Star Wars Outlaws Review - Missing The Mark
Star Wars Outlaws shines in a few moments but fizzles out in too many others
On Akiva, Kay and Nix dig into a fruit that, when the chef cuts into it, bursts open with dozens of flies that had been growing inside it. What's unnerving to me happens to be a delicacy for Star Wars, as Kay lets Nix happily lap up the fluttering bugs while she leans in to begin nibbling the fruit. It's a very different scene from the food stand on Toshara, where I watched Kay and Nix gobble down roasted street corn. Both moments, however, are full of love, and looking back on them and the other food vendors in Star Wars Outlaws, I appreciate how they briefly delve into an aspect of Star Wars we've really never seen before: the street food scene. This is Outlaws' strength: the moments that give you a glimpse into what it's like to live in the Star Wars universe for those who aren't fighting a galactic civil war or training to become a space wizard. But they are so few and far between--for as much as Outlaws is a decent action game, it regularly delivers unsatisfying narrative payoffs and misses the mark when it comes to rewarding gameplay choices.
In Outlaws, you play as Kay Vess, an up-and-coming mercenary who finds herself becoming an outlaw after a job goes poorly and a high-stakes bounty called a death mark is placed on her. To escape the bounty, Kay finds herself thrust into the position of putting together a crew to break into the near-impenetrable vault of the man who wants her dead--without any money, he won't be able to pay for the bounty hunters on her tail. Her attempts to put together the perfect team take her across the Outer Rim of the galaxy, always accompanied by the latest in Star Wars' long procession of Weird Little Guys, the adorably axolotl-like Nix. In her adventures, Kay regularly comes into contact or conflict with four criminal organizations--the Pyke Syndicate, Crimson Dawn, the Hutt Cartel, and the Ashiga Clan--as well as the Rebel Alliance and Galactic Empire, the latter of which is hunting down the former following the events of The Empire Strikes Back.
Even ignoring the obvious shortcoming--Kay is yet another human protagonist in a sea of Star Wars games, movies, and TV shows that also feature a human protagonist--Kay is just not that interesting. A common narrative throughline for Outlaws is that Kay is aimless and doesn't know what she wants for her future, not even having any plans for how to spend the millions she'll have once her crew has stolen from the man who wants her dead. The other characters like to remind Kay about this a lot, which in turn acts as a frequent prompt to the player that you're embodying someone with no apparent aspirations or goals. That's a character who's hard to relate to and even harder to write for, as is evident by the lack of any clear arc to Kay's story. There are moments where the game seems to posit that the story has changed Kay, but there's no build-up to any of them and so they ultimately feel narratively confusing or sudden and unfulfilling. When the credits rolled, I wasn't convinced that Kay had actually undergone any sort of personal growth. The Kay at the end of the game largely talks and acts like the one at the beginning, save for an appreciation for her new teammates (and I'm still unclear as to why she likes them). And if the main character hasn't grown at all, then what were the past 30 hours of story for?
Typically, this wouldn't be too much of an issue for me. A lot of Star Wars games have bland protagonists with wonky character arcs (Cal Kestis in Fallen Order, for example, or Iden Versio in Battlefront 2) but these are offset with a deeply compelling or intriguing supporting character (Merrin in Fallen Order and Del Meeko in Battlefront 2). Outlaws doesn't have that crutch, as the supporting cast around Kay isn't all that interesting. BX-series droid commando ND-5--an initially cold robotic slave ordered to watch over Kay who warms up to her and becomes a friend by the story's conclusion--is a strong contender, especially given a late-game story development that almost (but doesn't quite) tilt Outlaws into a horror-like narrative space that could have been very interesting. But the way the game writes Kay and ND-5's relationship feels overly rushed. The story doesn't earn the two characters becoming partners, which is at the core of ND-5's arc.
The best part about Outlaws' story (and the game in general) is the sound design. Everyone who had a part in the creation of the musical score or the design of the sound effects used for the blasters, speeders, ships, or environmental murmurs deserves all the accolades. Outlaws sounds quintessentially Star Wars, beating out the gold standard of Respawn's Jedi games. The orchestral surge as Kay takes off into space and activates her ship's hyperdrive for the first time is sublime, and I was positively buzzing with adrenaline as the distinct hum of Kay's blaster cooling and Nix's excited squeals broke through the triumphant horns that signaled I had held my own against a truly staggering number of Imperial soldiers. Perfectly jumping off a ramp in a speeder to circumnavigate an Imperial roadblock rewarded me with an intense burst of speed that I swear I could feel in my bones as I heard Kay's speeder initially shudder from the impact before she pressed the throttle and the engine's normally comforting hum briefly escalated into a dangerous whir. For as many issues that I have with this game, there are twice as many moments where the music and sound effects briefly transported me into the world of Star Wars, and I haven't been that immersed in the franchise in decades. The music and sound design is superb.
