A Four Hour Hands on With Star Wars Outlaws and the Cheapest Copies Available

ign.com:

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there was 1313, a Star War I desperately wanted to play. Tonally, it was pitched to be darker than the inside of a tauntaun tent, and grittier than a Sand Person’s underpants. Better yet, it took an original Dark Forces approach—nary a laser sword nor space wizard in sight.

Sadly, that sci-fi spaghetti Western couldn’t exit the hangar before LucasArts took a proton torpedo to the exhaust port. Our dreams of inelegant weaponry, disintegrations for all, and skullduggery on Coruscant went the way of Padme. Just a pointless, unfair demise.

I’m therefore over the small moon/space station to say I have a new hope for a spiritual successor in Star Wars Outlaws. Ubisoft Massive, a dev that’s been navigating the games-as-a-service system since 2015, is deftly replotting a course to cinematic action adventuring, not unlike 1313.

Mechanically, not everything in Outlaws is perfectly in place—and I’ll elaborate on some iffy Alluvial Dampers in a bit—but overall I was mighty impressed. As an OG fan who’s been falling in and out of orbit with Star Wars since The Last Jedi, I went in skeptical; after four hours of hands on, I emerged with an ardent desire for more high adventure in the low places of this galaxy.

Though I’m not sure if this timeline is accurate to the final product, my save file lists '20 minutes played' when I click in to crash land onto the planet of Toshara. One can only guess as to what's caused my downfall, though it's likely, and a bit poetic, that some Black Sun wannabes probably made me go full Icarus.

I'm treated to a cold open of our heroine, Kay Vess, being face licked awake by Nix as she lies on the deck of The Trailblazer. The former is a fuzzy, axolotl-esque version of Cal Kestis’ BD-1. Think: a command-able companion who's great for messing with distant foes or doodads, and to have one-way conversations with for exposition purposes.

As for the latter, I learn that Kay's mechanical meteor of choice—the