A Bountiful Star Wars Harvest

With the ongoing release of final-season episodes for Star Wars’ The Bad Batch and the reveal of The Acolyte’s debut teaser trailer, my already-strong passion for the sci-fi IP is flourishing. As fans like myself are constantly looking ahead at what’s next to satisfy our craving, the upcoming release of Massive Entertainment’s Star Wars Outlaws, an open-world game set between the events of Episode V and VI in the Original saga, is watched with heavy (and cautious) anticipation.

Ubisoft subsidiary Massive Entertainment is best known for Tom Clancy’s The Division and Tom Clancy’s The Division 2, and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora in recent years, with the Division titles garnering a fairly loyal following through their PVE/PVP features and commitment to long-term post-launch support for each. Can Massive Entertainment and parent Ubisoft deliver a home run open-world adventure experience in a first-of-its-kind release under the Star Wars license? Or will it release as an overly broad and bloated time sink, à la Assassin’s Creed Valhalla?

To be clear, I don’t want to pin worries of a Valhalla-esque product on a completely unrelated development team, I’m merely hoping Ubisoft’s oversight doesn’t unnecessarily suggest overextending the scope of what should be built.

Gameplay Trailer Impressions, Nine Months Later

It doesn’t feel like nine months have passed since the above trailer debuted at Ubisoft’s standalone summer showcase, but alas, time seems to move fast when game releases are plentiful. Coming hot on the scene as an unexpected treat last June, this nearly 11-minute-long gameplay trailer gave us lengthy examples of stealth, ground combat, speeder travel, and space combat. I, for one, have to applaud the developers for letting us look at a full collection of game systems in one fell swoop. They easily could’ve left us with the CGI reveal only, leaving its mechanics up to pure speculation. However, an ambiguous open-world Star Wars game would’ve naturally generated sky-high expectations during a period of radio silence, so Ubisoft/Massive getting ahead of this benefits everyone involved.

Main character Kay and her furry companion Nix opened the trailer by sneaking through a Pyke Syndicate-controlled workshop of some sort, though her stealthy mantling of both cover and climbable objects didn’t keep her concealed for long. The encounter eventually ended in a firefight between Syndicate thugs that would transition to a swoop bike chase through an arid landscape. If one word could encapsulate all of my thoughts on this sequence, it would be: sleek, enthralling, rugged, and stimulating. Wait a second, that was way more than just one word. Well, those four words definitely describe what I believe we were treated to. The fidelity shown off in this section kind of blows my mind for a game that, by and large, came out of left field.

The third-person camera is positioned well and moves freely around the snooping duo to reveal an NPC welding a segment on a dilapidated A-Wing, smoke billowing out of various exhaust vents, sparks flying from poorly maintained wires. Wow. The attention to detail in this one room alone has me excited for what looks like proper love and care being applied to the chaotic and quirky environments of this universe. Hell, even the discarded components on the ground and junk piles of discarded droid and ship parts in random corners look good. Nix is assigned to carry out a button-pressing command, and it’s clear that using him as a sort of helpful combat and puzzle companion is reminiscent of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order’s introduction of BD-1 as a multipurpose tool for Cal Kestis.

A Closer Look at the VFX and Combat in Star Wars Outlaws

As Kay’s cover was blown, the hired gun confronting her in Huttese was such a nice touch. I do love a good bit of alien language gibberish to make a world truly feel diverse and lived in. With the play tester dispatching this sentry in quickdraw desperado fashion, taking out a shielded enemy with a quick punch, and proceeding to then begin a multi-weapon shootout from cover, Massive was clearly quite confident in combat that has likely only been further refined in months since. It doesn’t look like the same cover navigation system is being employed from The Division series, as the player doesn’t appear to ‘snap’ to objects in the same manner. This could become more tight with more time in the oven, though.

Rappelling down a small cliff to a getaway speeder, vehicle handling looked loose and light. Combat ramped up once again after a stunt-like bike hop to lower ground, and the intensity was palpable. Explosions and particle effects also featured in the previous run-and-gun warehouse encounter, look fairly well done and reminiscent of those found in the original movies. As the party of grunts is then put in the rearview, a well-delivered, on-bike radio dialogue sequence between Kay and Commando Droid companion ND-5 puts her escapade into context.

