Star Wars Outlaws was pretty good but shouldn’t have been an open world game
I finished Outlaws last week and immediately fired up Jedi: Fallen Order, officially my favourite Star Wars game since KotOR. I liked Outlaws a lot despite the bugs and bloat: Kay Vess is a great new character, there is some incredible environmental detail, and the story is not only pretty good but sticks the landing—a rare feat for an open-world game.
But the needs of a giant open-world game that is full of shit to do really hurt that story. Outlaws, which is inspired by rollicking high-concept heist movies like Ocean’s 11, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Solo, is missing a key element of what makes those stories so much fun: momentum.
How much time passes in any of these three movies? I don’t think it’s really said, but it feels pretty quick; a few days or weeks at the outside. I have no idea how much time passes in Outlaws. The way the ship gets more cluttered (a nice detail), all the running around you do; it feels like you’re on that ride for months. I finished Outlaws in just over 40 hours—that’s a long game! The sheer number of outfits Kay acquires suggests a long timeline. I buy a lot of clothes, but I’ve never bought 20+ jackets in one week.
Kay and ND-5's relationship ends up being a high point but could have been so much more (not, like, in a sex way).
Kay levels up, but she doesn’t change. Humberly González does a great job with Kay, but she’s hamstrung by a bad piece of directing. At the beginning of the game, Kay is green, uncertain, and scared. González uses a halting, hesitant speech pattern to convey this. It’s a good choice. Unfortunately, nearly every line in the game is delivered…like…this? It’s a fine choice for when she’s bullshitting a mob boss, but just when she’s buying a pair of pants? Like, grow a backbone, kid.
The biggest issue with this is we grow in ability and confidence at the same pace that Kay does. That’s what’s great about video games with strong protagonists: we gain new powers, get better at the game, along with them. But Kay’s voice remains the same unsure, timid young woman—even though she can quickdraw and blast five Stormtroopers in under a second.
In a linear game they could have charted her growth but, in a game where you can do story beats in any order, there’s no sense of progression. The limited amount of crew bonding hurts this, too. You barely interact with your crew, so there’s no opportunity to show how Kay has evolved outside of her stats. The storytelling takes some hits, too—a few events seem to happen out of order, and the journal occasionally references things that haven’t happened yet. Or at least hadn’t for me. It makes the story feel like little more than a vessel to drive the action forward, which is a shame because the plot is a perfectly serviceable heist story with lots of betrayals, setbacks, and double-crosses, and a lot of the scenes are pretty good.
Firing up the Jedi games right after completing Outlaws put the latter’s shortcomings in an especially harsh light. Fallen Order’s storytelling is so mature and so thoughtful—moreso than any other piece of Star Wars storytelling since Andor. It has a clear theme and point of view, and it communicates this with great performances through wonderful characters. Outlaws doesn’t have the same ambitions, certainly, but you can see the narrative team trying to say something new about the seedy underbelly of Star Wars.
Here’s hoping they get to have more focus in the sequel.