oh…uhh…umm” pauses and stumbles that make her look like an amateur who is unsure of what she is saying and doing in every conversation or situation. To give a tiny sliver of fairness to the writers, she is a novice at the start of the game, but her character does not change or evolve in any significant way throughout the course of the game. There is no character growth to speak of, and she is just as lacking in confidence in the first hour of the game as she is in the 30^th hour.

If you are looking to make the player feel like a badass scoundrel, smuggler and outlaw, again drawing parallels to Han Solo, why are we made to play this absolute goober of a character? Kay is very much so a good-guy, “Disney-fied” character that the developers wanted to make out to be tough and capable, which she displays through her actions via gameplay, but comes across as a complete doofus during conversations and story beats. It’s a major clash of tones that unfortunately cannot be ignored. This is by far one of my biggest irritations with the game that I have not been able to overlook throughout my playthrough because it comes up so frequently.

Gameplay, story and everything else

Outlaws struggles a bit with what it wants to be. It wants to be an RPG in some respects with some mild elements in the form of gear sets, unlockable skills, upgradable weapons, etc. It wants to be a big open world game that encourages exploration, and I did enjoy exploring the different worlds, but also limits your ability to do so by restricting your speeder to only being used in the main open areas as well as the side areas being more linear than expected. For example, you will unexpectedly run into an invisible wall and big red warning telling you that the area you are trying to go into is a speeder restricted area, which is immersion breaking, kind of like Starfield’s invisible walls when exploring “planets”. A lot of the side locations feel like segregated little bubbles that sort of exist in their own space within the open world as you drive up to them, hop off your speeder and climb up a conveniently yellow wall or some other hand hold, not exactly something organically existing as part of the open world that you happen to be able to explore like we see in games like Red Dead Redemption 2.

At the same time, it wants to be the next Uncharted game with a significant amount of platforming exploration in both main mission areas as well as side areas, but ultimately falls flat due to a noticeable lack of any real major set piece moments, like the train sequence from Uncharted 2. The platforming in Outlaws is just kind of…there. It doesn’t really add much to the experience aside from padding out the play time and occasionally getting you killed due to Kay not grabbing a ledge as expected or a jump input not being registered.

There is also a half-baked wanted system a la Grand Theft Auto, but again it doesn’t really add anything to the game, it just makes some encounters slightly more annoying. You can remove your wanted level by waiting around long enough, visiting a corrupt Imperial officer in a city and bribing them, or if you are in space, you can hack Imperial satellites to clear your wanted status. I have only had to do this once so far, as the wanted level clears so quickly on its own that I have never actually made it back to an officer to bribe them. The only time I cleared my wanted status was immediately after a mission in space where I had to take out some Imperials. Not to mention that you can’t commit any real crimes as an “Outlaw”, you can’t use your weapons in any towns or cities, you can’t steal speeders from Imperials or civilians, you can’t shoot or assault any civilians and looting things in cities doesn’t get you any attention either, it’s all just free to take. Kay is the most law-abiding outlaw I have ever seen. The only way to increase your wanted level that I have seen in 30 hours of gameplay is just shooting Stormtroopers. It feels like a tacked-on feature that Massive probably wanted to expand on, but Disney shut down.

Another feature that isn’t as fleshed out as the developers made it out to be is the criminal syndicates that you work with, or sometimes against. At first it seems to have some depth to it, including special rewards for getting high enough reputation with each faction, but you are ultimately switching back and forth between who is pissed off with you at that moment. There are no repercussions that I have seen to having a low reputation with the syndicates aside from them not allowing you into their bases or being outright hostile if they see you in the open world. You can always take on contracts to get your reputation back up, and there isn’t any consequence like a hit squad if your reputation gets too low with a syndicate.

The story itself is not horrible but is also a bit cliché. It has a lot of potential to be good, but I think that the writers missed the mark a bit. The characters that you meet aren’t very likeable and I didn’t feel much attachment to them, aside from Nix, and it can sometimes be difficult to care about their stories. Without going into too many spoilers, the story revolves around Kay having a gig go sideways at the very start and getting on the wrong side of a powerful criminal leader, earning her a death mark and making her the target of bounty hunters. She and Nix set off on an adventure to set things right, and complete the heist of a lifetime with a crew that you put together through a series of missions. In fact, most of the game revolves around finding, freeing or otherwise assisting your teammates. There are interesting locations that the story takes you to for sure, and a few of the levels have that Uncharted set piece wow-factor as well, but they don’t live up to the same level of polish that Naughty Dog brings to the table.

As I mentioned before, the open world itself is mostly empty feeling. Not necessarily lacking NPCs specifically, but the NPCs don’t really do much of anything. They just stand around in the same spots and spout voice lines on repeat. Some wander aimlessly around the cities and towns, those out in the open world can get into shoot outs with bandits, and there are “random encounter” type activities that can come up from time to time, but in the time I played the game I only saw settlers shooting at bandits, Imperials harassing some civilians, and Imperials raiding pirate camps which you can sneak into and steal valuables from, which I had come up repeatedly. You can also be bushwhacked by bandits yourself, but most of the time they will end up running into something in the environment and blowing themselves up before they pose much of a threat.

