Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws occurs between Star Wars Episodes V and VI, which is to say, in the period after Empire Strikes Back and before Return of the Jedi, when Han is in Carbonite, Luke is processing his parentage, Leia is working with an Easy Ubese Phrase Book, and the Empire is generally winning.

I gave my early impressions of the game while in the midst of the main campaign; having now completed the main questline and a fair amount (but hardly all) of the side missions, I stand with most of my original opinions. I don’t anticipate any “I am your father”-level revelations on the path toward 100%ing the missions. The high confidence in not-being-surprised speaks both to Outlaws’ main weakness and its most endearing strength.

MAIN CHARACTER ENERGY

I enjoy playing as Kay Vess. Her character is a familiar type: smartass, renegade, a lingering unresolved problem with a parent figure — that is to say, a mythic hero. On the Snarky Protagonist Spectrum, her lines are written with more finesse than Black Widow in Marvel’s Awkward Avengers or Frey of Forspoken (I was rooting for Forspoken, but the parodic millennial self-absorption was not the move), but she does not quite convey the pathos of an Aloy, Control‘s Jesse Faden, or Dani Rojas of Far Cry 6. She is a Han Solo analogue, and inhabits all the characteristics of Harrison Ford’s pantheonic space pirate. She can knock people out with her bare fists, even armored people, with superhuman quietness. To continue the Ford-ian comparison, there’s an Indiana Jones-esque lightheartedness in the way that she solves whole rooms of foes by methodically punching them in the back of the head. Humberly González has her moments channeling both Ford and Fisher, voicing Kay with an appealing dry wit and an excellent balance of an up-and-comer’s urgency with an experienced scoundrel’s charisma.

Kay’s mother Riko figures large in the Vess backstory, which is as rote as, well, any angsty child-parent relationship in Star Wars. The closest thing to a romantic subplot is in her friendly robomance with the battle droid companion ND-5, and that’s fine. The crew she assembles for the story’s Ultimate Final Heist includes a Rodian droid specialist and a riotous bombmaker whom I initially thought was an Ugnaught, but is in fact of the mouse-ish Chadra-Fan species, I had to look that up.

A few words must be spent on Kay’s small animal companion Nix, because Nix is her cheat-code uberweapon, and as in John Wick, her relationship with the adorable dog/cat is the central heart-tugging hook of the storyline. Sidekick Nix is versatile to the point of absurdity for any task that need be accomplished from a distance, whether it’s sabotaging alarm panels to pickpocketing access cards off of clue-free Imperials. The sequence in which, deprived of Nix, Kay must penetrate Jabba the Hutt’s palace with compromised stealth abilities and more-than-baseline amount of brute force is the most emotionally compelling mission in the game.

As far as the looks question, because graphic presentation is inextricable from the analysis of video games: I will indulge the superficial fanboy complaining only to the point of saying that Kay is a beautiful fictional woman. All right, dank farrik, will elaborate, because it’s an aspect that everyone thinks about — the sadly-predictable “discourse” that tries to make us discern between Very Pretty Main Character and Hiphop Video Hottie-Level Main Character is a very stupid thing. Not just because of the broad objectification-of-people problem, but also because it’s disingenuous to suggest that Vess’s phenotype would have anything but high pretty privileges, even though she doesn’t wear her hair long or have aggressive cleavage. No one involved in making this game gave the slightest effort toward generating a “plain” main character. In any real world setting, Kay Vess would be one of the gorgeous persons in the room, all you nerds know it, the hyper-buxom microwaisted 2Bs and Eves and Lara Crofts of the video game multiverse are never in the room, because to the extent that they exist, they are on a set, they are busy with expensive maintenance by professional hair/makeup crews and gym scientists. Look, I’m basically a straight dude who’s done more than my fair share of ogling pretty people, said with no attempt at pride. The only reason this topic merits remark is because it is genuinely harmful for goofballs to try to move the frame such that merely Very Pretty is viewed as unacceptable. I don’t say this to bolster Kay’s confidence in her Instagram presence or any pandering thing like that, but I believe it’s worthwhile to assess, with honesty: A) the Themysciran ideal is an over-deliver, not a standard, and B) the AAA action-adventure games do not even try to have “ordinary” or average-looking female playable characters. One notable recent exception might be SSKTJL, and if there are other cases, would be happy to be shown wrong.

