Star Wars Outlaws hands-on impressions reveal the game’s true scale

When you come across Stormtroopers frisking people at a checkpoint, which happens during the first 30 minutes of my four-hour hands-on, Kay buries her hands in her pockets and glances around nervously. She knows there’s little chance against them in a firefight. 

Similarly, when Kay uses a comlink to communicate during combat, you’ll note rising panic in her voice. It’s a big galaxy, and you’re at the bottom. Rather than resulting in a lack of agency, however, this makes the diverse settings of Star Wars Outlaws more immersive. 

For instance, while exploring the snowy castle walls of Kijimi, I come across a shopkeeper having issues with the local cartel. They’re demanding a cut of his profits in return for not smashing the place up. As a regularly-powered human rather than a super-powered Jedi, all I’m equipped to do is extend my sympathies and pledge my custom, which earns a discount at his shop. It’s a window into the struggles of ordinary civilians.

Later, I sit on a bench and overhear people talking about side hustles that will curry favor with a local syndicate. Following their lead, I descend into a seedy bar heaving with weird-looking aliens betting over a race shown on a holographic display. 

Deviating from my task, I pump a few credits into the terminal and watch the race unfold, coming away with double my money. It feels good not to have the entire fate of the galaxy relying on my heroics. Later I even kill time on a retro arcade machine.

Equipment-wise you’re relying on nothing more than a small blaster and a few hacking tools. In fact, if Kay was to try and handle a lightsaber, she’d probably drop it on the floor and slice through her own foot. So, how does combat avoid getting repetitive? That’s where Nix comes in.

He’s a multi-tool in furry form, a cute cross between a cat and a ferret able to perform tasks. By holding LB, you’ll highlight interactive spots in the environment like in Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs series, and there’s an impressive number of them. 

Nix can drop hanging pots on enemy heads, trigger fuel canisters to explode, disable alarms, steal weapons from holsters, remove pins from grenades, pause spinning fan blades so you can duck under them, and, best of all, distract guards with a little dance. In fact, there are so many options it’s a little messy in the heat of the moment. 

Thankfully, when it gets loud, combat is impactful. Laser blasts thump home with satisfaction, and there’s a skill that lets you target-paint multiple foes and take them out simultaneously. That move aside, fighting is more scrappy than flashy; a desperate, last-ditch attempt at survival when stealth fails. It’s fun in short bursts but not hugely substantial. That’s something Ubisoft itself seems to recognize, because sometimes failing a stealth section triggers an instant game-over.

Instead, exploration is the game’s highlight: entering a bar and finding you can select the songs on a jukebox; hacking into a locked chest and looting a blaster mod; meeting a strange alien that lives in a jar and sounds like Javier Bardem.

There’s fresh insight around every corner. For example, on the arid, canyon-torn Toshara, I overhear an Imperial brag about their friend who apparently shot down six X-Wings in a single dogfight. Meanwhile, sneaking down a corridor on an Imperial fuel station in orbit above the Toshara, I hear a Stormtrooper recount his personal experience serving in the battle of Hoth. These incidental moments make the world a joy to explore. 

And that’s just the tightly designed interiors (which, by the way, are in sore need of some kind of waypoint system). You can also take your speeder bike and explore miles upon miles of beautiful open terrain. 

Going off the beaten track rewards you with any number of perks, including new paint schemes for your speeder, accessories for your ship the Trailblazer, coats, trousers, charms, and more. You’ll also find ‘fixers’ – secret characters who’ll boost your skills. 

Bram the bartender, for example, unlocks a new fighting combo called ‘cantina brawling’, and gives you the ability to distract alerted enemies by clicking in the left stick to ‘fast-talk’. These perks are usually in exchange for crafting resources or completing tasks, like performing a takedown on an Imperial officer. There are untold secrets to unearth, and most of them feel meaningful. 

And that goes for space, too. When flying towards a planet, I find an icon pointing me to a secret cache of hidden treasure in the middle of an asteroid field. My HUD tells me it’s 7 km away, which in itself is novel. That’s a vast chunk of freely traversable space for a Star Wars game, even if there’s, admittedly, not a whole lot to do in space between here and there. 

Emergent gameplay is less impressive. During the open scene when bandits give chase on speeders down a shallow creek, collisions are clumsy and reveal some spotty physics. There aren’t that many unique anecdotes you can create when your character is incapable of violence towards innocents. They’re allowed to hurt you though. Stand in the road and you’ll get run over.

The open world feels like it’s big in order to hide things, rather than a place encouraging experimentation. But when you’re riding your speeder across an open expanse as the sun sets, or peering out from a clifftop landing pad across miles and miles of alien countryside, it’s thrilling enough just to be there rather than test its limitations. 

With its sprawling sandbox world filled with surprises, Star Wars Outlaws promises to keep you busy for ages once it launches on August 30, 2024. As well as releasing on PC and console, Star Wars Outlaws will come to GeForce NOW, and feature DLSS 3.