Gaming Star Wars: Outlaws (Ubisoft) [Mod Approved]

Oh yeah, I’ve got the latest GeForce driver, latest Windows updates available for 23H2, latest patches for Outlaws. If anything the next step would be to try to uninstalling drivers/Windows and reverting to later versions as I’ve seen some theories elsewhere that it might be the problem, but I don’t wanna mess with that. GeForce doesn’t make reverting to old drivers easy, and uninstalling Windows is a rabbit hole I really don’t wanna go down.

I’ll just wait for more patches from Ubisoft and hope for the best. I’ve been prowling various Reddit and Discord threads where people are trying to trouble shoot the problem, a lot of people with more powerful rigs than mine and who are more savvy with pc’s are having the same issues with CTD. If they find a solution I’ll be the first to know.

 

That sucks. Empire at War flashbacks of CTD. Ive also had that problem when my MOBO was ready to die a long time ago, hopefully thats not the issue.

 

Just brought up a lot of repressed memories. I remember playing EAW on possibly the lowest spec laptop at the time and dealing with constant crashes and unbearable lag.

 

Strongly doubt it’s the motherboard, I got the rig only two years ago and it runs very well for all other games. It’s gotta be a problem with Outlaws that’s only affecting a slice of the player base on pc, this guy seems to be having the same issue:

 

Copy has arrived and I'm two hours in.

The general design of the world and its characters is excellent. Everything looks and sounds as you would expect for a SW game.

Where it is far rougher - and I expect this to improve as UbiSoft games tend to be weakest at the start - is the gameplay. There are some surprising accessibility gaps in places, despite that being very good.

Things like weird colour choices for game text, which I eventually fixed, and very fast disappearing of hint / explanation text, which I have found no solution to. This can be frustrating as the info vanishes quicker than I can process it.

For the stealth sections I'm still not seeing how Nyx's camera distraction works. If you carefully take out all the guards in an area, then take out a camera, two more will warp in. You disabled the local alarm? Doesn't apply to the camera. It feels underhanded and cheap.

When you are in a firefight, the direction indicators are poor for enemy location. Here I suspect there might be a high contrast setting I haven't found, as I think I'll need it to be able to see enemies. Too often they are dark figures on a dark background.

The minigames? The lock-picking one is useless and abysmal. The Wordal one was surprisingly all right, but I'm playing with every assist I can find, including the blaster auto-cool.

The biggest problem I have is it can be frustatingly vague in its directions and signposting. Unusual for a UbiSoft game true, but I think this is them over-compensating for past games.

I think it'll get better, especially if I find those further accessibility options, but it's a rough opening. Oh yeah, that fixed falthier race at the start? Total con.

 

This is the only thing I can think of with that minigame.



Never stops being funny.

 

My version hasn't arrived yet

I was hoping for it to be installed by now, looks like I'm going to be waiting.


I'm sure I'll survive
//goes back to the GW2 expansion

 

I think I might be done with this abomination of a game.

The "stealth"? Crap. "Shooting"? Crap. "Aim assist"? Might as well not exist, it's non-existent. Enemy direction of fire? Crap, even with high contrast it's too difficult to see what I need to.

Outposts get to infinite spawn enemies.

World immersion? Killed by game bullcrap, a ton of it.

The Gorlak base mission? "Stealth" gameplay that was outdated over a decade ago. Oh, binoculars and marking targets? Great. Except I can't see what I need to and so can't play it easily. Took out 2 alarm panels, nope there's another one I didn't get.

Even at the start I was nearly blocked because, having activated high contrast mode, which includes interactive objects, the vent I needed was not highlighted!

"Fall protection"? Another total lie.

Decided to explore a bit. Tried the treasure dealer for Nix, nope. Turns out you have to do another quest to unlock but it doesn't explain that.

On another you get a prompt that someone knows a password, so I have to go talk to someone. No, you instead have to stand in the right location and eavesdrop, not that you have any idea you can do that because the system hasn't been introduced. Even if it had the directions are off.

Then tried doing the Sabotage mission, which was even worse. Climb up, here's some guards that I'm supposed to take out with no cover! Oh and the enemies are a definite hive mind.

