We are one month out from getting to return to a galaxy far far away again with Ubisoft’s and Massive Entertainment’s upcoming Star War Outlaws. The game is set between Star Wars Episodes V and VI, and this time there are no lightsabers or big battles or anything to do with the Skywalker saga. Instead, we get to explore the galaxy as up and coming scoundrel Kay Vess as she makes her way through the underbelly of the galaxy. Last week, we got to go hands on with the game and spent four hours exploring multiple areas of the game.
The demo we played started with Kay crashed on the moon of Toshara, and this is where we spent a vast majority of our time. The first thing we did was try to talk to the head of one of the game’s main factions on the moon to find work to find parts for our ship. We weren’t granted access to the area he was in, so it was up to us to find our own way in. This is where the game started to shine as it allowed us a few different options to gain access to the area. We could buy a pass from someone, bribe a mechanic working on the elevator to let us use it, or, what we chose, in hacking a vent and gaining access to the elevator myself.
This lead to us needing to infiltrate a faction controlled area to heist something for a different character. This mission is where the most surprising thing about Star Wars Outlaws occurs. The mission was mainly stealth focused with us needing to sneak past guards and make our way to the objective. Kay is able to perform stealth takedowns on guards and her companion Nix can join in the fray by distracting or attacking guards, picking up items, or interacting with points of interests. After completing the mission, we were introduced to our the person who hired us and we were given the choice to give them the info we learned or sell it to another faction. This is where the game’s other big highlight comes in as we saw the reputation system appear.
The reputation system revolves around Kay’s standing with each of the four main criminal syndicates in the game. Choices Kay makes will have an impact on her standing with the syndicates. The better standing she has allows her to access syndicate controlled areas, get vendor discounts in those areas, and even unlocks additional missions she can do to earn credits. However, the opposite can happen as the worse her standing becomes then the syndicate becomes more hostile to her such shooting on sight when seeing her or even hiring assassins to hunt her down if her reputation gets too low. Thus, you are going to be always factoring in how these syndicates will react when you are making decisions throughout the game.
After completing the mission, we were able to explore the open area of Toshara and got do whatever we liked. We could complete any side missions we wanted or just go around doing whatever. I found a speeder race Kay was able to participate in as well as found a little droid that needed help and gave some trinkets once I was able to help him out. Otherwise, while visually impressive, the open area didn’t have a lot for you to do. The side mission we did for one faction allowed me to betray them at the end of the mission to gain favor with another one without damaging my reputation with the one we did the mission for.
For the final hour, we got to do a little space exploration as we proceed to the next planet to find a new character to join our crew. It was fun to fly around space for a bit, and it featured a few points of interests to explore. When approaching our next planet, we got a distress call from a ship to help them out against bandits and got to experience a bit of space combat.
Once reaching the planet we got to explore a bit before starting our next mission. This mission, again focused on stealth, had us looking for information on the whereabouts of the character we’re looking for. Once finding this out, Kay figured we needed to do something for the syndicate that runs the planet and we got to do a mission that was more focused on combat. It was the first mission that featured a new enemy type as we were fighting against humans along with droids. Droid took way more damage and the only way we figured to take them out were with headshots.
Combat is the typical third person shooter affair with not a whole lot of variety mixed in. Kay is equipped with a blaster that deals plasma damage, but it can be upgraded to deal different types of damage. She’s also able to perform a one shot stun blast on enemies, however this is on a cool down after using it. The blaster does have an active reload feature a la Gears of War, so, when you master that, combat flows and keeps you always in the action. Kay also has an adrenaline shot ability where time slows down for and she can mark up to three enemies and take them all out in one shot. Kay can also perform melee combat, but there’s no depth to it as enemies are taken out in a few punches.
Overall, Star Wars Outlaws surprised me more than I thought it would. I came in expecting a typical third person shooter action game, but was completely caught off guard with how focused on stealth the game is. This was highly satisfying as we currently really lack stealth games today. The story gives a little bit of intrigue and Kay looks to be a fun and witty character to play as. The combat itself isn’t the most interesting thing Ubisoft has produced, but that doesn’t look to bring the game down. With one month to go, Star Wars Outlaws will be coming out at the right time before the big Fall rush of releases and looks to stand out during the end of the summer.
You can see 20 minutes of gameplay for Star Wars Outlaws below: