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I’m almost certain that I pitched Star Wars Outlaws to my mate Manky Kev when we were about 14. “All the Star Wars games are about Jedis or fighter pilots, the most boring bastards in the whole saga”, I definitely said, with the eloquence of a me three times my age. “You want a game where you get to be a baddie, but a good baddie, not a Sith, and it’s open world like GTA. And you’re Han Solo but before he started hanging around with Jedis and fighter pilots.”
I remember this really vividly. Manky Kev threatened to kick my head in if I came out with any more Star Wars patter and the idea was lost to time. Except, apparently, someone at Ubisoft pinched it from me and every other 90s teenager who liked Star Wars and GTA and wanted them smooshed together.
And yeah, after decades of shifting player tastes, genre convergence, and the general rise of Ubisoft’s Open World Formula™, comparing this decidedly Watch_Dogsy take on Disney’s 24th Acquisition to GTA might come off as a bit Boss Baby. You can’t even steal other people’s speeders. I checked, there isn’t even a prompt. Ubisoft are very serious about making you engage with the speed bike upgrade system, to the point where a techy-minded career criminal like Kay Vess would canonically rather pay legitimately for a better vehicle than just, y’know, pinch one.
But you can freely explore (some large walled off sections of) the Star Wars galaxy in your trusty ship. Do a big heist, and cleanse your palate with a few petty thefts. Get involved in personal NPC side-stories about wee guys with gambling problems. Play arcade games in a pub. Betray a local big cheese. Getting to the bustling hubs in which you do these things is subject to much of the same rules of traversal that govern GTA: there are vast open roads to enjoy, but other people use them. Sometimes they’re the cops, or whatever passes for authority in that particular region of the galaxy, and you’ve got a wanted level.
Big space highways to far flung places are – in at least one instance we’re aware of – locked behind story gates. Your access to entire city districts depends on your loyalty to its controlling faction. You rise up the criminal ranks working for various mobs, a journey punctuated by cutscenes whose director loves whatever the Du Jour TV drama is of the time, that are shot through with enough silly humour that you can almost forget what a horrid bunch of arseholes everyone is. Yes, it’s Ubi, and yes, it’s clear that the bulk of Outlaws’ DNA comes from stablemates Assassin’s Creed and Watch_Dogs, but if you wanted a pithy summary, “Grand Theft Andor” is honestly as good as any.
While it’s well-worn territory at this point (though arguably never properly followed through on), a huge part of Outlaws’ appeal is its bold lack of lightsaber action. This isn’t about lads in robes battling across the eons for the freedom or subjugation of civilisation according to their ostensibly incompatible but often indistinguishable ways (hmm), it’s about the kind of people who have to live in a place like the Star Wars galaxy without a high midichlorian count, or Skywalker as their surname. In short; people whose lives suck, but would suck a whole lot more if they were straight.
Kay Vess, and her wee lizard dog thing Nix, are not the sorts of people who are likely to ever see or hear a lightsaber extending. If Ubisoft makes good on the core appeal of the pitch here, they won’t. Or, if they do, it’ll be one time only, and it will scare them half to death. As it would. As it should. In the same way your average pickpocket working Dundee’s high street isn’t ever likely to feel the launch thrust of a £3,000,000 cruise missile, or know what buttons make one work.
While they’re more akin to Han and Chewie than they are to Luke and Leia, Kay and Vix never get tired of sneaking around. The Ubi-ness of the minute-to-minute gameplay is at its most prevalent in enemy camps. Obviously. You have the usual options: sneaky sneaky (good player), all-guns-blazing (idiot player, just a complete moron, how do they even get dressed in the morning), or the secret third way where you start with stealthy (good) intentions and then abandon them because the game is bad or you’re crap at it and missed something.
Nix, your wee dog, fills in for Watch_Dogs 2’s drones and gadgets, and Assassin’s Creed’s Eagle Vision. He can be sent to open doors, he can distract baddies, or he can give you a headache that makes important things glow. But unlike the Ubisoft tropes he’s filling in for, he’s a cute little baby and I want to cuddle him and give him treats.
And that’s it. Really. Star Wars Outlaws is Ubisoft’s take on Star Wars. You already know, instinctively, whether it’s your cup of blue milk or not. But I can offer this, by way of additional insight: Outlaws was barely registering as a blip on the release schedule in my mind before this hands-on session. I didn’t think it would be bad, necessarily, but the prospect didn’t feel exciting. Perhaps because it represents a nexus of franchise fatigue – Ubisoft’s much maligned open world template being applied to a media property that has, in recent years, gone into production overdrive with wildly varying results. Whatever the reason, that’s where we were.
But Now? I’m excited. I can’t wait to get properly stuck in. The small vertical slices we played (two distinct environments, a mixture of urban and open area gameplay, a light smattering of space combat, and one hyperspace jump) certainly looked and felt like the Star Wars game of my childhood dreams, and that is the lasting impression which has cut through my literal decades of tempered expectation. It remains to be seen if it will turn out to be a monkey’s paw. We will, as ever, reserve proper judgement until review.
Star Wars Outlaws launches August 30 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.