A few days ago, the long-awaited game Star Wars Outlaws was released.
For the first time in many years, its development was not the responsibility of EA, which lost its exclusivity rights in 2023, but of Ubisoft. The situation with the game turned out to be extremely ambiguous: while foreign journalists give the game the highest marks, users underestimate the game’s rating. At the time of writing the review, the new product has a rating of 7.6 from critics and only 4.8 from users.
We have already played for over 20 hours and are ready to share our impressions. Did Ubisoft manage to cope with Star Wars or did they fail this task, as many gamers note? Let’s find out.
Return to the beloved universe
The studio responsible for the creation of the new product was Massive Entertainment, responsible for both popular and mediocre projects, including Tom Clancy’s The Division and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.
In Star Wars Outlaws, we are told about the thief Kay Vess, who has been doing this since childhood. Now she wants to go on a big job to earn a reputation in the thieves’ world and get rich. In parallel with this, another job does not go according to plan, and a large reward is announced for Kay’s head throughout the galaxy.
The story turns out to be quite simple and easy to follow. We are not overloaded with numerous micro-plots and are kept within the framework of one global event that intersects with a number of others. On the one hand, this is good, since we can concentrate on a specific story without being distracted by anything secondary.
However, on the other hand, the plot is not very diverse, it is not multi-layered and is too simple in itself, which can cause melancholy in some players (but here the numerous comic situations that Vess and his pet Nix get into save the day).
It is the facial animation that prevents you from enjoying the dialogues. It seems stuck at 2016 level. Everything looks too rough, and the main character’s face blurs periodically for some reason. And I’m not talking about ordinary gameplay elements – such flaws are visible in full-fledged cutscenes, where everything is directed at a high level, but facial expressions are almost absent. How is that possible, Ubisoft?
Outlaws has a full reputation system. You can be friends or enemies with four groups/clans. Your actions directly affect their attitude towards you, meaning you can become both a respected member and a sworn enemy.
But the implementation of the reputation system itself is lame. Why? For example, you constantly steal something from the gang’s territory, kill everyone in a row, and then complete a couple of contracts, and they forget about your deeds. And you can build friendly relations with them again.
This applies to both plot choices and secondary tasks, including those very contracts. Somewhere you are faced with a difficult choice, and somewhere you can get out of it very easily. Because of this, there is no sense of the importance of your actions and influence over other characters (and after all, you can even destroy an entire civilization with your actions, but in the end you will not care about it).
Your animal is a full-fledged character.
The developers have done a great job with Nix. He always accompanies you in any situation. He is not only functional, but also well-developed character.
This companion can do a lot of things: open vents, carry objects, including dropped weapons, interact with opponents (for example, attack them or steal something from them), blow up barrels, break mechanisms and a bunch of other things. In general, this is your full-fledged right hand, without which you often simply cannot do.
But in addition to these mechanics, there are more personal activities. For example, you can feed the animal. And this will be a full-fledged mini-game, in which you can catch funny situations or just sit and be touched by its interaction with Kay. Well, plus these activities also give their own buffs for the animal.
If you aim at him, he will pretend to be dead.
Nyx is used constantly both in the story itself and in your daily activities. For example, you can play the card game Sabacc for money, where Nyx will help you cheat and will look at the opponents’ cards.
Overall, it’s been incredibly well-designed, it’s got a ton of attention, and it’s just so cute and cool in and of itself!
Stealth and combat. Very, very controversial.
Lost in the middle of nowhere, yeah
The combat system is mostly stealth, where you need to sneak past enemies, because Kay is not the strongest girl who can take out a crowd of droids or imperials in a minute.
For this reason, you will often have to hide and act unnoticed. True, stealth here is often represented by your movement in a crouch. You squat around the corner, and no one can see you – I’m exaggerating, of course, but that’s how it works.
Enemy AI leaves much to be desired. Once you’ve been in a heated shootout, run away into the smoke from a manhole, they’ll remember you at one point in that smoke. Once you move a meter, the enemies will lose you. It’s that simple and stupid. The same goes for grass. The enemy’s intelligence clearly needs some work.
Your primary weapons are fists (3 hits on almost any enemy and they’re out) and a blaster. The latter can be upgraded and improved to unlock new firing modes and increase overall combat power, rate of fire, etc.
Kay can use other weapons, but they don’t let you carry them around (to the point of banality – go into the elevator and throw the gun down). And the other guns you pick up only have one clip. But at least they have some variety: from automatic rifles to grenade launchers.
The problem with firearms is that there is no impact to them. You don’t feel how you hit the enemy, you just see a marker that tells you about it.
As a result, the combat system and stealth in the game are weak on both legs.
Leveling up, open world and space exploration
Kay can improve his skills with the help of some mentors. Each of them hides certain skills that are unlocked as you play. There are no points to invest anywhere.
To level up you only need just play the gameEach mentor has a series of challenges that must be completed, which will unlock a new ability.
There’s a lot of Uncharted-style climbing here.
For example, you can accelerate from a cliff on a speeder, fly 60 meters and not fall. For this, you will learn how to jump on transport to overcome obstacles. Or talk to different merchants, and you will learn how to charm enemies to distract their attention.
The open world itself is represented by four planets (5, if you take the starting location) in different systems. On each of them, the player is given big mapwhere you can freely move and explore them. The game world itself looks alive thanks to the abundance of NPCs that go about their business. However, many are fixated on one animation, which can occasionally ruin the “livelyness” of the open world.
To get into space, Kay Vess has her own ship, the Pathfinder, which can also be upgraded by purchasing numerous attachments for it, such as a more powerful engine or enhanced guns.
The ship flies out into space not like in Starfield. Or rather, not like that. This also happens through a cutscene, but there are no loading screens, you can continue to control the ship, which is rapidly rushing into space through the clouds (they hide the loading).
Overall, you don’t get the feeling of losing control of the ship, and it feels like you’re actually flying seamlessly into space (if you don’t decide to skip this cutscene, there’s a button for that).
In outer space, there are also certain areas for exploration. However, you cannot leave the ship. Here, too, you can look for caches (some can be learned from the dialogues of simple NPCs), fight on ships with other factions, steal cargo and much more.
Of course, without outposts couldn’t do without them on the planets. This is Ubisoft, did you really think they would abandon them? But I will say in the company’s defense that there are a minimum of checkpoints here, and you don’t encounter them very often. And they provide a certain challenge.
In general, they don’t irritate me, but quite the opposite.
Technically, everything is far from perfect.
The numerous landscapes simply make your hands reach for the screenshot button. The game looks Great.
But there are a number of nuances. And they are both in the character animations themselves and in the half-baked state. The abundance of graphic artifacts, numerous bugs – all this negatively affects the gameplay.
These are the aspects that gamers mostly criticize the game for. However, I personally haven’t encountered many of them. Yes, there is some dampness, but it’s not as annoying as it was in Cyberpunk 2077. At least on PlayStation 5, where I’m playing the game.
It’s still worth playing
Star Wars Outlaws turned out to be controversial, many elements in it do not work as you expect. And its technical condition raises questions, and this with a price tag of $70 (about 7 thousand rubles in Russia).
The game itself is casual and fun, but it still needs some work and polishing. There’s no rush to pick up the new game right now, especially with other big titles coming out in the coming days.
Let Ubisoft finish the game first, and then you can get it at a discount (or with the Ubisoft+ subscription, which is available on PC and Xbox). But it’s definitely worth getting, it can immerse you in the atmosphere of “Star Wars” and just generally entertain you.
Source: www.iphones.ru
