Star Wars Outlaws is the most Star Wars a Star Wars game has been since Star Wars Galaxies

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(Image credit: Ubisoft)

Kay chilling out on a broken speeder

The Disney era of Star Wars has made it very easy to dunk on the galaxy far, far away, but Star Wars has still inspired aheck of a lot of great games. Few of them, however, have truly made me feel like I’m inhabiting the galaxy of the original trilogy.

Dark Forces was an amazing Doom clone full of Star Warsy-looking corridors. TIE Fighter brought the dogfights to life. KOTOR 2 was an impressive, philosophical dissection of the Force. The greats all adapt and explore specific slices. But only Star Wars Galaxies (RIP) dropped me in the setting of the films and just let me soak it all in. Until Outlaws.

Jedi light

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

Kay on her speeder

Kay Vess lives in a galaxy where there’s only a faint glimmer of hope and no magic. She’s a scoundrel making do—hitting up cantinas and hanging out with ne’er do wells. The wide open spaces she races through on her speeder are majestic and full of tourist-trap vistas, but the cities are dirty, busy, lived-in places where every nook and cranny builds this tangible sense of place. A real place.

Outlaws has a grounded vibe that I think a lot of adaptations forget the original trilogy also boasted—especially A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. Back then, using the Force meant being able to jump super high and choke a subordinate. Mostly, they were films about a likeable group of buds getting into scrapes. Spin-offs, sequels and prequels have tried to make Star Wars more high falutin, and I feel like a lot of us fans have been only too happy to buy into that, as if to justify the importance we place on the series. And that’s fine! Star Wars can and should be more than one thing. But god do I crave the simplicity of the classics.

Ubisoft and Massive Entertainment have captured all the fun, the japes, the cheekiness, and in doing so have given us something that feels pure Star Wars in the best possible way. It’s charming and silly and isn’t putting on airs—a roguish romp where you can punch stormtroopers and piss off crime bosses.

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(Image credit: Ubisoft)

A group of sabacc players

Coming from a stint in Jedi Survivor, I appreciate Outlaws so much more. Respawn’s soulslike series is pretty good. The lightsaber fights are rad, the little robot is cute, and they look inoffensively nice, if utterly forgettable. But holy shit are theyboring.Boring people having boring conversations in boring places. They desperately want me to care about the stakes, but I just could not give a toss. And my god, they’re so bloody serious. You’ve got a lightsaber and magic powers, Cal—at least try to have a laugh, mate.

Survivor in particular feels like it’s going through a Star Wars checklist—Cantina hangouts, Darth Vader duels, Force puzzles, Separatist droids, Stormtroopers, dark side temptations—but it’s all for naught when the bulk of the game just sees you jumping around in the wilderness as some sad ginger lad. The Star Wars stuff feels like set dressing rather than something the game truly embraces. In the end both games are perfectly enjoyable, but they’re bad Star Wars games.

Going rogue

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

Kay watching a band in Canto Bight

I’ve seen some criticisms about the worlds being empty and Massive not making the most of the vast spaces, but I’ve found the opposite to be true. If you’re focused more on the proper quests, I can see how the planets might seem a bit sparse, but I’ve been taking my time to look for opportunities, listening in on conversations or browsing misplaced datapads, leaving me with a long list of optional objectives. Whenever I hop on my speeder, I have lots of potential distractions gently tugging me in different directions—it’s just that they’re not always clearly displayed on the map. Thus, I find myself setting off on proper adventures rather than being dragged to specific destinations to just go through the motions.

Really, though, I would have put up with a lot of Ubisoft’s usual bloat if it meant getting to experience Outlaws' commitment to and love of the setting. Like the movies themselves, it has a transportative power, kicking me back a few decades to an era when I could enjoy Star Wars without a hint of cynicism.

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Going rogue