- Platforms
- PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S
- Publisher
- Ubisoft
- Rated
- T (teen)
- Genre
- Action, Adventure
- Release date
- Aug 30, 2024
Set between the events of The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983), Star Wars: Outlaws follows Kay Vess, a young scoundrel who assembles a team for a massive heist to pay off a crime syndicate1. Kay navigates the galactic underworld, attempting to outmaneuver the Empire, evade the Syndicates, and confront elements of her past. The game features third-person gameplay, open-world exploration, combat with blasters and melee attacks, and the use of a companion named Nix.
James Carrick
James Carrick is a passionate film enthusiast with a degree in theater and philosophy. James approaches dramatic criticism from a philosophic foundation grounded in aesthetics and ethics, offering insight and analysis that reveals layers of cinematic narrative with a touch of irreverence and a dash of snark.
6 comments
Goblue7405
August 29, 2024 at 12:23 pm
After about 5 hours of playing they really continued with the Star wars Disney theme “but a chick in and make her gay” theme. There is a side quest you do for another female character and the whole mission they flirt and they try and make you feel the sexual tension.
Also so many female storm troopers!! Not really a bad thing but we all know why the developers did this.
So far the gameplay is enjoyable and there is lots to do on the planets and the cities are very lively. Main character is kind of boring though. We will see if her story gets any better. So far it’s a 7/10 (woke-ish) for me but I’ll update once I complete the game.
Apparently the villian
October 22, 2024 at 7:10 pm
I skipped this one without a hint of regret. I am not buying anything with even a hint of agendas. We have to stop supporting it.
Seymour Butts
October 27, 2024 at 7:13 pm
tbh why even have a video games section if you’re just gonna not review anything
James Carrick
October 27, 2024 at 7:18 pm
Our game reviewer left and we are looking for a new one.
Sweet Deals
October 30, 2024 at 6:45 am
I didn’t play the game, but I watched a 14-hour playthrough on YouTube. It allows me to save both money and time on games that are both too expensive and time-consuming for me to actually play while still getting the story. This is a big, sprawling game with lots of ground to cover, optional quests to hunt and different choices to make, so I didn’t see everything; only the things that the player chose focus on. I’d like to add that I am a former Star Wars fan who has been consciously avoiding everything Disney has put out in the past ten years. (As Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn says, your focus determines your reality, and I prefer to live in a sane one where I’m not miserable all the time). I can appreciate the attention to detail that the developers put into the game. However, I’m watching this playthrough specifically to search for objectionable content. It’s going to be difficult for me to be objective when I admit my heart has been bruised. I’m taking this one for the team.
The game centers on a career criminal who was trained by her deadbeat mother, who was also a career criminal before she abandoned her daughter at the tender age of twelve. The main thread that runs through the game is that our protagonist wants “freedom”, but the only way to get it is acquire everything you want by stealing and achieving “scores” (payloads from heists). She’s not only a criminal who makes a living by stealing for and from criminal syndicates. She believes her criminal lifestyle is justified because she’s a victim of living in a “rigged galaxy”, and she’s playing the game to get what’s hers. This also goes for the main villain. He was born in a wealthy family, but double-crossed them because he thought he was disfavored, and subsequently built a criminal empire with that motivation. The crime bosses are wealthy and powerful but still consider themselves as victims.
During the story, Kay Vess repeatedly allies herself with people who are generally considered untrustworthy and have no compunctions about stabbing each other in the back when it’s convenient. She acts as if she doesn’t trust them because she thinks she’s being used, and she can only truly rely on herself. She also remarks that the Rebel Alliance is morally equivalent to the Empire and the other criminal syndicates because she thinks they are users, too. However, during the gameplay, Kay is constantly making friends left and right because as a video game protagonist, people instinctively trust her and the game wouldn’t be able to advance otherwise. There’s some degree of mixed message here; by the time the game is over, everyone has doubled-crossed each other and yet Kay still has friendships with her companions, who all go their separate ways. I’m still a little confused about what kind of point the game was trying to make. Either you have loyalties or you get betrayed by everybody. The game keeps switching between one and the other. I’m taking the moral with a grain of salt because everyone is a selfish criminal. I don’t know if this game is like Jedi Knight or Knights of the Old Republic, where Light Side and Dark Side choices were clearly marked. This time, you choose from multiple crime syndicates and I’m assuming that they’re all evil to some degree.
Now, we go on to the obligatory intersectionality. About 80% of the plot-relevant characters that Kay meets during the game are females in positions of power and male-dominated professions. There are female crime bosses, female intel brokers, female technicians, female mercenaries, female Stormtroopers, female Imperial officers, female merchants, female speeder racers, female bounty hunters, female Tusken chieftains, female Jawas and female translator droids. While I have no personal issue with seeing competent female characters as individuals, when I see them in male-dominated professions with such an unusually high frequency I can’t help but think that someone in central casting has been “stacking the deck”, so to speak. I don’t think this can entirely be chalked up to alien species having different gender roles than humans do. Did so many men die during the Clone Wars that females had to step up and replace them in every job? I hesitate to call them “women”, because in the world of intersectionality, a female character is essentially a male character with breasts. There are male allies, but they’re more nerdy than manly, and the truly manly men are villains. It’s obvious that the females are meant to be cooler in every way.
Also on the obligatory intersectionality scale, Kay meets a black, obese woman with a butch haircut who claims to be someone’s auntie (but her nephew is not black). She refers to the obese, white, long-haired woman standing next to her as her “partner”. Should I give them the benefit of the doubt and not assume that these two women are lesbians in an interracial relationship? Let’s go with that. Also, as mentioned above, Kay is hunted down by a black, female bounty hunter with a butch haircut named Vail for a hefty bounty. There is a main quest where they have to work together as a team to escape alive. They don’t become a couple by the end of the story, but Vail double-crosses her boss to ally with Kay and they reconcile as friends. If the game wants to imply that Vail is a lesbian, I’d prefer not to take the bait.
I’m sure the developers worked really hard on this game. The environments are beautiful and detailed, there are many open-ended possibilities, and it probably would have been an excellent game if not for the distracting obligatory intersectionality. But that’s the key element that makes it a deal-breaker for many fans, especially former fans like myself.
Fondily McRub
January 5, 2025 at 12:27 am
As was already mentioned, the density of female characters is completely unnatural. It’s not just that there are more women than these fields would suggest, it’s that it’s almost ALL women. With so many women in this game, it’s amazing how it completely any femininity. We’re not lacking any male brutes and morons, backstabbing faux allies, and just generally immoral characters. Masculinity is clearly associated with power, corruption, greed, stupidity, unless of course it is a woman being masculine and masculine they all are.
Of course, the 2 main antagonists are white men. You have a companion besides your pet, a robot, which helps guide you around unknown parts of the galaxy. I’m convinced they had a head scratching moment here. Either they selected another woman as a companion, which would be way too in your face, or they would go with a man, and then you’d have a male character mansplaining things to the protagonist. So they went with a robot devoid of any human traits.
I honestly don’t blame Ubisoft or Massive interactive for this. Pretty sure this is a Disney thing. If you want to use the Star Wars IP these days, you gotta conform. It’s easy to ignore all these things and enjoy the game anyhow, and it’s really good. You shouldn’t let the talent behind this studio go to waste just because Disney bought Star Wars. Wait for a sale and get the game, it’s totally worth it and you’re not financing this nonsense.