Star Wars meets Grand Theft Auto in stunning but patchy new heist

Almost all Star Wars video games are, understandably, obsessed with lightsabers, the force, the Rebellion, the Empire, the Jedi and the Sith.

But such a hugely appealing part of the universe, and certainly of the original 1977 film, is the criminal underbelly thriving against the backdrop of constant galactic war. The sleazy cantinas, brutal crime syndicates, dashing rogues and steely bounty hunters. That’s the energy that inspired this week’s Star Wars Outlaws.

Coming from publisher Ubisoft, known for Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry and various Tom Clancy games, the potential is there for an incredible sandbox scoundrel simulator – but the reality is a game that’s deeply uneven.

I’ve loved delving into every huge open area and drinking in the detailed settings, characters and creatures that feel straight out of the movies, and trading blaster bolts with bandits and bounty hunters across the frontier worlds of the Outer Rim. But from early on, I could tell there was something missing, and it wasn’t just the laser swords.

The best Star Wars stories have an emotional core of hope or aspiration, or at least deep philosophical conflict, whereas here, there’s surprisingly little of anything approaching character development. The titular outlaws are cool and likeable, but they’re extremely thin, and most attempts at introducing stakes, backstories or motivations fall totally flat.

On top of that, several aspects of the game feel strangely unpolished, including the sneaking, platforming and shooting, which make up a large bulk of the missions. Star Wars fans may be able to see through the frustrations given what a joy it is to simply exist in this world at the height of the Empire (before Episode VI), at the far periphery of Luke and Vader. But it’s certainly not everything I’d hoped.

The Empire’s enforcers are as gormless as ever in Outlaws.

A hive of scum and villainy

The game kicks off with Kay Vess – a small-time thief living on the rough side of rich-person casino city Canto Bight – getting in over her head. With a massive bounty placed on her by the boss of a scary new criminal syndicate, she makes things worse by stealing his favourite starship and blasting blindly through hyperspace, looking for somewhere to lie low. Conveniently she ends up on the moon world Toshara, a melting pot of various pirates, bandits and lowlifes with heaps of dirty work to go around.

From there, the game’s main plotline follows a familiar heist movie formula, with Kay needing to head off across the territories – including to iconic Skywalker home planet, Tatooine – in order to assemble a crew and pull off the job of a lifetime.

But it’s everything around that primary quest that provides the true meat of the game. Your journal of tasks, side jobs, rumours and opportunities is constantly being filled as you explore, so if you’re not in a hurry to follow the narrative, you can spend hours just being a dirtbag, taking contracts from the local mob boss to infiltrate Imperial checkpoints and steal data, delivering contraband on your speeder, or fleecing the locals at the surprisingly addictive poker-like card game, Kessel Sabaac. It’s a lot like a PG Grand Theft Auto with no carjacking.

Spending time at the droid-dealer-run Sabaac tables is a lot more fun than it should be.

A lot of the actions you take will end up affecting your standing with the four major crime syndicates, two of which are headed by characters you may recognise from the films (Jabba the Hutt and Emilia Clarke’s Qi’ra).

It’s an interesting system because your reputation will affect some of the jobs and vendors you can access, as well as whether the syndicates will allow you in the areas they control or shoot you on sight. You’re frequently given opportunities to backstab for money, but you can’t be truly blacklisted; getting back in the good books usually just requires doing a few odd jobs.

Dealing with the Empire’s space cops is a little different, as crossing them will give you a Grand Theft Auto-style wanted level that makes it tough to get around and necessitates some hacking or bribing to clear. Thankfully, the stormtroopers are as incompetent here as they are in the films.

Exploring each region brings you to some incredible places, from the overgrown wreck of a High Republic cruiser to the familiar gleaming interior of Imperial space stations. But in between, the game can feel disappointingly empty, whether you’re blasting over sand dunes on your speeder or zooming around space junk outside a planet’s atmosphere. In fact, space exploration may be the flimsiest part of the game overall; dog fights with TIE fighters are fun, but there’s not much else to do besides scan for loot.

Kay’s best friend and partner in crime is a cute and clever critter called Nix, who arguably does the bulk of the work in any infiltration. Nix can scan the area for enemies, remotely activate switches, retrieve loot, pickpocket, distract and even fight. This is a tool set that you’ll be using a lot because a huge number of missions and activities call for you to be sneaky.

Flying through space looks great, but there’s not much to do.

I have a bad feeling about this

I’m not a huge fan of stealth in video games generally, but the way it’s handled in Outlaws is emblematic of the game’s main problem overall. The game might be made up of wide open spaces, but it’s incredibly prescriptive in terms of how it wants you to complete missions, and it can be frustrating how often you’ll fail outright and be sent back in time a few minutes because of something outside your control.

Instant fails can happen because you were spotted when you were supposed to be in stealth, you raised an alarm when you were supposed to be quiet, or you wandered too far from a specific person or area. Combined with the tendency for platforming sections to take place over instant death pits, even if they look like normal terrain you can jump to, it means you should expect to see the loading screen that takes you back to a recent safe state quite often.

I did have some tense and exciting encounters that worked out exactly how I assume the designers of these systems had hoped. During an infiltration of Jabba’s Palace (one of the very few locations pulled straight from the films), I managed to sneak around undetected enough to sabotage an area’s alarm systems, meaning that when I stunned a Gamorrean guard and opened fire on his friend, none of the workers nearby could put the place on lockdown, and I was able to clear them all out. More often than not, though, I ended up frantically running about and eventually having to retry.

But even though many of the systems are frustrating (why is the hacking minigame just Wordle but with nonsense characters, and who came up with the rhythm-based lock-picking), there is something magical about the game that meant I often didn’t want to put it down.

Many of the environments and skyscapes are stunning, and although Kay seems to have no personality or convictions besides wanting to escape the Outer Rim planets, it’s fun to inhabit a clueless scoundrel in this world. There are potential mentors you need to track down to teach you new tricks, which you then unlock by ticking off a list of feats, and there are heaps of gun and outfit upgrades to make or unlock. In the absence of a story to care about, that trademark Ubisoft “list of things to do” carries the bulk of the weight.

Ultimately, if you’ve ever desired a Star Wars underbelly take on Grand Theft Auto or Assassin’s Creed, Outlaws is likely to provide dozens of hours of entertainment despite some key elements being underbaked or unpolished.

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