REVIEW: ‘Star Wars Outlaws’ Is All About Worldbuilding (XSX)

Set between the events of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Star Wars Outlaws is the first open-world game for the franchise. It centers around Kay Vess, a scoundrel learning about what it means to be one in the name of finding freedom and happiness that she hasn’t had since she was left in Cantonica on Canto Bight.

Dedicated to starting a new life, Kay Vess leads this Massive Entertainment-developed game as she assembles a crew to pull off the greatest heist in the galaxy. With a bounty on her head and her companion Nix at her side, Kay has to learn what she is willing to risk and what she wants.

A young woman who finds herself pulled into the Underworld, the overarching Star Wars Outlaws narrative is about her learning who she is. Raised in a cantina, Kay has been alone since she was 12 years old. She was left alone with a casino chip, a data spike, and Nix, and she has always been on her own so far as other people are concerned. Throughout the game, as you unlock her past and the mentors in the present, you begin to understand who she is, just as she does.

Does Kay want to be the scoundrel who has chosen to live out their life on a desolate planet with Death Marks from syndicates on their head and wanted by the Empire? Does Kay want to have a family again? Does she even know how? As much as Star Wars Outlaws is a large story in an epic franchise, it’s about a woman trying to know how to live.

But she isn’t alone in it. She has her team with ND-5, Nix, Gadeek, Ank, and an expanded cast with Asara Hoss and Waka. Kay is surrounded by interesting characters with histories with the syndicates (Crimson Dawn, Ashiga Clan, Pyke Syndicate, and the Hutt Cartel), and each pulls Kay into their mess.

When it comes to Kay, you have the ability to customize her outfits, upgrade her blaster (and its appearance), and even add costume items to Nix. While you cannot change Kay’s hair or even her boots as a separate item from her pants, it’s really not necessary. The customization is neat, but the reliance on fulfilling sidequests to find new items means that players may not see the full range of her closet. That said, Kay isn’t about her outfit or her blaster.

However, characters are only part of the game, and mechanics are the other parts. For combat, Star Wars Outlaws is stealth first. The priority is for Kay to work with Nix to remain as hidden as possible to complete her missions. With “don’t raise the alarm,” often the subtext on your mission, if you struggle with stealth, you will struggle here, at first at least. Yes, I speak from experience as a running and gunning player who can’t just take a minute to wait for an enemy to pass by.

That said, with Nix in hand, that impatient nerve was never struck. Sure, I was waiting for my moment to either knock out an enemy or stun them, but I was also looking at the rooms and environments to plan how to use Nix. Nix’s addition is a great stealth helper, but at the same time, he forces you to be strategic. The combat is actually at its best when you set Nix to protect mode and blind enemies as you shoot through them, taking very little damage.

But Nix isn’t just a tool; he’s also Kay’s companion and her family. Throughout the story, we see flashbacks of Kay’s past and how she became who she is. With an expert system requiring Kay to meet new mentors to learn more skills, it’s clear from both a narrative standpoint and a mechanical one that Kay is someone we’re supposed to understand. Throughout the game, we get to know why she is the way that she is. Brash and unafraid (at least on the outside), Kay comes to life in her moments with Nix.

As you explore the different cities and locations, you have the option to stop and get street food. Each meal comes with a detailed droid cooking montage and a mini-game. The mini-game is wholesome beyond belief—all you’re doing is eating. Through QuickTime events, Kay and Nix eat together and laugh. A moment of sweetness underscores the larger world of scum and villainy around them. As Kay sees more of the Underworld and begins to understand that it may not be the life she needs, even if the freedom it offers is what she wants, these moments at the street vendors become a perfect way to decompress.

They’re also not without their gameplay benefit. Each meal you share with Nix is registered as a treat he likes. On the Trailblazer, you can set his treat and then garner abilities like throwing back a grenade or being able to distract multiple enemies at once instead of just one. Throw in a whole quest dedicated to the bestest boy and what he means to Kay, and Nix is way more than just a pet.

In addition to the eating minigame (for lack of a better phrase), Star Wars Outlaws also features multiple arcade cabinets, gambling (Kessel Sabacc and Fathier Racing), and speeder racing. The variety of the mini-games keeps you engaged in the planets well beyond just your quest line. Outside of the main quest, I have spent the most time playing Kessel Sabacc, finding the high rollers where I can, acquiring new shift tokens to change up the game, and sometimes, just playing without realizing how much time has gone by. The card game is simple, but it works perfectly.

While it’s not a true mini-game, using the data spike that Kay keeps in her hair to open locks and splice terminals to hack into them adds their own games to the mix. You click the right trigger on the beat with the lights for the former. Yes, it’s a lockpicking rhythm game. And for the latter, you’re playing a Wordle variant that I initially rolled my eyes at but found myself getting extremely excited about whenever I needed to break into a terminal.

Star Wars Outlaws is a unique experience among Star Wars games. A canon title that brings players to some of the hives of scum and villainy we’ve been fascinated by within the original trilogy; what sets it apart is the visual style. With sideswipe black screen transitions, a 16:9 format with the horizontal black bars that define the wide-screen film, and a minimalist HUD, Outlaws aims to immerse you just as much as any of the films in the franchise. And there are plenty of moments when you can literally lean into this style.

