Hands-on with Star Wars Outlaws – an impressively designed open world

Hearing the words ‘Ubisoft-developed open world Star Wars game’, it’s easy to roll your eyes and brush Star Wars Outlaws off as another bloated checklist-’em-up, but this time with space scoundrels instead of historic assassins or freedom fighters. It’s almost tempting to believe it, as who has time to juggle yet another space adventure?

The problem is, having gone hands-on with Star Wars Outlaws, I can assure you this is one worth burning the hyperfuel on. Whether you’re looking for your next cutting-edge open world to get lost in or are a diehard Star Wars multimedia spice-head, Outlaws is going to be impossible to ignore when it releases on 30th August for the best games consoles and PC.

Plus, Star Wars Outlaws is built on the excellent Snowdrop engine and developed by Massive Entertainment, that both excelled on Ubisoft’s previous open world for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, so it feels like we’re in safe hands. And we’ve already fallen in love with the Star Wars Outlaws’ option to tweak the cameras to replicate the original film’s cinematography.

Star Wars Outlaws: stealth game design

While Ubisoft landed its star cruisers in LA to showcase Star Wars Outlaws at its own event concurrent with Summer Game Fest, I managed to secure a transponder ID that granted us access to the game itself. There I got to play three distinct slices of the game, each showcasing Sta Wars Outlaws’ distinct mechanical pillars. I was left impressed by how well it blends telling the story of a dashing (if ill-equipped) scoundrel with the scale of a Ubisoft open world game to create what feels like an exciting take on the Star Wars galaxy.

First was a cinematic set-piece set within a decaying crashed starcruiser. Second was what felt like a core gameplay of stealth action mixed with cover shooting. And finally we played a sequence aboard an imperial cruiser which showcased the game’s ship combat and exploration.

Taking control of spunky Kay Vess (as played by Humberly González), along with her adorable alien meerkat companion Nix, our initial mission has us trying to retrieve a navigation system from an abandoned ship to repair our own.

The opening of this mission plays out as a rather linear platforming sequence not far off something you would see in Uncharted, as Kay clambers through a painstakingly detailed wrecked Republic cruiser. When bounty hunters catch up to us, there’s a tense chase cut off right as ND-5 (the trenchcoat-wearing droid) shows up to save Kay’s skin – and not for the last time, we bet.

It might not be a gaming revolution, but it proves a good introduction to the kind of cinematic set-pieces Ubisoft is keen to intersperse between Star Wars Outlaws’ more freeform open world sections. It’s a game based on a series of movies that’s all about bombastic action sequences, and looks to be living up to that.

But you’re not only going loud. As a thief, Kay knows the importance of flying under the radar when possible. Our next task has us infiltrating one of the game’s five criminal syndicates in order to steal a treasured artefact belonging to a rival gang, so we can build our relationship with its members.

Not only does going in quietly make pulling off the job easier, it allows us to maintain a healthier relationship with the gangsters we’re stealing from – how can they blame Kay for something going missing if she doesn’t get caught?

The game often prompts you to begin missions with a stealthy approach. Kay can perform the classic stealth knockout if she approaches enemies unseen, and her blaster is equipped with a stun shot that drops enemies in one hit – though it requires a lengthy cooldown once used. In addition to navigating sight-lines, we bypass security locks and hack computers – the former requiring a kind of rhythm-based lock-picking mini-game, and the latter a spin on Wordle, albeit with Star Wars’ Basic glyphs instead of English.

Star Wars Outlaws juggles its combat nicely

With the McGuffin pocketed, things get louder when we try to escape. Which does at least mean we can switch our blaster from its stun mode to something a little more destructive.
In normal firefights Kay’s blaster is capable of two types of fire: one that does damage to human and fleshy enemies, and the other more suited to taking down droids or disabling shields.

This isn’t a looter game – Kay’s blaster is Kay’s blaster – so you won’t be patting down bodies on the hunt for a legendary version with +0.2 Critical Hit Damage. Instead, upgrades and different configurations and firing patterns can be unlocked as you progress. For us, the settings meant that while our normal blaster shots fired single high-damage bolts, our anti-droid mode popped off a three-shot burst.

Fortunately, though, Kay’s hand isn’t fused to her blaster alone. When you fry an enemy, they’ll drop the weapon they were using, which you can pick up to blast away with until it’s out of ammo. Assault rifles, stormtrooper blasters, and sniper rifles – we found plenty to scavenge while playing. Pinned down by enemy fire with a tantalising weapon just out of reach? You can send Nix out to retrieve guns dropped in no-man’s-land.

Though you won’t often be locked down as there’s no rigid cover system here; instead shootouts encourage you to run-and-gun, freely sprinting and staying on the move as you crouch and slide to evade blaster bolts.

While this is Ubisoft’s first Star Wars game since 2006’s Lethal Alliance, inspiration has been taken from Star Wars titles released since – most noticeably, Star Wars Outlaws has a nearly identical healing mechanic to the one in EA’s Jedi: Fallen Order / Survivor games. The damage Kay takes reduces a health bar that doesn’t regenerate, but can be quickly healed with a tap of the D-pad to use a bacta stim pack.

Also like the Jedi games is the fact that the number of hits it takes to kill Kay isn’t very high. This, paired with excellent sound design (which sounds clunking and industrial in all the right original trilogy ways) gives combat a seriously dangerous edge that demands a bit of consideration before you decide to go loud. However, it does have to be said that in the in-progress build that we play this sense of danger was somewhat nullified by the sheer quantity of healing items we found lying around at every turn.

Everything comes together as we skip ahead in the story to find Kay aboard an Imperial starship. Not docked there by choice, she’s separated from her ship, the Trailblazer. Sneaking into the space-Nazi equivalent of an air traffic control room, I hack into the Imperial systems and clear her halted ship for take off. Far from simple, from there we have to hold out inside the wolf’s den as waves of stormtroopers… well, storm in – all while we wait for droids to get
our confiscated cargo back on board our ship.

It might sound simple, but what happens next takes my breath away: I board the Trailblazer and it flies out of the hangar and into space without a loading screen in sight. Still pursued by the Empire, we transition right into interstellar dogfighting as TIE fighters close-in. Gunning them down is intuitive enough – more complex Star Wars ship-fighting is out there – but a real thrill, especially in the context of moving seamlessly from one type of conflict to the next.

From there we soar to a nearby planet, where we get a prompt to land the Trailblazer. Fog masks the entry (as well as a brief, quick cut), but it’s incredibly snappy. It’s a grimy outpost – much of Outlaws explores the lawless Outer Rim of the series’ galaxy – but full of character. I even have enough time in my session to stumble on an in-universe arcade machine that features vector graphics and rail shooting – a nod towards the likes of Rez and Star Wars’ own arcade history dating back to the ’80sm (one of the best video games of the 1980s). It’s enough of a full circle to make Yoda grunt approvingly.

For all that Star Wars Outlaws features all the things you’d expect from a game set in this universe, and even some familiar Ubisoft hallmarks, it still feels decidedly like its own thing. That’s one of the greatest things about the series – beyond the movies, different developers, directors, artists, creatives, and viewpoints can play around in its sandbox and create something new, fresh, and exciting. And that’s exactly what Star Wars Outlaws promises with Kay’s adventure: something we’ve not seen before. It’s a big, vibrant galaxy, it’s far, far away, and it has a little something for everyone.

This article first appeared in Play Magazine. You can subscribe to the print edition, digital version, or save even more with the print/digital bundle – whatever you choose, you’ll be receiving an unprecedented trove of dedicated PlayStation coverage every month.