Star Wars Outlaws: The Final Preview

ign.com:

It seems impossible that Star Wars Outlaws is the first-ever open-world Star Wars game, but indeed it’s true. With that first comes plenty of expectation, but also lots of excitement – particularly when the studio handling the effort is Massive Entertainment, the talented developers of The Division. Speaking personally, I confess that I don’t often get hyped up for too many open-world games these days outside of those made by Rockstar – as those can be counted on to raise the bar every single time – but I have been plenty hyped for Outlaws. After all, it’s set after Empire Strikes Back, you play as a Han Solo-caliber scoundrel instead of yet another Jedi, and you’ve got an awesome alien creature pet named Nix by your side at all times, who promises to have an impact on gameplay and not just follow our hero Kay Vess around being adorable. In other words, it’s got a lot going for it on paper.

And while it doesn’t seem like Outlaws will do any Rockstar-like bar-raising, after playing a near-final build of it for four hours across two different sections of gameplay, I can say it’s still one of my most anticipated games yet to come out in a busy second half of 2024, and it feels very Star Wars in all the right ways.

Ubisoft has developed a reputation for making “checklist” open-world games; big spaces where you’re given a to-do list of sidequests and activities to complete outside of the golden path. Generally this is not a compliment. But one of the things that impressed me about Star Wars Outlaws is that I didn’t get the sense that I was just checking boxes to inch closer to 100% game completion. Don’t get me wrong – there is plenty to do in Outlaws, but those sidequests and activities feel a lot more organic than they do in the publisher’s other games. For example, while wandering around the town of Mirogana on the planet Toshara, I walked by an arcade mini-game of sorts. I wandered up and played a round. I also stumbled upon a betting stand where I could wager on