Despite the overabundance of Star Wars in the last few years thanks to all of those middle-of-the-road Disney+ shows, there’s always been a bit of a white whale for those old enough to remember the pre-Disney era — that being LucasArts’ cancelled Star Wars 1313. While we have an endless number of games where you play as someone with a lightsaber, 1313’s Uncharted-style approach caught our eye for a reason.
Now, over 10 years after 1313’s sad demise, Ubisoft has picked up the ball with Star Wars Outlaws, an open world adventure game starring scoundrel Kay Vess and her little freak companion Nix. Mixing Uncharted-style mission design with a cocktail of Ubisoft open world games, Outlaws has you patrol many of the famous locations from the films. Well, in theory that is.
We had some hands-on time with Outlaws at Summer Game Fest. But rather than being able to explore the galaxy at our own leisure, we were dropped into three specific scenarios that aimed to show off the different segments of the game, which struck us as a very strange way to show off an exploration-focused intergalactic adventure.
The first segment of our demo — titled False Flag — kicked things off with a bang; Kay and Nix had to escape an imperial space station after destroying data belonging to the Empire. This segment gave us a bit of everything: gunfights, stealth, and dogfights in space.
The combat is a standard third-person shooting affair obviously, but there’s a focus on improvisation that caught our eye. Kay has access to a blaster which has three attack modes (standard bolts, electrical ones for shields and droids, and a stun bolt that takes enemies down in one hit but needs time to recharge), but given how dinky it is you’ll undoubtedly need some more powerful weapons in massive gunfights. Kay can run around the battlefield and take weapons dropped by Stormtroopers and other enemies, and get Nix to steal from enemies or set up traps on the battlefield. It makes things a bit more interesting than a typical third-person shooter due to this.
Stealth is a bit more awkward. One thing that really clicked during these sections is that Star Wars Outlaws shares a lot of DNA with Watch Dogs. While you get to go full hacker man in Watch Dogs to mess with enemies or set up traps in the environment, Kay instead can rely on Nix to distract enemies to allow her to sneak about or go for the stealth takedown. Plus, Nix can also launch itself on explosive barrels to blow them up when enemies walk by, and even steal grenades from a Stormtrooper's belt. However, while hacking in Watch Dogs was fairly instant, Nix is a little creature who has to scurry around, plus in terms of long-ranged stealth options you’re pretty much stuck with the aforementioned rechargeable electric bolt (of course, more could appear later in the game).
The second segment of the demo is where it started to lose us a bit. In a sequence called The Wreck, Kay has to explore a smashed-up Republic ship in search of spare parts to fix her own vessel, The Trailblazer. This segment was pure Uncharted, with lots of climbing and exploring. However, it also surfaced one of the biggest issues we had with our limited time with the game. First off, the mission felt incredibly linear; there wasn't too much in the way of player freedom as it felt like you were siphoned into solving situations in one way. We're not usually bothered about the "yellow paint" debate in games, but between that and the dreaded God of War-style puzzles telling you the solution almost instantly, we didn't come away with particularly high hopes for the mission design in Star Wars Outlaws.
Thankfully, the things you can rely on in even the worst Star Wars games are still present here. The aesthetic is nailed and the sound effects and music are exactly how you want them to be. Plus, it's absolutely gorgeous to look at. The indoor areas and planet environments look phenomenal both in terms of fidelity and aesthetics. One aspect that we really weren't a fan of was the constant letterboxing; obviously the team is going after the movie look, but to us it just undermines how good the actual game looks.
It's extremely hard to get a read on Star Wars Outlaws from the demo we were shown. The idea of exploring a galaxy far, far away is such an enticing prospect and instead we were presented with extremely linear Uncharted-inspired demos that weren't exactly big on player freedom. That being said, we can already tell people are going to love this game, even if some of the game design feels a bit dated in an era of titles like Dragon's Dogma 2. There are so many little things to like here (we really love the lockpicking minigame), and the attention to detail and adoration for Star Wars undoubtedly makes it exciting — but without seeing the open world gameplay we can't really make a proper judgement call on Star Wars Outlaws just yet.
Are you looking forward to visiting a galaxy far, far away? Do you think it matters that Star Wars Outlaws hasn’t put its best foot forward with this pre-release media demo? Blaster away in the comments section below.
Comments 39
A shame if it's disappointing, i found the space part shown in videos pretty underwhelming, basic arcade shooter, woth the usual roll evade, and the loading in clouds to a scripted landing on planet.
Ubisoft games are medicore at best, I'll wait and see with this one.
I'm pretty curious about this, even though I shouldn't be - I'm in my periodic open world fatigue place currently. But I suspect I'll check the reviews out and if it's solid maybe I'll try and score a Black Friday copy.
The other thing is, it comes out pretty close to Astro Bot, so...
Wishing this game all the best and hoping it turns out great.
So like the Star Wars universe in games.
It's an Ubisoft game. It's worth $20 a year or so after release, at best. They make pure junk food games. The fact they truly believe they're making AAAA titles anymore just goes to show you how deluded they are.
It's sandland all over crappy demo for what's most likely a good game
This website’s fascination with DD 2 is so weird especially since most people have turned on it now that the hype as died down. Talking about dated design that games open world is dated as hell and wasn’t improved on barely if at all in the ten years between sequels. On topic though I think this game looks awesome and I can’t wait for the end of August to get here to play it.
