Well hello again and welcome to another AAA Thursday! We're covering a game that was released already, but has a new creative director and is coming to steam soon (11/21/24). We're talking about Star Wars: Outlaws.
Star Wars: Outlaws was released August 30, 2024. To say the least the game wasn't a blockbuster (remember that place? lol). It didn't do bad, however it didn't meet expectation that Ubisoft set for itself. The open world concept was one of few Star Wars designed in this way. Other than Star Wars: The Old Republic (what a great game) I can't think of one! Definitely none in a single player setting, so, with this being so unique to this title, why did it fall short of expectations? Most believe it was due to the $70 price tag. When faced with so many games, most priced around $60 and most being more highly anticipated than Outlaws was, its easy to understand why it wasn't vastly popular.
However the competition alone isn't to blame for its "poor numbers". In general the reviews were pretty good. But there were some mechanics that people thought of as less than desired. One being the stealth mechanic. The missions themselves are relatively boring and redundant. There are other titles like Thief or Assassin's Creed that do this so much better. On top of that if you're caught the mission resets and has penalties. I get having consequences for mistakes, restarting from a checkpoint is completely understandable. But the reputation loss is just to much, making these mission have an air of anxiety about them.
Next we move to the speeders. This was massively disappointing to me, as I've longed for an open world to race around in on speeders. The controls were clunky and felt very inorganic, on top of that you cant fight from them. A high speed chase where you have to fend off attacking speeders could have been overwhelming entertaining. Many games have this style of combat so, obviously its do-able. The reasons they gave were because; they wanted to create a chase mechanic instead of letting you ride in and assault people. A poor excuse to me as there are plenty of variables you could add to make certain areas non-combat for mounted persons. They missed the mark here not letting the wide open spaces contain speeder combat.
Finally and more of a side note the paywall and lack of customization is annoying. You get cosmetics but, at least for the most part you must spend real currency to buy them via either Ultimate Editions, pre-order or DLC. Some are available through in-game currency but not in any efficient way. And for an already expensive single-player game, that's a tough pill to swallow.
But enough complaining about what was and lets look to the future. What is changing under this new creative director Drew Rechner? Well first and foremost the combat is being revamped! This is exciting and enough to make me revisit the game. Rechner explains "The first area of improvement to the game is combat, where we see a real opportunity to add depth and excitement to the experience, further rewarding your tactics and precision." That is very enticing information as I felt the combat was quite infantile. Next Drew talks about the stealth areas, saying he'll improve the readability and consistency of enemy detection, an area that made me stop playing this game. So again this is very good news. Lastly he wanted to improve character controls. Increasing responsiveness of climbing and crouching, just generally improving the consistency of character controls overall.
While the changes don't give me speeder combat they are significant enough to warrant another look at the game. Also it's finally coming to steam, Ubisoft has put off releasing on steam because... well it was greed mostly. But Star Wars: Outlaws is set to release on steam 11/21/24 and I for one think it may be worthy of consideration, well once the price tag falls a little.
Price: $70-130
Platform: PS5, XBOX Series X and Series S, GeForce Now, Amazon Luna and PC (Ubisoft connect now, Steam on 11/21/24)
Metacritic: 75 (I expect this to be adjusted after revamp)
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