Star Wars Outlaws Review — Reminding Me Why I Love the Galaxy Far, Far Away

In recent years, I have grown tired of Star Wars. The franchise has been diluted with the same tired tropes and stubbornness to keep playing in the same playground it has for almost 50 years. Of course, there have been projects that have given us a glimpse at a different side of the galaxy, with Rogue One and Andor exploring morally grey characters and their struggles against an imposing, evil empire. Star Wars Outlaws channels that same energy, showing us a new way to explore this galaxy with much success. It’s also the best Ubisoft game I’ve played in years, with the developer beating all my expectations by delivering a truly next-gen open-world game.

Forget the Jedi, the Sith, and their overpowered lightsabers. You play as Kay Vess, an Outlaw on the wrong side of many overlords of the galaxy’s underbelly. While most Star Wars projects will deal with the everlasting battle between the light and dark side, Kay couldn’t care less about the conflict. She will double-cross anyone she can, except her trusty pet pal Nix, if she has something to gain from it. It’s the quintessential Han Solo stand-in, and I’m glad she’s an original character, free from the shackles of established canon. Across her many run-ins with the Empire and various crime syndicates, you decide where she stands on the slippery slope of morality.

Outlaws is focused on selling you the experience of operating as a freelance scoundrel, taking on jobs for different factions, and performing various heists, and it does it in spades. Being the first open-world Star Wars game, it expands upon the ideas presented in other Star Wars titles, especially Respawn’s Jedi games starring Cal Kestis. However, the world of Outlaws is more fleshed out, giving us a comprehensive look at the lowlives and the elites. Small touches like the ability to lean against a bar’s backdrop, eavesdrop on aliens talking about bounties and treasures, or play various minigames at the arcades add up to immerse you in it. There’s even a QTE-filled minigame when Kay and Nix sit down at any planet’s street food vendor, and it’s not just for show, as the dish you select for your pet companion offers passive bonuses. And Kessel Sabacc is another great card game I wish existed in real life.

Most of the usual Ubisoft open-world systems have been stripped down, emphasizing actual exploration. Sure, you’re still doing repetitive tasks and following markers for side-quests, but they don’t feel as exhausting as they usually do. Like any Ubisoft game, the key lies in delivering a satisfying 20-minute gameplay loop that you enjoy so much that you forget how many times it’s replicated. Still, the main story packs enough twists and blockbuster set pieces that switch up the gameplay experience in meaningful ways.

What Outlaws isn’t though is being revolutionary. No, don’t expect stealth like Metal Gear. You’ll still be employing the same tactics you do in an Assassin’s Creed or Watch Dogs title, but that’s good enough for me. Using Nix to distract guards, turn off security systems, or set off explosives offers the same level of fun, and you’ll be doing that a lot as you infiltrate Imperial bases. I did fail a lot of infiltrations, partly due to poor planning and a detection system that alerts the entire base when caught.

The same goes for combat. While Kay’s blaster has three alternate fire modes to stun, shock, or eliminate enemies, I would’ve liked additional weapons. She can pick up enemy weapons, but can’t keep them on herself while platforming, and that’s disappointing. Speaking of platforming, you’ll be doing the same things you’ve done in all triple-A games — swing a grappling hook, climb across yellow-painted walls and ledges, and crawl through vents. Like most mechanics in the game, it’s serviceable.

What blew my mind away was the seamless space travel. Outlaws is what Starfield wishes it could be. Taking off from a planet’s spaceport through the stratosphere and beyond among the stars, using the hyperdrive to set a destination orbit, arriving in front of a meteoroid-filled nebula that you have to carefully navigate and then land on your destination planet, all without once opening a menu screen. It’s glorious.

I was also impressed by the mission and progression systems. While the main quest will have you hop across planets to put together the perfect heist crew, it’s the side missions that surprised me the most with how they unwind. What may start as a simple fetch quest turns into a giant infiltration mission, ending with a twist where you’ll have to choose between the factions you want to support. You unlock different rewards based on your standings with the syndicates, and they’re all out for each other’s blood.

The reputation system also affects exploration, as certain segments of the world will (attempt to) lock you out if you’re not in a certain syndicate’s good books. It’s a cool way to give players some agency, both in their role-playing adventures and difficulty. It’s not a static thing reserved for quests either, as your reputation can marginally increase or decrease based on your free-roaming actions. You may enter a syndicate-controlled area if you’re on good terms with its leader, but if you’re caught within the restricted premises inside the region, your reputation will go down a tiny bit.

Abilities also see a similar implementation, where players can determine how advanced a skill can become depending on how much of its pre-requisite requirements they have met. You could skip those side-quests and skill progression branches, but you’ll only make the game harder for yourself.

That’s not to say that everything’s perfect. Lip-sync and character animations in cutscenes have issues, instantly pulling you out of the story. A shallow, forced depth of field effect narrows down the scope of the world in every scene. The wanted system will lock down gameplay options like fast travel when you need to traverse great distances, and some minor bugs remind me that I’m playing a Ubisoft video game. My game also crashed a fair amount, and no amount of tinkering with the settings solved it.

Star Wars Outlaws PC Performance

Outlaws requires high-end PC hardware if you want to fully immerse yourself in its world, with some pretty forward-facing features including a heavy integration with ray tracing. I used the following PC for benchmarking the game, which offered stellar results in Ghost of Tsushima, Final Fantasy 16’s demo, and even Ubisoft’s Avatar:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
• GPU: Nvidia RTX 4080
• RAM: 32GB DDR4 3200 MHz
• Storage: WD SN850 M.2 SSD

Now, my system’s biggest bottleneck is its CPU, which is five years old at this point. Even after lowering the game’s settings, it’s easy to see very high CPU usage, so you’ll have to add around 20fps or so to our benchmark results if you’re using a more modern processor.

Unfortunately, Outlaws doesn’t include any in-game benchmark, and its open-world hubs have a lot of variety. I used the game’s heaviest areas like the densely populated Cantinas and marketplaces to test the game’s performance. It uses ray tracing for shadows and diffuse reflections mostly found in these places. With that said, here are the benchmark results I got:

It should be noted that these results were observed while exploring a densely populated area, and general gameplay in the exteriors is much smoother.

You’re going to rely a lot on image reconstruction and frame generation, although the latter had issues in the review period. I could get above 100fps during exploration and almost 200fps during space combat, but there were constant stutters. Nvidia’s RTX Direct Lighting also exhibited some issues, and the performance hit for a minor improvement to its visuals isn’t worth it.

Star Wars Outlaws Score & Verdict

Star Wars Outlaws is easily one of the best games in the franchise, offering us a familiar but delightful look at the underworld of the galaxy far, far away. Ubisoft Massive improves upon its open-world formula in various ways, maximizing the player’s immersion in this space fantasy with serviceable combat, exploration, and plenty of blockbuster set pieces.

Score: 9/10

Version tested: PC (Ubisoft Connect)

Star Wars Outlaws is available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S consoles.

Originally published in Men’s Journal on August 26, 2024.