Some side quests are unlocked when an NPC calls out to you, and you respond; others are found as you lean against a bar or wall and hear the conversations around you. It’s a small detail that pays off in weaving how smugglers move through the world and helps you immerse yourself further into Outlaws. 

One of the elements that allowed me to sink into Fathir racing or Sabacc was the ability to limit the information on the screen. The developers have mostly struck that fine balance between understanding how to instruct the player without detracting from the overall experience. Instead of being a high-fidelity video game that feels like a movie (ala Hellblade 2), Star Wars Outlaws is a dynamic video game that uses the cinematic strengths of its franchise to key into nostalgia and remind you that you are playing a Star Wars story.

Along those lines, Star Wars Outlaws honors the franchise with moments and characters—both with narrative impact and just fun pop-up moments as you look through a vent grate into a room. But if it was just an Easter egg hunt of any character in the Galaxy, Outlaws would fall flat. Instead, Massive Entertainment has crafted planets that feel highly specific across Toshara, Kijimi, Akiva, Tatooine, and Canto Bight.

The people all act a specific way, refining the planet’s culture impacted by the climate. The cantinas are never repeated. And even the syndicates and their territories change per planet. Nothing is surface-level about the worlds that have been created, expanded, and brought to life in a tactile way. These worlds are Star Wars; they know the histories of what has happened on the planet before, and for the new creations (or ones with little history), they fit in the franchise and make me want more of them. This game is a world-building standout.

Star War Outlaws also makes sure to use its platforming to add thoughtful verticality to the world. While the platforming itself is a mixed bag, the environments you see while scaling walls, rocks, and more. Platforming is, in fact, at its best when it’s in the natural worlds or ships and buildings that have been reclaimed by nature.

For all of its strengths, Star Wars Outlaws also has some glitchy moments, ranging from small glitches that would trap me under the ship I was crouched next to or Nix’s commands taking two to three button taps to make him perform the requested action to the most frustrating thing I experienced: checkpoint issues. That said, on the Xbxo Series X, there were no noticeable performance issues like frame rate or scene clipping outside of what’s mentioned here in my 20-plus hours of gameplay.

For checkpoints, on Kijimi, a main campaign quest required that I work with the Ashiga Clan, who had arranged my passage through their guards and toward a weapons factory, and after a bad jump, the moment I got into the factory led to a death. Instead of spawning at the immediate checkpoint as I had in the other platforming section, I respawned at the Trailblazer across the map. After I ran through the city and found my way in front of the guards, they wouldn’t let me pass, the dialogue lines reverting to what they would be if I weren’t on the designated quest. The only option left to continue was to reload a save 25 minutes before the checkpoint at the gate, and all that time was lost.

If there is one thing I would change outside the glitches that affected play, it would be the choice to keep the player on the rails once a quest is undertaken. Both affect how you take in the beautifully crafted world around you. The world feels wide open across multiple planets and the bevy of Imperial ships you board. The worlds created in Star Wars Outlaws are the strongest visuals of the game. The character models do end up looking drastically different from the cinematics to the gameplay, and it’s often shocking.

There are layers that come in the mini-games I mentioned earlier, as well as the twisting streets and vendors. But once you leave the city on your speeder, the openness is evermore breathtaking with each planet where it’s possible to showcase the shared diversity of inhabitants and syndicates as you explore. However, your exploration is often honed in on the quest radius.

Once you’ve ventured too far, a 10-second timer will appear and restart your game from the last checkpoint if you don’t return. These kinds of rails aren’t new in gaming and are almost unnoticeable if you’re on foot. While traveling the world without a vehicle, you can quickly correct your course and not worry about losing your playtime. But, if you’re unlucky enough to use your speeder or the Trailblazer’s speed boost too close to the radius, it’s virtually impossible to turn around.

It may be a petty complaint, but nothing in the game shook me out of immersion or the quest than not being allowed to return to the path naturally while zooming through the open environment. Add in the fact that sometimes the speeder just runs away, and the vehicle traveling, for all of its excitement and fun, becomes tedious.

Last year’s Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, also from Massive Entertainment, allowed the player to explore Pandora with a limited UI and similar mapping system; there were no barriers (other than level) to seamless exploration. As the first open-world Star Wars game, I want to get lost in it, not be tied to one quest area at a time.

Even with the hiccups, Star Wars Outlaws is a fantastic story that effectively uses the heist genre and never keeps its characters in focus. That said, the side quests are vital to learning more about the world and the characters we have met. Thankfully, the game doesn’t end once you roll credits. Afterward, you can continue to do Syndicate quests and explore the world. And if I wasn’t writing this review, I would still be doing quests and playing Sabacc.

While the launch plan for the upcoming DLC can be described as controversial at best, the core story and what happens after sets the stage for more, and that’s not bad. I want more of Star Wars Outlaws. I want more Kay and Nix, but more importantly, I want to keep adventuring through the world, betraying Underworld bosses and befriending others just based on who is giving me a better reward. And wanting more of a game is all you can ask for.

Star Wars Outlaws is available on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC now.