Star Wars Outlaws is a Surprisingly Enjoyable Journey With Glaring Flaws
The Need for a Good Star Wars Game and how inconsistent Outlaws is with it's fun.
*Spoilers for Star Wars Jedi Survivor*
Earlier this year I desperately wanted to have a positive Star Wars gaming experience. A few years ago I played Fallen Order and while the gameplay was good, the story did not connect with me at all. I didn't care about the characters, I didn't care about the upgrades, I didn't care about the overarching story. It just fell flat. So with my desire to have a positive Star Wars gaming experience I decided to replay KotOR 2. I initially intended to replay 1 but I had issues getting it set up and just didn't want to put in the time.
For reference, the original Knights of the Old Republic was my favorite game ever for a long long time. I remember playing it back in the 2000s on my families pre-built Dell PC. It was difficult and so I had consistent frustration with the Undercity. Those rakghouls kicked my ass. Meanwhile, the second game was also really enjoyable, and I didn't hit the same wall as the Undercity in the sequels' opening planet, Telos, so I was able to play it without as much instant frustration. I actually ended up finishing the second game before I finished the first all because of those rakghouls.
Now after all this time, I was hoping that KotOR 2 would give me the experience I craved. But it didn't. Far from it, I was constantly annoyed with the core combat. This was in the 2000s when people were still porting over tabletop-like rules with die roles and such. A novel concept that, in some genres and perspectives, has worked wonderfully. But here in KotOR 2, and indeed the original, it did not work wonderfully. The game is an RPG and has the perspective of more of an action game, something akin to future Bioware game Mass Effect. But unlike the future Mass Effect games, this game had you be able to miss even when your character obviously hit your target. I have to say, there is nothing more unsatisfying than going through combat and having action after action after action miss all because of some bad luck and then to have all of your enemies attacks hit because of more bad luck and end up dying in a puddle of frustrated tears. Put simply, a die roll to see if your character missed in this perspective, was fucking shit.
So here in 2024, I felt like I was having my teeth ripped out trying to enjoy the game. The story in KotOR 2 is fantastic, besides the very abrupt ending. I enjoyed it thoroughly back in the day and I enjoyed it just as much now. But nothing could fix the terrible terrible combat system. In ttrpg games, you have a die roll that determines if you hit and you have your bonuses and such, just like here in KotOR 2. But in a ttrpg you also have a real person behind the scenes who's supposed to be on your side. I'm a DM, and as a DM I can fudge rolls depending on the flow of the game, even though that's controversial in the ttrpg community, because the game is supposed to be fun and my players shouldn't be getting super frustrated playing it. But here in KotOR 2, the computer is not on your side. The computer will not fudge rolls, if you have bad luck then too bad, I hope you saved recently otherwise you're SOL. This just ended up with the same thing I talked about in my Dragon Age post, having my teammates die and then me having to run around in a circle and intermittently attacking after my teammates had perished. Except here, the attacks wouldn't necessarily even hit, which just made me cheat so I could rely on my force powers more.
The story still provided the most depth of a Star Wars story out there and made me even more interested than when I played it when I was a kid as I could now understand larger concepts like moral grey areas and how even people with the best intentions can make mistakes. Kreia was still the best written villain is Star Wars gaming history and provided philosophical ideas that I didn't experience outside of the game until college. But despite the story having depth, the combat was still infuriating, so I sadly didn't get my satisfying Star Wars gaming experience.
Then back in July I played Jedi Survivor. It had the same gameplay as the first, a rather satisfying feeling of being a Jedi even if i wanted better/actually interesting force powers, but it had the exact same problem I experienced with the first game, a dull story. In fact, this one was incredibly predictable, which the last one wasn't. The moment I met Bode as a character I instantly knew he was gonna betray me eventually. I wasn't sure when but I knew it was gonna happen. Its not that the game was bad per se. Its just that it wasn't that intriguing. I didn't have the "I need to finish what I'm doing so I can keep playing" feeling that I had wanted. This partially could have been because Ive played enough Jedi games and the period between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope isn't exactly my favorite period in Star Wars Canon, but if it had been a compelling story I don't think this would have mattered. Yet again, with Jedi Survivor, I did not get the satisfying Star Wars experience I craved.
Enter: Star Wars Outlaws. A game taking place during the Original Trilogy and where you're not a Jedi? I was immediately intrigued but skeptical it would be good. But after having finished the game and played for 20 hours, I really enjoyed the game, even with its several issues. You play as Kay Vess, a scoundrel Han Solo type, who has a pet...nix, and a trusty blaster at her side. Its open world and filled with side quests and mini games.
The game starts very well with a heist and slowly introducing more concepts of the core gameplay loop. Very quickly I understood how I needed to use Nix to distract enemies and such. But then I ran up against my first issue, the lock picking mini game. I've never really enjoyed mini-games like this, even in my favorite series Mass Effect. So then I found out that here in Outlaws I don't have to install a mod to disable these tiresome mini games, I immediately disabled it. This is what accessibility is supposed to be, allowing your players to engage with the parts of the game they like while making parts of the game they don't like easier to deal with. Another example of this is the food mini-game that is introduced once you get to the first real planet and its city. If you don't disable it you have to do a multitude of quick time events for Kay and Nix to eat the delicious food. But if you disable the mini-game, you see Kay and Nix simply enjoy the food and what was once an annoyance becomes a moment of bonding not just between Kay and Nix but between Kay, Nix, and You. The mini-game felt like something the developers wanted to have so you could feel like your interacting with the main characters, but it just ended up being an annoyance. I am incredibly thankful for the surge in accessibility settings recently so that I'm able to actually enjoy the game how I want to enjoy it.