That said, Outlaws positions itself as a lot of things and doesn't follow through on most of them. The story implies this will be a heist--grab the crew, make a plan, do the job--but there's very little of that. The gameplay points to Outlaws being a stealth game, as Kay has no Force powers or fancy body armor and relies on Nix to distract guards or security cameras, but she is so skilled with a blaster that unless you put the game on harder difficulties, she can quite handily mow through legions of Storm Troopers or criminal armies and forgo stealth entirely. The inclusion of a ship seems to indicate that space battles will be a pillar of the experience, but the ship handles poorly and space battles are an unexciting slog--barring a couple of mandatory moments, the game allows you to avoid space altogether, and that's for the better. And a relationship tracker that provides updates on Kay's fluctuating status with the four criminal syndicates indicates that who you have alliances with and animosity against impacts how Kay is perceived. But barring one unrewarding moment right at the end of the story, it doesn't. It affects which areas of the different hubs you can interact with and which outfits you unlock, but neither fundamentally affects the experience of playing the game. It's underwhelming how little Kay has a hand in influencing the four-way crime war at the center of the game's story, and it's irritating to watch your attempts at making big choices repeatedly deflate into unfulfilling narrative consequences.
For example, I opted to side with Crimson Dawn on every issue, regardless of morality, which kept Kay's relationship with them at Excellent and lowered both the Pykes and Hutts to Poor (the Ashiga surprisingly remained at Good despite no attempt on Kay's part to help them outside of one mandatory story mission that forces her to). And so Kay's relationship with Crimson Dawn was at the highest it could be by the time I reached Kijimi, a planet where the Crimson Dawn and Ashiga Clan are in conflict. Crimson Dawn leadership acted like they had no idea who I was, however. So in a final bid to try and have some sort of impact on the story, I made a drastic decision at the end of that particular arc. Leading up to the conclusion, the bombmaker that Kay had been trying to recruit told Kay that she'd join Kay's crew if Kay did the right thing and sided with the Ashiga. Other characters also told Kay how bad it would be for the Ashiga if Kay did not side with them, and how not doing that might destroy their clan from the inside out. I still chose Crimson Dawn anyway...and a fairly prominent character died. I was frothing with excitement--at last, here was a moment where my poor actions would have a consequence! But it didn't. The bombmaker joined my crew anyway. Kay had a two-minute meltdown about having a hand in someone dying and then dropped the subject, never to be brought up again. Crimson Dawn, meanwhile, never factored into the story after that, so my decision for Kay to blindly stay loyal to them had no impact.
In the end, completing optional assignments to boost Kay's favor with the various syndicates on the tracker is just there to give you more stuff to do. And if all you want is more, then you'll probably like aspects of Outlaws like the relationship tracker more than I did. But it's all so deflating how little impact that has on the game's story and gameplay. Outlaws is a beautiful game that sounds great and manages to capture these delightful moments of one person enjoying the smaller elements of the multitude of cultures in Star Wars, but then the gameplay and story fall short when it comes to differentiating the four criminal enterprises that define much of Kay's adventure. Their soldiers all fight pretty much the same, their bases contain vendors that sell similar items, and their bosses all initially regard Kay with a cool indifference that usually softens into a more "You're alright kid" vibe as the story goes on. Your experience playing Outlaws is virtually the same no matter who you support or betray, leaving those choices feeling hollow and narratively unsatisfying.
Combat, at least, is more exciting, and when combat breaks out, Kay is a capable gunslinger. Armed with a blaster that can deftly switch between four distinct shots on the fly (stun blast, standard fire, electrified shots, and a powerful blast), Kay can react to pretty much any situation in front of her. Nix can be commanded to fetch the fallen firearms in the midst of a fight, letting Kay temporarily wield more powerful rifles, snipers, and grenade launchers too. And when Kay has done enough cool stuff in a row (stealth takedowns, successful kills, things like that), she can build up enough adrenaline to unleash a special move during which time briefly slows and she can mark off several targets to take out in a split second.