“ONLY IMPERIAL STORMTROOPERS ARE SO PRECISE”

Speaking of Outlaws as a video game, leaving aside most of the lore stuff for a minute: It’s not especially challenging, and I am not a precisely-skilled person with the controller. If you want to get most of the skills and breeze through to the end, that is very do-able. The trickiest un-skippable event is probably the battle with the Rancor monster, but the encounter is still not as demanding as the comparable fight with the Rancor in Respawn’s Jedi: Survivor.

The progression is generously guided, the “correct” choices are fairly intuitive. If there’s a ventilation duct, crawl into it. If it has a head or eyes, it can be blasted. There are difficulty/accessibility settings adjustable to your idea of how much plasma fire a Stormtrooper’s armor should be able to withstand. I enjoyed the mini-rhythm game that serves as the door-unlocking mechanic, but you can just turn that off if you don’t vibe to that beat. The overall difficulty curve is, for me, a completely subjective aspect of the game. Not everyone wants a Souls-like strenuous strugglefest all the time, but if that is your baseline, you may find Outlaws wanting.

The most pleasing gameplay flowstate is when you achieve optimal rhythm of Nix Trix and melee to clear bases full of the Stormtroopers with exceedingly poor peripheral vision. While the stealth maneuvering can feel elementary, you do have to actually DO it, because getting spotted by one Imp often means a rapid swarm leading to assured failure. Sometimes it’s a grind, and I broke stealth just for the fun of starting a lasergun fight, which, if you remembered to send Nix to disable the alarm systems, is usually survive-able.

I dunno about you, I found 2020’s Star Wars Squadrons underwhelming, and preferred the starfighter sections of the Battlefront remakes, limited in scope though they were. A Star Wars starfighter mission with the breadth of 2021’s Chorus is what I’m pining for. The starship combat in Outlaws is pretty fun, and yet I’m hoping they will at some point add the option to pilot an A-Wing or a Y-Wing in addition to Kay’s bespoke Trailblazer.

So the quest tree is heavily weighted toward stealth/infiltration missions, and there are also straightforward gunfight events, dogfighting in space, fetch/shop/craft gear tasks, very agreeable casual exploring on speederbike, occasional eating at food vendors, “fathier” racing (horse racing) mini-games I didn’t mess with too much, vintage cabinet arcade scmups, and a lot of sabacc games.

It’s a copious array of stuff spread out over four lovely planets, but the game could still stand one or two more activities. Begging a question, what were you all hyped to do in a Star Wars open-worlds game anyway? Unlock a strip bar? Sleep inside a Tauntaun? The balance of laser battles and daily schlepping through life feels authentic to the canon universe, the open question remains whether one side of the experience could benefit from more detail and more intricate options for solving problems.

IT’S CANTINA-CENTRIC

The commitment to the Mos Eisley underworld side of Star Wars myth is impressive. Kay is skeptical about the Rebel Alliance’s motives, and devotes her energies to concocting scores, making credits, and running from the law/the Imperials. Each planet has some version of a cantina (including the original no-droids pub that started all the magic in 1977) and it’s in these adult-beverage settings that Outlaws truly shines, reproducing and expanding on the jazzy-scuzzy atmosphere that made A New Hope so captivating.

Occasionally, one misses the elegant gratification of the lightsaber, but the Jedi iconography is so well-covered in most other Star Wars media, Outlaws feels like a just compensation. You eventually get a fusion cutter for getting through metal grates, but its use cases are very specific. For much of the game, the toolkit is limited to blaster, grappling hook, grenades, a set of electrobinoculars that mark enemies adequately but can’t seem to focus on anything, and Nix.

Like The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, the set pieces draw heavily on tropes from classic gunfighter Westerns. One stirring scene recalls the final standoff in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, with an appreciably less-tragic resolution aided by deus ex battle-droid. It is a tempting world to marinate in, even when the contracts feel repetitive. If all things were equal, I’d be happy to play Sabacc all day.

Plot-wise, the main thrust of Outlaws is a LOT like the second act of The Last Jedi. There’s an inaccessible target, and you go to all lengths to assemble a crew with the skills to access it. Fortunately, though, this roster doesn’t include whatever character Benicio del Toro was playing in the divisive Rian Johnson film. The supporting cast showcases smugglers and scam artists aligned with criminal factions drawn from far-flung parts of Star Wars canon, all of whom are extraordinarily flexible when it comes to Kay’s constantly-shifting credibility score with their various leagues.

SPOILERS! a.k.a. STAR WARS TRIVIA QUESTIONS & EASTER EGGS

….

Lando Calrissian shows up as a high roller on the planet Akiva. Qi’ra from Solo has a significant role, as do numerous somewhat-familiar characters who are surely from novels I haven’t read. And yes, Darth Vader himself makes a brief appearance to do some genuinely scary Vader stuff.

Aside: I’ve been a Star Wars fan for most of my life, and the two types of squid people have always confused me. I had both the Squid Head and the Admiral Ackbar action figures, and both species were clearly based on squids, yet their body designs were decisively different. Not that there can’t be two squid-based lifeforms in the same galaxy, but I always thought that Ackbar’s people were called the Mon Calamari, and in Outlaws it’s the Squid Head who refers to his home planet of Mon Cala. Are they both Mon Calamari? Does anyone feel my pain?

But while the squid folk have me twisted, I’m happy to have total (non-canonical) clarity on the question that no one asked, but I have (aspirationally) answered, and that is: IS Kay Vess Cantonese? Because she’s from Canto Bight on the planet Cantonica, and makes proud reference to capers pulled in the Canto Grand Casino, which takes the gambling palaces of Macau as design inspiration. Q.E.D., says this Chinese-American. She’s Cantonese, lah.

I appreciated the sequence toward the end where Kay disguises herself in Stormtrooper armor, in a nod to familiar Original Trilogy shenanigans. Yet the ending is plotted with a lot of structural silliness, even for a video game narrative — you do all these things just to gain the chance to not do the next thing when you get the chance to do it. In the endgame arc especially, Outlaws could’ve benefited from some of the tension in the crackling heist scene from Andor, the other criminal-focused Star Wars narrative. The Imperial Security Bureau (ISB) from that show is a presence in Kay’s world, and one wishes (perhaps for the already-announced expansions) for Outlaws to find a way to rise past its essential lightheartedness and offer enemies who create some sense of fear or challenge. One of the classic bounty hunters like Dengar or 4-LOM, or Dedra Meero with her sonic torture headphones, would stay consistent with the fanservice while also compelling us to invest more of our leisure hours into the world(s).

MY RATING OF STAR WARS OUTLAWS, REDUCED TO NUMBERS (1-10 SCALE)

GAMEPLAY: 7
STORY: 8
VISUAL-AUDIO PRESENTATION: 7
TECHNICAL FORTITUDE: 6
(There were a few debilitating first-week glitches, as when I couldn’t dismount the speederbike or got trapped inside a rock. The tutorial had a few funny flubs, but obviously I was going to attack that guard anyway. I imagine these minor issues will be addressed expediently.)

OVERALL: 7

Star Wars Outlaws generates many thrills which will especially engage the Original Trilogy purists, and in its artistic rigor surpasses Episodes I and IX of the feature film entries. It aspires to the immersive grandeur of Episodes V and VI; when it succeeds, it is often due to the nostalgic vibe of the main character, and the cinematic ambiance of the environments.