A Hive of Scum and Villainy

Kay and Nix soon arrive at Jaunta’s Hope, a lesser-known hive of scum and villainy, to progress further in the quest. Once again, an obvious amount of care seems to have been exercised in bringing the world of Star Wars to life. The hustle and bustle of speeder traffic, brush swaying in gusts of wind, and the beautiful randomness that the cantina area offers has me entranced.

Ever since the iconic Mos Eisley Cantina scene in A New Hope, I’m sure every honest fan has wanted to act out their own Han Solo-type fantasy in some way shape, or form. Well, given the likely endless supply of seedy locations in this title, I’m sure that we’ll all be able to emulate Han’s suave and smooth-talking act to patrons and rivals alike. A smooth cutscene portraying a deal-gone-wrong with an Imperial officer on the take jettisons Kay into another chase scene, this time ending in a getaway jump to orbit.

If there was anything in this entire trailer that I think looked somewhat lackluster, it would be ship combat and navigation when in space. There wasn’t anything particularly wrong with it from what was shown off, but it also didn’t look overly exhilarating – even when trying to evade a squadron of TIE Fighters. Granted, this could feel better when playing it yourself, rather than watching it play out over a video capture. The in-orbit wreckage that you can fly through in this scene, though, is very cool.

A Wishlist Fit For an Outlaw

All in all, I think the trailer was a strong showing all around from the team to start up the hype train on their road to release. However, everything is not always as it seems. This vertical slice was just that: a vertical slice. I have concerns about environmental diversity, and whether locations like the Pyke Syndicate warehouse are copy-and-pasted across multiple planets, with little changes to differentiate one instance from another.

Given that there is seemingly a more zone-focused approach that is more like The Outer Worlds than something like Starfield’s enormity, hand-crafted and non-procedurally generated content should be commonplace. It’s these concerns that have me wishing for a compact yet well-made selection of five to six planets for exploration. Maybe even less, depending on how big each planet’s ground area is. This game is going to thrive on interaction with NPC encounters, and spreading out maps to the point of having large gaps in action is not conducive to fun smuggling escapades.

A seemingly small and inconsequential second item on my wishlist, would if Outlaws gave us some sort of a Sabacc minigame. What could become reminiscent of Red Dead Redemption 2’s casino games, Sabacc could act as a cozy cantina feature to relax in moments of downtime from the story. I am contradicting myself a little bit here because I said I didn’t want Outlaws to be a Valhalla-esque time sink previously. Red Dead’s poker and blackjack had me in a stranglehold for a good while as I ignored progressing in the story, and a well-thought-out Sabacc would undoubtedly do the same to me here. In my defense though, having unnecessary amounts of game content and having an addicting minigame are two very different cases of time sinking. Pour me up another glass of blue milk, bartender! I’ve got a great hand to play and two nerf herders that are none the wiser!

Final Wishlist Item for Star Wars Outlaws

Lastly, this game should seize the opportunity to blow our socks off with a killer soundtrack, for both in-world and background music tracks. Look, I’m a simple man. I see an opportunity to get more jazzy Star Wars cantina band music produced, I’m going to publicly make my want for it be known. Hearing the brief appearance of “Chicken in the Pot” when watching Solo: A Star Wars Story was proof that incredibly cool pieces of in-universe music can be produced, even if they don’t hold a candle to Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes’ classic hit. Yes, I did just attribute John Williams’ iconic song to a completely fictitious alien band. This is totally a normal thing to do. Don’t judge me for it! In all seriousness, I think that this piece of the wishlist will be an easy slam dunk for the devs to coordinate. If there’s one thing that the franchise is constantly able to pull off, it’s tying pieces of media together with iconic harmonies.

As I, along with many others, await for the next tidbit of Star Wars Outlaws news to hit the internet, I’ll continue to bide my time and hope for a home run from Massive. They’ve evidently piqued my interest and excitement with what they’ve unveiled to date, and having played their Division games, I do have a great deal of trust in their abilities. Regardless of that, we need more of what we’ve been given to prove that this gameplay reveal wasn’t a simple case of smoke and mirrors. Even the most well-trusted developers can drop a dud here and there, and Ubisoft’s publishing role in this could lead some to worry. Nevertheless, I and many others will be seated to play this scoundrel-simulator as early as possible – at the end of the day, everyone should seize the long-awaited opportunity to unleash their inner Han Solo.

Star Wars Outlaws is currently slated to release in 2024 on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC.

Author Credit: Jacob MacDonald

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