Kay handles just fine, no less agile than the frontrunners in other action-adventure games like Tomb Raider's Lara Croft or Horizon Zero Dawn's Aloy. But Kay can handle most threats by staying in place and keeping behind cover. Unless you put Outlaws on a harder difficulty, firefights are only a passing challenge. They take more brain power than stealth encounters (which we'll touch on in a bit) because you have to react more quickly, but the enemy AI isn't very smart--often I could just wait behind cover and let the enemies blindly charge me, making them easy targets. These fights are cheap easy thrills--there's nothing groundbreaking about Outlaws' combat mechanics, but they aren't bad by any means either.
The main crux of Outlaws gameplay, however, is stealth encounters. Kay regularly has to sneak inside somewhere to find someone or something or escape an enemy base without being seen. The gameplay is fine. Kay can direct Nix to distract guards or cameras or use takedowns or the stun setting on her blaster to silently knock out enemies. There's even grass for her to hide in and whistle from to attract the hapless guards, akin to Assassin's Creed, and air ducts to crawl through.
It all works as intended, but there's not much that feels rewarding in it. The enemy AI is egregiously dumb, returning to normal patrol patterns after investigating disturbances for only a few moments or falling for the same distraction over and over. Lots of enemies in these missions stand still facing a computer (making them easy to sneak up on) or patrol in mapped patterns (making them easy to predict). The experience feels less like solving a puzzle, and more like being told an obvious solution. Is that a camera? Send Nix to distract. Are those two guards patrolling close to bushes? Hide and whistle them over one at a time to take them out. No way to reach the guard on the far-off platform? Wait for the stun gun to recharge and then take him out from a distance. The order of operations changes from mission to mission, but the solutions to each step of the stealth encounters rarely change, making it feel unrewarding to "figure them out." You don't have to think critically or strategically to get through them.
I say "rarely changes" because there are two adjustments Outlaws makes in the final hours of the game that break the established flow and force you to think about how to move forward. The first is a one-and-done experience where Kay has to go through a story mission without Nix, removing the ability to distract from a distance. That was fun, but it didn't last as Outlaws promptly returned to its normal gameplay format. The other change is more substantial, however. Near the end of the game's story, Kay gets into more encounters where being detected is an instant fail state, meaning you can't just blast everyone away if you fail to stay hidden (unless you are exceptionally quick on the draw). In addition to that, more heavy enemies are introduced. These foes cannot be stun-gunned down, nor can Kay do a silent takedown on them without grabbing an optional upgrade. And, if alerted to Kay's presence, their big healthbars make them hard to take down, allowing them to overwhelm and easily stop Kay before she can prevent anyone from reaching the alarm.
The more regular inclusion of these enemies do a great job of showcasing what Outlaws could have been, where Kay can't easily take out everyone in a room and is a lone woman against very high odds. The enemies are still pretty dumb in these instances and the path forward is still linear, but there's an underlying tension to these encounters that doesn't exist earlier on because sometimes the obvious answer forward is one you don't have. The game might be saying, "This is where you stealth takedown this enemy and stun blast the other," but if both are heavies that are immune to both options, then you have to be a little creative in how to get past them. I really enjoyed the stealth encounters in the final 10 hours of Outlaws because of that. However, my enjoyment waned once I went to unlock the optional upgrade that allowed Kay to silently take down these high-endurance targets. Once that was done, the stealth encounters became a cakewalk again. In hindsight, I shouldn't have done it.
I don't regret the effort I put into unlocking the ability, however. Outlaws does not have a traditional skill tree where Kay unlocks new abilities by earning points. Instead, Kay can hear rumors about Experts hidden in the world and then, using those clues, track these people down to wherever they're hiding on one of the various planets. After befriending these Experts, they'll clue Kay in to challenges she can complete for them--killing enemies in a certain way, for instance, or finding a particular item--and upon doing so, Kay unlocks additional abilities and upgrades that add more options to her toolbelt. Proving that she's adaptable enough to take down threats after distracting them lets Kay unlock the Merchant's ability to fast-talk enemies who spot her so they hesitate before shooting her or sounding the alarm, for example, and completing a challenge for the Mechanic can give Kay access to smoke bombs to break line of sight.
These challenges add a degree of optional complexity to Outlaws' gameplay, introducing small goals that you can keep in the back of your mind while in the midst of a firefight or slinking through a restricted area. Save for the handful the story forces you to unlock, none of these additional abilities are mandatory for beating the game, but completing the challenges to unlock them introduces entertaining tests of skill. They can also lead you to gorgeous vistas and secret wonders that hide the components an Expert sometimes tells you that you need to nab. These tasks aren't narratively rewarding, but their inclusion does improve the gameplay by encouraging you to mix things up a little throughout the 30-hour runtime.
