Nostalgia is a funny thing – there are times it just swoops in out of nowhere like a TIE fighter and blasts you right in the guts, leaving you confused and in pain. An hour into playing Star Wars Outlaws, I didn’t expect to become emotionally overwhelmed during a minor quest that involved buying spare parts from a group of Jawas. But then I rode my speeder out into the Dune Sea and saw their transport there, black and monolithic under the low suns, and then those little chaps were scuttling about, fixing droids … and it took me right back to being 12 years old, watching Star Wars on VHS in our living room, eating a bowl of Monster Munch my mum had brought to me, repeating the lines along with Luke. There are many moments like this in Ubisoft’s sprawling adventure, and they save its life on more than one occasion.
For all the pre-release talk about this not being a typical Ubisoft open-world game, Star Wars Outlaws sure feels a lot like a typical Ubisoft open-world game. You play as Kay Vess, a street thief quietly living off her guile until a lucrative heist goes wrong and she ends up stealing a spaceship, then crashing it on the remote moon of Toshara. From here, she must survive by working for the galaxy’s many criminal gangs, playing them off against each other and building a rep for herself as a skilled mercenary and thief. This is where things become familiar. You’re instantly plied with main story quests, dozens of optional minor tasks and also the opportunity to take on side jobs for various smugglers and ne’er-do-wells, usually involving travelling somewhere and fetching things or blowing them up – like in Assassin’s Creed. Or Far Cry. Or Watch Dogs. It’s Star Wars: The Busy Work Strikes Back.
There are key differences, though. Here, you’re aided by your beloved pet Nix, who you can send off to distract guards, fetch useful objects or crawl through tight spaces to unlock doors. It’s cute and serves to add emotional depth and jeopardy to Kay’s otherwise lonely life. But more importantly, the game expertly weaves in Star Wars lore, so that the buildings you’re breaking into are beautifully realised Imperial research stations, ruined Republican spaceships and sleazy Hutt strongholds, all filled with intricate visual and narrative details drawn from the original film trilogy. Everywhere you go, there are treats for fans, whether it’s familiar droids, nuggets of history or beloved spacecraft. The streets of Mos Eisley are even patrolled by Stormtroopers riding those monstrous dewbacks.
The planets you visit aren’t vast expanses of explorable domain. Most have a major city and a few square miles of open landscape. But this is fine, as there’s plenty out there to discover, from Hutt treasure caches in the valleys of Tatooine to pirate camps in the swampy forests of Akiva. Sadly, the speeder bike is horrible to control, like trying to traverse alien planets on a knackered old Honda 125. Similarly unwieldy is the space flight section, which is reminiscent of No Man’s Sky – planetary orbits are dense with derelict spacecraft to loot, as well as TIE and pirate fighters. You can help ships in distress, or carry out cargo pickup missions, but the flight simulation is definitely NOT up there with the classic LucasArts space combat titles.
On most land-based quests, there is a familiar combination of parkour (climbing yellow-painted pipes and cliff faces – though you can opt to turn the paint off) and stealth as you creep through steel corridors, past walls of flashing buttons and bleeping computer displays, then sabotage alarm panels and quietly knock out enemies. It’s basic stuff – sometimes veering closer to the Mary Jane-missions in Spider-Man than, than say, the systemic complexity of Dishonored – and it can be frustratingly slowgoing. However, as you progress, you meet an array of experts who allow you to unlock new skills, such as quieter movement and cool stealth toys such as smoke grenades, to make infiltration a lot more fun. You also have a hugely configurable laser gun with an array of unlockable modes, and although it’s possible to temporarily pick up other weapons, I kind of like the fact that Kay sticks with her Han Solo-style pistol – there’s no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.
Beneath it all is a pulpy narrative that grows from a street-kid-makes-good myth into something a little more interesting. As Kay recruits her raid crew, including the heavily laser-scarred battle droid ND-5, she forges friendships that both enhance and contrast the heist plot. Run-ins with rebel forces also call into question the ethics of their war and methods. There are wonderful moments when it’s clear the designers aren’t just drawing from Star Wars itself, but from the directors George Lucas held dear – John Ford and Akira Kurosawa.
Some may miss the Jedi lore or EA’s Fallen Order and Jedi Survivor titles; Outlaws is definitely a game for Solo rather than Skywalker fantasists – just with a truly likable new character at the helm. It will deliver what most fans of the films want and give them much geeky pleasure as they spot EG-6 power droids or maybe an X-34 Landspeeder or … is that a Chadra-fan sitting at the cantina bar? I found myself just wandering for hours looking for this stuff and rarely left disappointed.
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If this were an Assassin’s Creed or Far Cry title, it would be one of the OK ones – decent fun, a little annoying at times, and crammed with the worn-down tropes of the open-world genre. But time and time again, the Star Wars license grabs this game by its Corellian breeches and wrenches it into thrilling territory. For many of the 40-or-so hours I played, 12-year-old me was back, feeling somewhat bewildered and giddy, but enjoying every blissfully familiar moment.