Star Wars Outlaws (2024)

Finally completed this. It got to be a casual game of complete the checklist of open world activities. It doesn’t do anything incredibly well except…. be very true to Star Wars in all its trappings. Misfit crew, a cool star ship, droid sidekick, non-verbal companion, and lots of great blaster fights.

I enjoyed the character interactions at the end game, particularly the main villains exchange that fleshed out their motivations (the estranged brothers of Jaylen and Sliro). I wasn’t shocked by any of the other late game revelations but they were well voiced act well.

The last “fight” sequence with the boss was totally stupid, but I had heard about this online and so was prepared for it. Glitched out for me multiple times. But the final space ship battle made up for it. I miss arcade style space shooters and I actually think Outlaws does a great job with keeping theirs light and accessible and classic Star Wars.

I try to be careful about not falling into nostalgia traps, especially with Star Wars, because they are very guilty of that.

But, and I guess this is a spoiler for a side quest, having Lando be someone you play cards against was a great call. It felt natural to have him in that setting, he wasn't shoehorned in & they did a good job of capturing some of that Billy Dee Williams cool as he sits at the table. It made me feel like a really cool Star Wars poker player by association.

This game has been growing on me. It has all atmosphere of Star Wars I need and yet doesn’t involve the typical high stakes, galaxy ending, Jedi powers heavy stories. It is pretty standard open world but has cherry picked good enough mechanics from a bunch of different games.

I also love the take-off and landing from the planet and entering into hyperspace. The swell of the music and seeing the ship fly to its destination with aesthetically interesting locations is something I really missed from Starfield.

So far enjoying this game. I love open worlds generally and this Star Wars themed version is engaging enough. Speeder bikes are fast and true to the universe, the blasters feel good, and I enjoy the focus on stealth and stealing versus the standard Star Wars Jedi stuff. I think I am post-patch for the improvements to stealth and unlock mini-games as they are not too punishing.

The one gripe I have is the platforming feels a bit imprecise for some reason. Jumping from ledge to ledge there was a lot of mistimed jumps that were either due to delayed execution or camera angle that made it harder to see when I was at the end of the ledge.

I started this because I got it "for free" with my graphics card, and because I needed something to test the whole machine with (works fine, very silent, but I haven't turned all sliders up to super duper ultra yet).

It looks gorgeous, the sound is great, Nix is cute, the main character is ok so far (I like her look, fits well with the original film aesthetic) and it is very Star Wars-y, but I am not hooked. Now, I am not a Star Wars fan except for the oldest three films, and I would not have bought this, so I did not expect much from the game. I like how they manage to name drop people and events from the movies but stay in their own story and part of the world.

I have now made it to the second world and met the underworld boss and I am not sure if I want to continue and I am not sure if it is me or the game. Maybe I am still too stressed out from the renovation (we are now in the process of cleaning up the mess) to dive into such a huge world and game.

The lockpicking can go to hell. I picked the first one in the first go and couldn't pick the second one if my life depended on it. I am normally a fan of lockpicking. I am also a fan of pickpocketing, and having that taken away and having the pet do it is no fun, no matter how cute it is doing it. In the end, I just deactivated lockpicking for good, but it's not a good way to start a game when one of my favourite mechanics is undoable for me (at least in my current state of mind and health) and the other only exists in a rudimentary form. I guess there will be no fishing to make up for these two missteps, otherwise I would have read @BMO complaining about it. 😁

The accessibility options are great. Is there a reason for cut scenes to be only 30 FPS, do the look better that way? The aliens are well made, especially the last one I talked to after meeting the underworld boss. I wanted to touch that skin - it was so real.

I am probably just being unfair to the game at the moment and putting it aside, but I will definitely try it again in the future.

Struggling to decide what to give this. I enjoyed it. And for the first three-quarters I quite loved it. But it kind of fell apart at the end, partially narratively and partially in terms of mechanics and systems. When you reach the home stretch a lot of the fetch quests and running around grows tedious. It’s great at first when you’re exploring the Star Wars universe, but eventually stagnates toward the end. This is especially so because of the upgrade system. Massive replaced an XP system with an achievement system, whereby executing certain skill based challenges unlock new abilities. The problem is that about 30% of the upgrades are just unlocked via items. And I don’t mean speeder and ship upgrades which require parts to upgrade. I’m referring to skill-tree upgrades (except it’s not really a tree). This means you have spend a lot of of time hunting down scrap. Some scrap comes easily, some you can buy, but some is rare and you have to run around the galaxy trying to find it. The skill and challenge based upgrades are a ton of fun, but once you start focusing on the item based unlocks you start running around checking every vendor you hope you can remember in the off chance they have it. It’s deeply unrewarding and a drag on an otherwise novel approach to skill upgrades.

Thus, by the end I was excited to drop all the side activities, including certain upgrades, and push into the final sequence of the game. While fun, this does not feel like a game I want to return to for cleanup. My enjoyment of the game is not high enough to complete every achievement or polish off every entry in my journal. I had a good time playing the game but its still an Ubisoft game with a ton of busy work, busy work that really doesn’t justify itself in a way that makes me feel a deep sense of enjoyment or accomplishment in completing.

And yet I did have a good time, I really love Kay, Nix and ND-5, and I’d play their next adventure, if Ubisoft and Disney decides to fund one.