Most of my play time is with the pre 11/21/24 title update. In my experience, the AI is very, very stupid in combat. AI in third person shooters is not known to be incredible across the board, but the AI here is particularly dumb. They can forget your location almost immediately if you are spotted sneaking around, and shoot outs boil down to playing whack-a-mole when they pop out of cover. The game is very easy when it comes to the actual combat and stealth; the only times I have failed a mission or died is from the previously mentioned missed jump or ledge grab with one exception early on in an Imperial base where it took a couple of attempts to get the guard rotation down to sneak by to the next objective. I have had one major combat encounter after the 1.4.0 update, but I didn’t notice much in terms of AI changes. The stealth section prior to combat felt generally the same, with Kay clobbering Stormtroopers with her bare hands through their armor, and the AI just kind of stood around exchanging gunfire with me until I had killed them all.

I do credit Massive for their attempt to make lock picking different from other games. In Outlaws, lock picking is done as a rhythm game using your hair pin/data spike. After a while it got a little bit repetitive, mostly due to seeing the same pattern repeatedly, but I appreciated that it was something new compared to the bog standard turn one stick this way and the other one the other way until it unlocks that we see in most games with lock picking mechanics. The slicing mini game is also different from normal “hacking” mini games and basically plays like Wordle, but with symbols instead of letters. This also got a little repetitive after a while, but still, I can’t knock the developers for doing something different.

One notable thing to mention is the card game you can play, Sabacc. I am personally not a big card game fan, outside of playing a lot of blackjack in Read Dead Redemption 1, I generally skip card games when they are available as a mini game. Even Gwent in The Witcher 3 was not my cup of tea. However, Sabacc was a blast to play. It’s simple, fun and addicting and I spent a solid few hours of my play time just hanging out in seedy parlors playing Sabacc until I was either out of credits or I had won enough to buy whatever upgrade parts I needed for my blaster or speeder. Kudos to Massive for making a fun bit of side content here.

Final thoughts

Overall, comparing Outlaws to a combination of GTA and Uncharted with a coat of Star Wars paint would be the most accurate description, although it fails to achieve the greatness of either. Despite having some big criticisms, I can see a lot of potential with a future entry into the franchise if Massive gets the green light to make a sequel. They hit the nail on the head when it comes to creating worlds and environments in the Star Wars universe and a significant portion of my time with the game was enjoyable as a Star Wars fan, but the gameplay mechanics need a lot of refinement. I would have loved to have seen a much more mature and darker themed story here, especially considering the title of the game, though that may have been out of Massive’s hands with Disney looming over their shoulder. I also think the story would have benefited from having a much more experienced and mature main character as well. Hell, showing Kay as a nervous goober in a flashback sequence, and a more hardened scoundrel during the actual story would have sufficed.

I feel like there was some missed potential with the speeder and your ship as well. In the later stages of the game, picking up loot is basically meaningless as you don’t need credits for anything. You can’t buy new ships, speeders or weapons, just new outfits, most of which have very similar effects and just offer new cosmetic appearances. You can upgrade your current speeder, ship and blaster, but once you unlock all of those, there is really nothing to do with your money. Allowing players to purchase and upgrade different vehicles, weapons or even buying some property or having a home base to build up and design would have been great. There is a side mission that allows you to get a share of profit from a moisture farm on Tatooine, but again the credits are useless after a certain point.

There is a good amount of side content in Outlaws, and I honestly enjoyed the mini games a lot more than I expected to. The simple arcade games, gambling on space horse races, sharing a meal with Nix, Sabaac, it was all fun and I like to see developers putting more effort into that kind of content. It’s never a bad thing to offer more for your players to do, even if it doesn’t impact the story in any way. I also appreciated the way they approached acquiring new skills for Kay. You track down and “unlock” masters of the skills you are looking to learn by completing their story lines. I thought this was a novel approach compared to traditional RPG mechanics of earning experience points until you level up and then using skill points to unlock skills. I think this system could be greatly expanded upon in a future title to make progression even more rewarding and interesting.

Disney, can we please just get Star Wars 1313 already?

7/10

Pros

• Outstanding visuals and sound design
• World design and the “Star Wars Vibes” are spot on
• Unique approach to skill and gear progression
• Not overly bloated feeling like some other Ubisoft titles
• Fun and engaging side content/mini games
• Nix

Cons

• Omega doofus of a main character
• Occasional performance hiccups
• Some minor graphical bugs persist 3 months after launch
• Audio/lip syncing issues
• Predictable story line moments
• Uninteresting characters
• Dumb combat AI and outdated stealth mechanics
• Restricted gear/weapon options

This review is based on a paid copy of the game; this product was not received for free. All screenshots included were captured in game, credit to Bad Habit Gaming and Massive Entertainment.