Anyway, back to the gameplay. Its rather simple and has a mix of Assassins Creed and, I'd argue, the Division. Which isn't surprising given its developed by The Division developers, Massive. The shooting felt satisfying, and continued to add layers that required you to adapt to the enemies around you, but perhaps the most important part of the gameplay is the stealth. Early on you're introduced to the worst possible gameplay mechanic in videogame history, instant fail stealth missions. These missions are way too punishing and the developers are working on changing some things about them but that doesn't change that they still thought it was a good idea. I was constantly having someone just barely see me and then having to go back to the very start of the infiltration as you aren't allowed to save in restricted areas, another terrible gameplay decision. And best of all (that's sarcasm), I only JUST found out that you can roll. No where is that explained to you despite constant pop ups of gameplay tutorials. Another inconsistent gameplay experience. Instead I was simply running and sliding. Which wasn't terrible, but wasn't ideal.
Now, later in the game the instant fail stealth missions stop because it changes to you can't trigger an alarm. Which is much easier to deal with, but even then you will continue to have moments where an alarm is triggered and you get sent back way too far. Its infuriating when you have just infiltrated a base for 20 minutes. This is a simple fix as well that so many games have done here in 2024, just let me save whenever the fuck I want. Its not that hard. Save scumming is provably something they were trying to avoid but I would say that save scumming is a sign of a healthy game. A game where you're able to do what you want in a sandbox that is based in that idea, it actually allows your players to play MORE of the game and have MORE fun and LESS frustration, but that's just like, my opinion man.
Besides these issues, I actually rather enjoyed the gameplay. Sure it had issues but it still felt satisfying sneaking into bases and grabbing something or doing what the mission wants you to do. But here comes perhaps one of the most infuriating moments for me, the speeder will recenter your camera so that your character is in the middle of the screen and you can't see anything in front of you. Which is absolutely awful. I have to keep holding my right joystick slightly off center so it doesn't change. This is one of the worst experiences I've had driving in a videogame. It reminds me of the first kingdom hearts, that I played recently, where the camera would also aggressively re-center so that Sora was always in the middle of the screen so you could barely see anything in front of you.
Story wise the game isn't as predictable as others. Sure you can guess that the guy running your heist has a secret, but that doesn't make the story as boring as Jedi Survivor's Bode twist did, or of the deaths that are incredibly predictable. Speaking of Bode, there's a betrayal in this game too, but I didn't see it coming until the mission it’s in. It genuinely made me sad to see this character that I enjoyed stab me in the back. Which is a good thing by the way. It shows that the game is capable of making you have emotions, making you feel like a scoundrel dealing with all that comes with working for the Star Wars underworld. And the characters are genuinely interesting and funny.
You meet an engineer, Waka, and there was a moment I had where when you're going to the space station in the first part of the game, Waka turns off your weapons on your ship, but if you pull the trigger to try to fire your weapons, Waka calls you out and says hes thankful he turned off the guns. This was genuinely funny and made me like Waka even more.
The story is intriguing and continues to have wonderful writing and characters that make you want to keep playing to see how they develop. I cant express enough how much anger I felt when the Hutts forced me to infiltrate Jabba's palace, and how satisfied I was seeing a well written bad character get eaten. Or how much sadness I had when an ally, a friend that I have grown to love over the course of the game, starts having issues and I need to search for a solution, leading me to another large and fantastic set piece that pulls from the lore of Star Wars. That's another thing, I genuinely loved all of the set pieces that pulled lore both from the time Outlaws take place during, and the older lore that hasn't been explored in a way that this the game does. The writers at Massive knew exactly what they were doing and wrote one of the best modern Star Wars stories Ive ever experienced. It's so good that I would argue it's worth pushing through some of the issues.
All of this is to say that Outlaws feels fun, intriguing, emotional, but speckled with outdated mechanics and controls. Controls that should have been fixed and called out by developers and testers incredibly early on. The game is unfortunately inconsistent. It’s wanting you to have fun and experiment while discouraging the very idea of an open world game. It feels like a ps3 game, specifically it feels like the original Assassins Creed. A very good groundwork for a great sequel where they make the changes that are desperately needed.
Despite the game not selling amazingly, and it being inconsistent with its fun, I fully expect a sequel. Massive improved significantly on the original Division with Division 2 and I personally believe they are able to make that same improvement with an Outlaws 2. Just like the Division 2, also expect Massive to improve, or down right fix, multiple of the poor gameplay decisions with post launch support especially since they have some full fledged DLC campaigns coming in the next 6 months. But I don't know how much they can fundamentally change. Making a game is complicated and I could easily see them being unable to change some of my biggest gripes not because they don't want to, but because they can't due to how the game is coded. You don't rewrite a bunch of the game when you're updating it unless its a live service game which Outlaws is fundamentally not.
I think if you have 18 bucks to spare for Ubisoft+ and you go in expecting a very well written Star Wars story but some janky gameplay like AC 1 then you'll have a good time. It was significantly more enjoyable than the most recent Star Wars games, at least to me. You could wait a bit longer and likely have less frustration but its up to you. At the end of the day, its a solid game and it gave me a largely satisfying Star Wars experience that both KotOR 2 and Jedi Survivor just did not provide me.
Don't listen to the haters, make your own decision, and maybe you'll be surprised by how enjoyable it is.
Meow,
Cat