Going off the beaten path to complete these challenges also helps you see more of Outlaws' handful of worlds. Save for Kijimi (which is mostly just one hub), each of the planets is a collection of hub spaces connected by an open-world. Kay is free to explore these spaces at her leisure, though the story is written in a way that really only affords that agency on Toshara, the second planet and where Kay's adventure truly begins. Once you leave Toshara, the story keeps ramping up and it's repeatedly implied that Kay is running out of time to clear her name. This is all arbitrary, of course, and you have as much time as you want to, but I found myself engaging with the side content and exploring the open worlds less and less as the game progressed and the narrative tension continued to ramp up. Thankfully, it's still all there once the credits roll, so if a particular side quest interests you but the game pressured you (like me) into feeling like you didn't have time for it, it will still be waiting for you once Kay's adventure wraps up.
Still, it's a weird clash. As Kay walks around hubs, random characters will call out to her and ask for her help, brokers that Kay has befriended will send her messages about possible jobs, Kay will overhear chatter about a hidden cache of treasure or a secret gambling parlor where bigshots bet huge amounts of money, and Kay can really only make strides in the syndicate relationship tracker by completing side quests for people. And yet, the game's main story heavily implies that Kay does not have time to deal with these people. It feels like the game is offering a lot to do but also telling you that you don't have time to do it.
Which is a shame, because some of the optional quests offer stronger gameplay experiences than the main story missions. Whereas most of Kay's misadventures in the story are linear, quite a few of the side quests are more open-ended. For example, infiltrating Imperial bases to steal away intel oftentimes offer multiple means of entry and a handful of pathways through the space, letting the stealth mechanics shine a little brighter in actual puzzles that you have to put some thought into solving--the normally repetitive rhythm-based lockpicking minigame temporarily acquired a degree of unnerving pressure when I opted to do it while Nix was distracting a camera and I could hear Storm Troopers I had failed to detect earlier slowly approaching down the hall. I kept having Kay look over her shoulder to see how much my window was closing and wondering why I had opted for this strategy instead of finding a way to reach the power generator that would have shut off security systems like the cameras first. Juggling multiple threats and doing so with a bit of time crunch? Where were these thrills in the main story campaign?
To get around these open-worlds, Kay has two main means of transportation: a speeder and her ship, the Trailblazer. I'm a much bigger fan of the former. Though initially unwieldy and difficult to control, Kay's speeder can be upgraded with all manner of parts that make it more nimble and increase its maneuverability, helping Kay speed through Outlaws' handful of open-worlds at entertainingly breakneck speeds. It's designed to make the trek between point A and point B faster and more thrilling, and in both goals, it succeeds.
I'm colder on the Trailblazer. Aesthetically, it's a remarkable ship--one of my new favorites for the Star Wars universe--and using it to take off from and land on planets is exciting given the accompanying orchestral swell. But in the vacuum of space, the Trailblazer doesn't handle all that well, even after you upgrade it. Dogfights are either frustrating encounters against more nimble starfighters or boring slogs against equally slow cargo ships. And space in Outlaws isn't pretty. Star Wars has had some beautiful space environments but those haven't made their way into Outlaws. In comparison to the lush and verdant jungles of Akiva or the ever-constant and frigid snowfall of Kijimi, Outlaws' space environments lack much in the way of character. There are differences in their layout, but they don't convey much variety in terms of appearance to entice you to explore them.
Thankfully, like I said before, you can skip most of space. Save for two or three mandatory space battles and missions in the main story, you never have to spend any time among the stars. The Trailblazer is fast enough to outrun anyone who might want to fight you, so getting close enough to a planet to land on it is a cinch. And once you return to space, you can launch the hyperdrive immediately and bypass everything to get straight to your next destination. That said, given how weak the space part of the game is, it was a bad decision to make a space battle the penultimate moment of the story and the major final fight. It robs much of the narrative momentum from Outlaws' final moments with the game's worst gameplay.
There are so many little moments in Outlaws that I love. However, the unexciting space combat and unrewarding syndicate-relationship tracker don't add anything meaningful to the experience. And neither does Kay, who feels like a protagonist without a meaty narrative arc. The game has some successes when it comes to gunslinging or sneaking--both of which are aided by a superb soundtrack and incredible sound design--but Outlaws does too much of what it does poorly, and too little of what it does well.
This story originally appeared on: GameSpot - Author:UK GAG
