Star Wars Outlaws

This game is pretty good! I'll admit, I went in with pretty low expectations, but I was pleasantly surprised by my time with Star Wars Outlaws.

I played this on my PS5.

At its core, it's a very familiar sort of game, for better or worse. It's an open-world Ubisoft game where you can choose to approach encounters stealthily or loud, and a lot of the hallmarks of their other games are present here. You have a creature you can use to ping the environment to (temporarily) see enemies through walls, you have a number of outposts placed throughout the map where enemies congregate, you have a GTA-style Wanted level; on paper this game is essentially just another "one of those".

The thing is, I feel like I need to defend this game because it got caught up in some culture-war nonsense that no game ever really deserves to be swept up in. Maybe it's just the contrarian in me, but when I see huge swathes of the Internet rallying against a thing for a dumb reason, there's a part of me that wants to see it for myself and form my own opinion on it, and in the case of this game I'm glad I did.

The game's not perfect, far from it, and a large part of that is due to the things I've already mentioned. It's a grab bag of mechanics you've no doubt seen before, the moment to moment gameplay may not seem all that noteworthy on a first look, and the stealth mechanics are pretty rudimentary, sure, but I found going in guns-blazing to most encounters was almost always a lot of fun. Blasters are firing everywhere but enemies are only sort of accurate, and in practice dodging stormtroopers' blaster bolts looks and sounds like, well, Star Wars.

You could argue that this is a crutch, that it's relying on a license to prop up an otherwise bland game, but there are some series that really do elevate the source material when used well. Star Wars is such a gargantuan thing at this point and a big reason this game works as well as it does for me is because of that brand attached to it.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this game's narrative was its characters. There's a decent number of supporting characters but, unfortunately, most of them were pretty one-note. No, I'm talking about the lead character Kay Vess and her partner, a droid named ND-5. Kay herself is a somewhat interesting character, and I'll get to her later, but for now I want to focus on ND. There are certain quirks to the Star Wars universe that this game runs with, and elements of its history that are in full display here.

Droids in Star Wars typically occupy a weird middle-ground between comic-relief, props, and something akin to pets, but ND-5 is maybe the closest I've seen to a droid feeling like a fully fleshed out character with his own motivations and internality. There are other droids like this, such as IG-11 from The Mandalorian or HK-47 from the KotOR games, but given how large Star Wars is it's always noteworthy to me when someone like this appears.

I also found him interesting because he represents a physical tie to the prequels. Those movies may not be great (even if the conversation around them has shifted somewhat in recent years) but the Prequel Era of Star Wars is hugely important and worth acknowledging (thanks to things like The Clone Wars). Having a battle droid as a prominent character in the time of the Original Trilogy helps sell that the two worlds are connected, that there's a continuity of history there.

Kay Vess, too, is also somewhat interesting character, though maybe less so than her droid companion. She's essentially another Han Solo-type rogue lying and cheating her way through the underworld but, well, that's an archetype that works for a reason. It's fun to watch a scrappy underdog wiggle their way out of messes and deal with people far more powerful than them, and she has an interesting perspective on the Rebellion too.

Star Wars has frequently dealt with characters who see themselves as outside the major conflicts of their time, characters like Hondo from The Clone Wars or, um, Benicio Del Toro in The Last Jedi, and I thought it was cool that they centered the story around someone who acts like that. She sees the Rebellion as a bunch of naive optimists fighting an unwinnable war and tells the Rebels this to their face when she interacts with them. It's a refreshing take on a setting that (usually) tries to paint its protagonists as people willing to die for their cause. It may not have the depth of something like Andor, but this game does put some thought into what makes its important characters tick.

That underworld I mentioned earlier is the other thing about this game that I found noteworthy. You see, there's a reputation system that's somewhat basic but surprisingly effective at communicating its intent. At the start of the game, you'll be at neutral standing with the game's four major factions, and every decision you make, early on at least, will raise one's opinion of you while lowering another's. Later on you'll be able to pretty easily raise your standing with any given faction if you're willing to grind side-missions for it, but  before the endgame you're constantly in this push-and-pull where some parts of the map will be hostile to you while others will be friendly.

The mechanics of this aren't too complex: essentially, at neutral or below enemies will shoot you on sight if you trespass, but if you have a positive rank with them you'll be able to visit their territory without triggering combat. There are additional wrinkles to this, like discounts (or price hikes) coming with positive or negative reputation, and enemy ambushes coming with the lowest rank, but what it all boils down to is a system that encourages you to work with these factions and one that often incentivizes you to doublecross your allies, and thus occasionally lower your standing with each. It's something that I'm not sure I'm explaining too well but it builds to is a system that, over the course of the game, shows how Kay is becoming a trusted member of the underworld. It's all really quite cool.

 I said this earlier, but this game isn't perfect. Maybe it's just another open-world game in a sea of other open-world games, but I think this is worth a second look if you passed it up initially. I had a very good time with it and you might too.