I’m fine with it feeling like Watch Dogs, I liked 2! The letterboxing is cool too, games are so insanely samey looking these days, Metal Gear Solid Delta being the straw that broke the camel’s back.
@dark_knightmare2 I find it depressing how cultish and fadish the whole gaming market is. Everybody latches onto a thing as the big thing, everybody defends it from any and all criticism real or imagined, fervently, and then a few weeks later everyone moves onto the next thing and forgets about the other one and realizes it's not really that great after all. There's something fundamentally wrong with gaming.
@dark_knightmare2 I honestly didn't quite understand the hype that DD2 was getting. If I remember, Dragon's Dogma was a bit of a niche title that had a following, but didn't really set the world on fire.
What a joke of a preview, lost me with the oh it's an Uncharted style area. Heaven forbid its "LINEAR" as if its unacceptable!! Has it not crossed your mind that some of us gamers welcome linearity In games. I will wait for a proper review, or will judge it myself.
I think it looks rather good myself, however I must say 'The Trailblazer ' is a terribly boring designed starship.
I was hoping for something a bit more Millennium Falcony really.
Wonder how many towers you need to climb to unlock the map and memory cards to collect
@NEStalgia exactly you hit the nail on the head it’s crazy. It also causes games that are good and even better than the game getting all the hype to be overlooked like with Rise of the Ronin but thankfully the opposite of DD 2 happened with that where the word of mouth was positive and carried it to being their best selling game.
@Futureshark if it was millennium falcony designed that would be boring as hell though
What exactly makes it "dated" in everybody's eyes?
@Axelay71 right I’m sick of bloated open world games. I’ve actually been missing the ps3/360 gen lately where open world games were special and an event when they came out not like now where there’s just tons releasing all the time
A rare pre-order for me as the music
for Star Wars games always pulls me in even with possible mediocre gameplay. I've liked what I have seen so far.
Comparing the game to Watch Dogs is a positive to me as i loved the second one and enjoyed the other two titles for the most part too.
I can’t play too many Ubisoft games but limiting them to 1/2 every 3 years is a good balance, Avatar was a fun enough time and i expect this to be more of that same enjoyment.
It is $17 with Ubisoft+ and you get the Ultimate Edition
I have had funs with Ubi games that get hated on in the past... I'll play it for 30 days, take it from there.
@MFTWrecks price of Persia was far from junk
Unless I missed something, you start off mentioning three different scenarios and only talk about two.
What was the third scenario?
Everything that you’re describing as “bad” sounds great to me. I have no desire nor the time to wander around until I find where/what I need. Excited for this one.
What's wrong with linearity!? You say that like its a bad thing! Most open world games suck.
This might be a game I shut off my brain to enjoy, and that's OK. Just hate the yellow paint for traversal, it irks me.
I think I am in a stage in my life where I welcome "linearity." I don't get why it's such a ghastly notion in this preview.
Suddenly "linearity" and "climbing & exploring like Uncharted" is a bad thing now?
@dark_knightmare2 yes the tides are turning, gamers are getting sick of em. It's about time devs get the message as well. The PS3/360 era was the golden age for 3rd person story games we need them back. If the devs poured the time & resources into this genre then everyone could be happy. The new Gears is going to amazing along with Astrobot. It's about time Linearity made a return.
@dark_knightmare2 no, most people have not turned against Dragons Dogma 2.
90% of gamers don’t even interact with the online community and especially not the ‘moaning minority’.
Most gamers just play games and enjoy them. The same will happen with this game. Many mediocre games are enjoyed by the masses.
@GamingFan4Lyf it was a mission called 'The Relic' in which you had to grab a relic from a safehouse to negotiate with a faction. But it was mostly just combat encounters so I didn't feel the need to go too in-depth on it (can't bloat the word count!)
@Puppetmaster I'm not saying linearity is inherently bad, but personally, I'm a bit let down that a game whose main draw (at least in my eyes) is being able to explore the Star Wars universe and improvise against an overwhelming force was presented in a way that makes it seem like there's one set way to do everything. I'm sure people are going to absolutely love it! And again, this is a bit of a bad demo to show off the open aspects of the game, so maybe other scenarios are a bit more freeing.
@Uncharted_Horizon27
I'm in super completionist mode for Ghost of Tsushima right now, so there are good examples
I am a little concerned by the "first Star Wars open world game" aspect, as it does looks a lot like Fallen Order / Jedi Survivor to me.
@Axelay71 agreed
@NEStalgia these developers win or lose either way. OP whom you responded too was saying that DD 2 has a dated design which is completely relative IMO. Then on the other hand when everyone does the same thing for specific genres people complain about that too. Modern gamers can’t be pleased at all.
@dark_knightmare2 dated is relative. I see nothing wrong with DD 2 niche open world game style. DD1 was niche and so is this one. It’s only mainstream outlets that made it bigger than what it is among average gamers. Let us reserve “dated” for things like a game engine. I.e. Statfield has a dated loading style for various digital resources. It doesn’t efficiently use modern hardware compared to other modern games.
Man, devs must think that we are just incapable of solving puzzles, because so many games just blurt out the solution seconds after coming upon one.
Was told the game wasn't for me by their community director. Who would know better? I'll take her word for it.
I love that Ubisoft is saving me money with their mediocre games and idiotic practices. Again, thank you Ubi for being trash
Historically Star Wars games have always been very hit and miss. This has bargain bin fodder written all over it.
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