Star Wars Outlaws Avoids Ubisoft's Biggest Mistakes (& I Couldn't Be Happier)

Star Wars Outlaws Gets Right Into The Action

There Is No Unnecessarily Long Prologue

One of my major complaints about the Assassin’s Creed series is how long it sometimes takes for the games to get going. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla has a nearly 20-minute introductory sequence before players even get to choose which Eivor they play as. While a game like Assassin’s Creed 4 does start off with a bit more action, it isn’t until over an hour into the game that players actually acquire the Jackdaw and start engaging in the game’s main selling point: high-seas piracy. Star Wars Outlaws, on the other hand, gets started much quicker.

Following a short cutscene and a basic introduction to Kay, Star Wars Outlaws let me loose on Canto Bite. It only took about seven minutes for me to start playing the game and another maybe five before I received my first somewhat open-ended mission to make some credits. Having started to play the game directly upon its release at 11 PM my local time, I’d had serious doubts that I would even get a good taste of what the game had to offer by a reasonable time. I was therefore pleasantly surprised by its expediency.

This isn’t to say that games with a long preamble before gameplay are all bad. As a big fan of the Persona series, I am accustomed to having to wait long periods before getting to fully experience what a game has to offer. That said, my expectations for an open-world game are different. If the main appeal of the experience is meant to be getting to explore the world, then that’s what I want to be doing as early as possible. Luckily, Star Wars Outlaws knew this and didn’t waste too much of my time giving me what I wanted.

Star Wars Outlaws Allows Players To Find Their Own Solutions

The Game Leaves Solving Problems Up To The Player

Another aspect of Star Wars Outlaws I was immediately impressed with was the open-ended nature of even its first few quests. One of the first tasks in the game is to collect 100 credits that Kay needs to pay for repairs on her Dataspike. However, how I collected these 100 credits was left completely up to me. I wasn’t even given a few options to choose from in a quest log, instead, I had to explore Canto Bite to find what I needed.

I remember one of the first things I saw was a terminal where I could bet on Canto Bite’s fathier races. Had I wanted to, I could have risked the five credits I had to my name for a chance to quickly earn the credits I needed. Of course, that would leave a lot up to chance and feel like a mistake. Still, it was a mistake the game was perfectly okay letting me make.

Exploring the area more thoroughly, a few other options began to reveal themselves. I could collect junk from around the area and sell it to merchants to make a few credits. Listening in on conversations around the area also revealed to me where an NPC had lost their wallet, allowing me to go find it. This section also taught me how useful Nix could be, as he helped fetch hard-to-reach credits, or would even pickpocket guards for me. This open-ended style of quests also continued even on more seemingly linear missions.

Even Linear Missions Offer Multiple Methods For Solving Them

Players Are Given Multiple Ways To Approach One Goal

After I finished collecting my credits, I did think that my next mission might be a bit more on-rails. After all, it was sending me to an enclosed location with a very clear goal. However, I was pleasantly surprised once I got there that this mission also offered a lot of flexibility.

I was tasked with getting into an office that was blocked by a bouncer, and the game gave me a few options. The clearest ones were to bribe the bouncer or lie to him. Bribing him would have been immediately available if I’d had the required credits, but bluffing meant I needed to find some info on the bouncer. Asking around revealed that he was obsessed with his new speeder, which gave me the information I needed to lie that it was in danger and get him to go check on it, allowing me to slip past.

While looking around for information, however, I also overheard a conversation about animals sneaking through air vents into the boss’ office. Sure enough, as I made my way to the office, I saw the vent that I could have used to sneak in had I not found a way to deal with the bouncer. Seeing the various options reminded me of another Ubisoft game, Watch_Dogs. More accurately, it reminded me of the Watch_Dogs we never really got.

The initial gameplay preview for Watch_Dogs showed a very similar structure for a mission that seemed to give the player a lot of options for how to approach it. However, once the game came out, the actual experience was much more shallow than the preview had suggested. It was a cool moment to realize that Ubisoft had finally delivered on this type of mission, albeit a decade after it was initially promised.

Star Wars Outlaws Proves Less Can Be More

Star Wars Outlaws Focuses On Quality Over Quantity

If there is one lesson Ubisoft should take away from Star Wars Outlaws, it is to focus on crafting a quality experience over a long experience. It’s possible that the development team on Assassin’s Creed Valhalla saw games like The Witcher 3 with absurdly long playtimes and wanted to compete. However, by failing to deliver an experience with the same depth, Valhalla didn’t achieve the same critical acclaim it felt like it was chasing.

Star Wars Outlaws feels like a much better chance for Ubisoft to finally get some praise for its open-world model. This isn’t because the game is a massive sprawling experience, but instead a tight one with more meaningful depth in its mechanics. Hopefully, Star Wars Outlaws is the new norm for the company, as it learns to move away from quantity and closer to quality.