Despite being a blatant mix of all things Ubisoft, Star Wars Outlaws feels like a proper Star Wars adventure
A New Hope?
Aside from a blue paint job and some migraine inducing Na'vi Senses, last year's movie tie-in, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora was a Far Cry game in all but name. It's a typical Ubisoft move to repurpose portions of an existing product that has already proven popular with their audience, but in the case of Avatar, the final result failed to set the metaphorical Home Tree on fire (sorry, too soon?).
I think part of why Avatar's players burnt out so quickly (sorry again), was that it was basically just Far Cry but made worse with the addition of a bunch of Avatar gubbins. In the case of Star Wars Outlaws however, Ubisoft hasn't just picked one singular game to rework. Here, its plucked all the best bits from across its biggest franchises and created this melting pot of familiar gameplay elements. These elements are instantly recognisable when you see them one-by-one, sure, but they all come together as a whole to create a proper Star Wars-y feeling adventure.
When our dashing Deputy Editor, Chris Tapsell went hands-on with Star Wars Outlaws in June, he came away underwhelmed by the dated gameplay he'd experienced during the trio of linear missions he'd been given to play. As if countering that preview with a big, 'well check this out then', Ubisoft invited me along to a four-hour preview session that featured a big chunk of open-world action instead, where player were let off the leash to explore as they saw fit.
The main planet we were given access to was Toshara, a simple farming world filled with large open plains that were very fun to zoom across on a speederbike. These plains were punctuated with small settlements full of NPCs, a couple of mission-givers here and there, and also a large, bustling city called Mirogana that was built inside of a mountain. It was the definition of 'a wretched hive of scum a villany', containing a gaggle of gangs and plenty of civilians and imperial troops. But crucially it was also a beautifully realised area, full of visual details that gave it that classic 'used future' aesthetic. Honestly, the props in this game are wonderful, especially those for the food.
The interior of Mirogana is where I spent the majority of my time during the Toshara portion of the demo. When I wasn't being distracted by playable arcade machines (massive missed opportunity not making the old 1983 Star Wars arcade game playable in these if I'm being honest) or gambling on Canto Fathier horse races, I was following the main story mission, which was to repair a ship called the Trailblazer so Kay could get off-world. These mission are where the afformentioned Ubisoft elements were really noticeable, especially the Assassin's Creed-style stealthing that saw me hiding a crouched Kay in tall grass as security cameras or patrolling guards passed by.
Then there's Nix, Kay's pet cat/dog/axolotl thing. When boiled down to his gameplay components, Nix, who you can send to do things like distract enemies, sabotage items or activate buttons and switches, is basically your mobile phone from the Watch (underscore) Dogs games. The only exception here is that Nix can also fetch items or guns for you - well, that and you can also pet Nix if you want, which is definitely something you can't do to the phone in Watch Dogs.
I utilised all of these gameplay elements, along with a bit of Uncharted-style climbing action to infiltrate an out of bounds area that belonged to the Pyke Syndicate, and it was here that the classic Far Cry outpost takedown loop began. First up I used binoculars to mark enemies, then I stealthed my way around that area, taking the enemies out before one of them set off an alarm which brought reinforcements running. It's all so predictable if you've played more than a handful of Ubisoft games before but, at the same time, I found myself getting pretty into it all. It felt both new and familar at the same time and while I can see this figuratively copy-and-pasted gameplay being tiresome to a lot of folk, to me it felt like getting a comfy pair of Star Wars brand slippers for Christmas.
While I did spend the majority of my time inside Mirogana, following the main story mission, I did manage to try a little bit of open-worlding. Outside of the city, Kay can call in a speederbike with the press of a button and use it to bomb around from settlement to settlement following waypoints for both main and side missions. It's a fairly busy area, with NPCs that will occasionally call out to you asking for help, but in terms of open-worlds, Toshara did feel rather small. There's plenty of that emergent and unexpected silliness that you'd expect from an open-world Ubisoft game; I kept being run over by careless speederbike riders for instance. Rather than featuring some massive maps on a couple of Star Wars planets, this definitely feels like a game that will offer you plenty of planets to land on, but those will house much smaller open areas that act as 'tasters' of the world you're on.
I also got to try out a little bit of space flight, and very much appreciated the 'press the thumbsticks to Punch It' pop-up on screen before the inveitable jump to hyperspace. The actual space flight did feel a bit lackluster though, with some limp dog fights and cargo collecting missions punctuating the journey from waypoint to distant waypoint.
The final section I got to try was set on the planet Kijimi, a wintery location with a dense collection of streets that's home to the Ashiga Clan. Unfortunately I didn't get to explore much of this area, as I was held back from progressing through the story by my only real critism about the game: its wildly inconsistent checkpointing. During this section, I had to sneak into an area full of guards that would give me an instant game over screen if they spotted me. However, to get into that area initially, I had to first take part in a lenghty and rather boring lockpicking mini game that I then had to redo every. single. time. that I failed the mission. I found out after the fact that you can actually turn off those lock picking mini games in the accessibility options, which is something that would have saved me a lot of frustration at the time. Either way, here's hoping Ubisoft has time to tinker with the checkpoints a bit before release, because up until then I didn't really have many complaints.
Star Wars Outlaws may not end up being a brilliant, original game that ends up at the top of a lot of people's game of the year lists, but I tell you what: from the 4 hours that I played, I can tell it is absolutely the type of Ubisoft game that I'll get fully absorbed in. It's not quite the Star Wars GTA that a lot of people were hoping for, but if you're after a familiar, inoffensive bit of Star Wars, I don't think this one will miss the mark.