Star Wars Outlaws is Shaping Up to Be the Most Varied Star Wars Adventure Yet - Preview

Throughout the history of Star Wars, there have been a number of dynamic duos. Han and Chewie, R2-D2 and C3-PO, Luke and Leia, Jar-Jar-Binks and cringe, to name but a few. Well, ladies and gents, step aside, as there's a new duo in town: Kay and Nix, the two protagonists of Ubisoft Massive’s semi-open-world action-adventure game, Star Wars Outlaws.

Star Wars Outlaws takes place following the Battle of Hoth in Empire Strikes Back, with the galaxy in transition. As a result, criminal syndicates have risen to power, which is where we find Canto Bight-born Kay Vess and her sidekick and best friend, Nix, a tiny, cute and deadly creature known as a Merqaal.

In Star Wars Outlaws Kay and Vess will have to do whatever’s necessary to survive, and as a way to survive - and potentially thrive - the duo must put together a team of skilled outlaws to pull off, as Creative Director Julian Gerighty describes it, “the greatest heist the galaxy has ever seen.” In short: assemble your squad for an adventure of epic proportions.

Each of the protagonists in Outlaws have their own set of tools and actions at their disposal. As Kay you’ll have access to a dataspike to hack doors, a slicing kit, grappling hook, grenades, smoke bombs, and Electrobinoculars (and much more). Kay’s best friend, however - other than Nix, of course - is her blaster, which has three different firing modes: Plasma, which is the standard damage dealing mode; Ion, which can be used to damage shields and overcharge droids; and Stun, which can be used for one-hit takedowns on regular enemies - the Stun mode, however, is on a cooldown, so don’t expect to rely solely on that.

When it comes to Nix, Kay can command her buddy to distract enemies, fetch weapons, survey the area, and even get involved in a good ol’ scrap with stormtroopers, scavengers, bounty hunters and the like.

The dynamics of the relationship between Kay and Nix seem to perfectly complement one another, too. Kay can use Nix to set traps for enemies, or even get Nix to distract them so that Kay can get behind them to perform a stealth takedown. And, if all else fails, Kay can lean on her Deadeye-like special move, which is basically Splinter Cell’s ‘Mark-and-Execute’ mechanic, to take down multiple threats at once. Speaking of “borrowing” mechanics, Outlaws also seems to have its own Active Reload system (a la Gears of War), which really suits the blaster mechanics.

We recently got chance to check out the dynamic duo take on three separate missions: ‘False Flag’, wherein Kay has to escape from a space station and take to the skies in her trusty ship, the Trailblazer, and dogfight against patrolling Imperial Forces; ‘Wreck’, in which the duo have to navigate through a crumbling High Republic Cruiser to get data from a nav computer; and finally, ‘Relic;, which tasks Kay and Nix with infiltrating dangerous Crimson Dawn territory to retrieve a stolen relic, the Bann Pu’Dira, to gain favour with the Ashiga Clan.

The relatively short hands-off presentation basically saw Kay and Nix get into all kinds of trouble, from stealthing through a stronghold behind enemy lines and blasting off against stormtroopers and more in tense firefights; to engaging in a sport of parkour through the wreck of a ship before escaping on a speeder bike and dogfighting with TIE fighters among debris fields in space. If there’s anything abundantly clear with Star Wars Outlaw so far, it’s that variety seems to be its spice.

And if that doesn’t grab you, or you want a break from the mayhem, you can just play Star Wars card game, Sabacc, at Makal’s Gambling Parlour in Mirogana City - a side mission that pops up when you land on the planet after completing the False Flag main mission.

While everything we’ve seen up until this point in Star Wars Outlaws pointed to an open-world action-adventure title, this recent look at the game seems to indicate that it’s not just another open-world cookie-cutter Ubisoft experience, with plenty of linear and more story-driven set pieces interspersed throughout.

Locations-wise, in around 30-minutes of gameplay, we saw so many different locations. From the grimy Mirogana City set into the rocks and caves of a desert planet, to the wreck of a space cruiser, reclaimed by nature - the variety in environments is as impressive as the sheer variety of experiences on offer. Heck, even Kijimi City, a snowy Wild West style location with plenty of Japanese influences, is a far cry from the more traditional Star Wars city like Mirogana.

Ubisoft Massive has clearly been paying attention to the discourse surrounding Starfield and its planetary navigation, too, allowing players to select their landing point on a planet (using the d-pad) and watch the Trailblazer descend through the atmosphere and the thick clouds, to make it to the planet surface and land. Sure, it’s on rails, and takes about 20-seconds (well, it did in the demo we saw), but it helps to feel grounded within the world - and is a fairly solid way to mask load times, without breaking the immersion.

While our first proper look at Star Wars Outlaws - outside of the two Ubisoft Directs - was fairly brief, Ubisoft Massive have done a stellar job so far at showing off the various different facets of Star Wars Outlaws. The game seemingly jumps around from open-world segments, parkour sequences, dogfighting, stealth sections, gunfights, high-quality cutscenes, storytelling and more, showing some fantastic variety. Now, if Ubisoft Massive can keep that up for the entirety of the game, we’ll have a proper Star Wars experience on our hands, like no other - well, not in recent years, anyway. It feels a little bit like an action-adventure version of Mass Effect, in that you build your squad for one big mission. You know, Mass Effect, the game once dubbed the Star Wars of video games that isn’t actually Star Wars.

Star Wars Outlaws is out on 30th August 2024 for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC.