About this time in a galaxy we call our own, the Star Wars IP has become quite a volatile brand. Since Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm, audiences have been inundated with many film and TV projects with middling success leaving fans wondering whether the next will hit the heights of the culture defining originals or slump to the nostalgia dependent sequels.

The video game landscape of the jedi chronicles is no exception to the rule. In the last decade we have been treated to great stories like the fallen order series, which nestles perfectly into the (somewhat bloated) Star Wars lore, and the very much troubled battlefront reboot series.

So when I heard that Ubisoft’s next soiree into the franchise Star Wars: Outlaws would be helmed by Massive Entertainment, I like other fans wondered what side of the quality fence it would fall.

I spent countless hours running around a dystopian America in The Division titles so hearing that Massive Entertainment’s next entry would focus on exploring the criminal underbelly of the galaxy far far away had me intrigued. A realm of the universe that I have personally been waiting for a decent exploration of since watching the events in Coruscant in Star Wars: Episode 2, Attack of the Clones.

So walking to this year’s Gamescom, I knew my first priority was to check out what Ubisoft had waiting for us come August 30th.

Ubisoft describes this game as;“the first-ever open-world Star Wars™ game, is coming to Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC in 2024. With development led by Ubisoft’s Massive Entertainment in collaboration with Lucasfilm Games, Star Wars Outlaws invites you to play as cunning scoundrel Kay Vess (Humberly González), who – along with her loyal companion Nix (Dee Bradley Baker) – must pull off one of the greatest heists the Outer Rim has ever seen” – Chastity Vicencio via Ubisoft news page.

Walking into the exhibition, which they carefully crafted to resemble one of the famous cantina bars, I sat down at my station. I was given a choice of three missions to play, one that focused on the stealth mechanics, another that explored the platforming and one that placed you in the middle of a dogfight in space. I chose the platforming level in the hope that it would provide me with a better insight at how I would be spending the majority of my time in this galaxy focusing on movement and interaction with level design.

As a bit of a disclaimer up front, I noticed the graphical fidelity of the game suuuuuucked. Most of the character elements stood out as if they were being displayed on my mum’s JVC television set from the 80’s. But the set next to me looks quite a bit more up to today’s standards, so I put it down to a faulty HDMI connection or something.

Kay starts the level entering an abandoned starship with her partnering mascot Nix as they aim to attain some coordinates for… something?
As I travelled further with Kay and Nix it became very clear that it was going to be tough to find anything particularly unique about Outlaws that would separate it from any other Ubisoft game I had played before.
The movement felt familiar to most Ubi titles and did little but tick the box. There was a bevy of shining materials that I’m sure would come to use in some sort of crafting mechanic. The puzzles take the norm and feel like they almost reskinned any castle playset I would play with as a child. Shoot switch to move platform, find blocked door and just circle around to unlock from the other side, climb wall (which feels almost plagiarised from fallen order) and press button upon the summit.

Nothing we haven’t seen before, but for some reason it feels so unreasonable in this world it gave me a feeling of seeing the matrix, seeing the strings that held this game together. So that rather than immersing me into the world, I was pushed right out of it.

The one thing that kept me invested through this almost monotonous adventure was the character guiding me through his maze. Kay was incredibly charming through her interactions with Nix. When reacting to diary logs and environmental events the writing doesn’t feel robotic but instead comes off as natural thoughts and discussions on the moments in hand. There’s an empathetic nature to Kay that resonates as she appreciates the emotions of a first-time crewmate on the ship before its demise. Her cadence and personality provided a friend that became a very necessary motivation to help me navigate the other levels of the starship that led me to the command bay.

Upon finding the coordinates, I was found by a set of enemies also looking for this MacGuffin. I may have missed some of the tools I had at my disposal in the tutorial, but I didn’t need them. I’ve played enough stealth games to know the very basic progression of this gameplay. Get behind and press button. After what I had experienced up to this point, I had almost hoped that some unique aspect would show up to justify showing this slice of the game, but once I knocked out one of the enemies I managed to slide out as if I was never there. Not due to any magnificent skill I possessed, but because it presented no real challenge (which added to the narrative dissonance with Kay commenting the stakes of the situation through comms to her man in the chair).

Once escaped, a cutscene plays and somehow, an unnamed imperial officer finds Kay and tried to stop them from leaving with the coordinates. Through the orchestral escape kay finds surprise help from a mysterious droid (the very same that has featured on the box art) and it utters a simple ‘run’ to which we are put back into the shoe of Kay again as you slide down a hill to land on your speeder to make your escape, and I will say this moment felt great as the adrenaline hit while I raced away through a mix of starship debris and (what I assumed were) Tatooine tunnels.

As I left the Ubisoft cantina nestled in a very large spot of the Koelnmesse show floor, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Massive Entertainment had not hit my lofty expectations for their entry into the Star Wars world.
Although this was a small slice of the game, it was hard to find any piece of it that let me see the vision that separated this from any other Ubisoft game I had played before. The only exception being Kay and Nix. With the game only around the corner, the demo left me intrigued to find out more about these two. I want to know where they end up in this world, and if I have to play yet another uninspired Ubisoft world to do so, so be it.

Written by Ojey