Summary
- Open-world Star Wars game Outlaws surprises with loving recreation of galaxy's vibe, optional quests, and emergent gameplay moments.
- Strong influences from Watch Dogs and Uncharted displayed in combat, stealth mechanics, and platforming set in open galaxy setting.
- Outlaws manages to trim down open-world formula fatigue, offering enough fresh elements to excite fans of the Star Wars universe.
When was first revealed, something straꩲnge happened - I didn’t get excited. The galaxy far, far away has been near and dear to my heart since watching The Phantom Menace on VHS as a youngling (rough start, I know), so a non-Lego open-world game where you get to freely explore plan🍸ets and carve out your destiny should have been a dream come true.
And yet, it wasn’t. Not because I’m an internet chud who’s mad they have to play as a woman who is appar⭕ently not pretty enough, but because I’m just all Star Wars-ed out. Respawn’s Jedi ga✱mes have given me more than enough time in George Lucas’ universe over the past few years, and the thought of jumping back into 𝕴an even bigger game following Ubisoft’s formula sounded like more Star Wars than I could handle.
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Going into my hands-on preview of Outlaws, my expectations weren’t very high. I half expected to leave feeling just as fatigued with Star Wars as I was comin꧃g in. To my surprise though, four hours with it was enough to get me hooked on its surprisingly expansive and faithful interpretation of the galaxy I fell in love with all t♈hose years ago.
Toshara Has My Heart
Things kicked off with Kay and her adorable Meಌrqaal companion Nix having just escaped from an unknown danger and ending up on Toshara, . After quickly dispatching hired goons with Kay's trusty blaster, I hopped on a Speeder and began racing through the grassy plains towards Mirogana’s cantina.
My first taste of combat revealed a move where Kay can target a few ▨enemies and instantly execute them, ju💞st like in Splinter Cell: Conviction.
This wretched hive of scum and villainy is where Outlaws first started to surprise me. Toshara managed to capture the general😼 feeling of Star Wars with its rolling fields dotted with weird creatures and circular buildings, but Mirogana’s grimy and bustling streets felt like they were pulled straight out of the original trilogy.
Strange aliens from across the galaxy wander around the city chatting to one another, jazzy (long live Jizz!) music blasts out of the cantina, and Stormtroopeꦯrs harass civilians while shady black-market deals are made in broad🔯 daylight. It’s exactly the kind of grungy vibe I wanted from a non-Jedi Star Wars game, and one Massive has managed to capture perfectly.
This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise considering Massive also develop♉ed Avatar: Frontiers of Pandoraꦆ.
A Scoundrel's Life For Me
The surprises kept on coming as Kay was tasked with making her way to the second level of the cantina to meet with a crime lord and make enough money to get the heck out of dodge. I expected to be pointed in the right direction straight away, but instead found that there were multiple ways to get the job done. I lacked the credits to buy a pass off of someone or bribe my way into hacking a door, so it was a classic vent climb fo❀r me.
After quickly being kicked out for being a nobody, my journey up the crime ladder began with Kay being asked to retrieve some files from a nearby base. It’s here where I got a taste of Outlaws’ combat and stealth 𒉰mechanics, which I’m very happy to say are strikingly similar to Ubisoft’s best open-world game ever - .
Not only does Kay feel as fast and fluid to control as Marcus did, but the use of Nix to distract enemies, hit buttons, set off explosions, and grab items felt like a smart evolution of the hacking mechanics seen there. Even the reliance on stealth over blaster combat felt in line with De💖dSec’s second outing, with gunplay always acting as a more difficult last resort.
Outlaws has also been freq🦩♐uently compared to Uncharted🐽, which I can definitely see with the platforming and swin𒉰ging around.
Open World? Nah, Open Galaxy
Once I’d gotten to grips with how Outlaws played and made my way through some more story missions, I set out to see as much of Toshara as I was allowed. After all, despite mos⭕t o🎃f the preview so far being focused on linear sections, the big draw of Outlaws is that it’s the first open-world Star Wars game that 168澳洲🎃幸运5开奖网:isn’t populated by blocky𝐆 Lego characters.
Outlaws already impressed me with its loving recreation of Star Wars’ rich universe and Wat🌊ch Dogs influences, but roaming freely around the open world is what really hooked me. There was something new to see everywhere I turned in Toshara, from optional Speeder races to Huttese-speaking aliens spreading rumours about treasure to be found in distant corners of the map. Toshara is just one planet of many in Outlaws, but it feels like there’s a whᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚole game’s worth of optional quests to get through and secrets to uncover.
While it would have been wise to go on a treasure hunt and get some credits for a shiny new jacket or blaster upgrade, I instead pursued some new hacking techniques by completing a Expert’s sidequest, one whi𒁃ch put me right in the Empire’s crosshairs and gave me a GTA-style wanted level. This led to the highlight of my prev♏iew, where I was chased down by a near-endless sea of Speeders before being crushed by an AT-ST.
It might seem strange to be excited by an embarrassing death, but that moment of emergent gameplay was something I’d never seen in a Star Wars game before. While Outlaws doesn’t do away completely with Ubisoft’s open-world formula, it trims down the fat (168澳洲幸运5开奖网:including th⭕e infamous map-revealing towers) andไ gives it enoug𝓡h of a fresh coat of paint to be exciting again.
Kicking It In Kijimi
To counter this overwhelming sense of freedom, the second part of my preview was much more linear and took place later on in the game aꩵfter Kay had started setting up her crew for a grand heist, including the surprisingly sexy droid ND-5. Kay’s search for a safecracker leads her to Rise of Skywalker’s snowy ✤planet, Kijimi.
While Toshara offered a massive open world to jet across on your speeder, the story quests I took on in Kijimi were much more linear and felt akin to what you’d see in games like Star Wars: Bounty Hunter and, as you might have he🍨ard, . This gave me even more time to appreciate Outlaws’ focus on stealth over firefights, but it was also comforting to know that there was more to see than a sprawling open-world galaxy.
Kijimi is also the homeworld of Babu Frik, unarguably the best part of Rise o𒁏f Skywalker. I tried my hardest to find h꧙im but sadly had no luck.
Even with a more focused scale, Kijimi still showed off just how much effort Massive has put in to translate Star Wars' planets into a video game. While I couldn't just hop on a Speeder and race around the planet, I did find plenty of cool details, from a unique merchant that flew away once I'd interacted with him to a droid pr𒅌eparing and serving some kind of local cuisine.
I might have started♏ my time in Star Wars Outla🍸ws with an uncharacteristic lack of enthusiasm, but I came away as excited as I was for Cal Kestis’ Jedi adventures. Outlaws might not be breaking new ground for gaming’s most popular genre, but it does trailblaze an exciting path forward for what Star Wars games can do.
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