Speeder combat? Utter rubbish, there's no way to easily see the enemies outside of its crappy, timed Red Dead bullseye bollocks. So it's drive around, wait for meter to fill up, activate, look for poorly indicated enemy, mark and shoot before it runs out. That's all it has.

And, this is with it set to Story, which is stupidly difficult.

Is the game mis-sold? Yes, it is, it absolutely is.

 

Still haven’t found a fix for the chronic crash to desktop, which strangely happens at almost exactly 18min mark every time I play, but my game is installed on ssd, and the load times are less than ten seconds, so I decided to buckle down for a few hours and play as much as I could. It’s far from ideal but nonetheless I had fun . . . because I really like this game!

It certainly isn’t setting any new standards for the third person action genre but it’s a breezy little adventure with just enough heart to be charming at unexpected moments. I’ve just left Toshara, so probably not even 20% through the main story yet.

• Open World - Toshara is not a concept that looks great on paper, “What if we made a wind-themed planet for Star Wars,” but somehow it works pretty well. Wind-cut sandstone canyons are reminiscent of mesas from the American Southwest and then you have broad wetland plains with alien megafauna, like a zany African Serengeti. Zooming around on the speeder is a blast although it handles a bit janky. That ends up being its own thing, crazy near misses keep you amped up, it has the too-fast energy of the speeder chase from ROTJ and podrace from TPM. Exploring low-orbit in the Trailblazer is pretty simple but gets the job done for letting you know there is an off-world dimension waiting for you when you’re interested in that. Cities and towns are atmospheric with loads of NPC’s, although the variety of aliens is a bit limited for now. Lots of Trandoshans, Rodians, Zabraks, Wequay, and Twileks, and a few fat Twileks. I think I spotted one Ithorian at some point. I expect that we’ll see more on other planets.
• Stealth/combat - it’s very simple and casual, there’s no mechanic for hiding bodies because it doesn’t matter. Nix is your constant helper, able to manipulate devices undetected, to distract enemies, or jump on their face like an angry cat while you run in for a knockout punch. When the blasting starts it’s usually over pretty fast, enemy ai is rudimentary, if they outnumber you by a wide margin then you’re probably in trouble though.
• Minigames - dataspike lock picking us pretty lame imo, and I decided to disable it. Slicing is pretty straightforward but uninteresting. The big standout is Kessel Sabacc, I love how the implemented it, a wacky take on Texas Hold’em. Every game has fully animated and expressive ai players at the table like in Red Dead Redemption, the game is complex enough to allow for different strategies and the “cheating” mechanic where Nix will spy on opponents’ hands is delightful. And I wasn’t expecting this but there’s also an “eating” minigame where Kay and Nix have meals together and it’s great.
• Story - so far it’s a bit underwhelming, only a few characters feel memorable, most are very bland npc-nobodies who needed more exuberant voice acting. Kay is pretty bland too, but Nix frequently saves the day with too-cute humor. There is a backstory to her but it’s getting rolled out very slowly through flashbacks that don’t do enough to establish things. As with many open-worlders the environment is supposed to be telling its own story, that happens sometimes, there was one mission where I snuck into an Imperial research station and discovered they were manipulating Toshara’s meteorology, it gave some context as to what might be going on behind the scenes, but then not much follow up. Choosing which syndicates to side with does have consequences, if you get deeply on their bad side they will bar you from their turf and even send bounty hunters, but the chances to actually interact with people in conversations are few and far between.

As I kind of expected it to be Outlaws is a casual vibes game, if you like the gameplay loop of racing around for an exploration/stealth mission, then heading back to town for vendors and a game of Sabacc, then checking in the main story, repeat, repeat, it can be a lot of fun.

 

Could a new Star Wars game be dividing the fanbase?

That's never happened before!?

 

According to PlayStation stats I am about 70% of the way into the game. I expect to finish it tonight or tomorrow (basically only been doing main quests)

it’s not Jedi survivor or fallen order. You can feel the love put into those two games. The story is fine. A 8/10

however it just completely falls apart on game play. Stealth is boring as ****. Gunplay is pretty boring. I would so far unless the story improves tremendously give the game a 6.9/10 which if you know me it’s pretty bad.

it’s still better than hogwarts legacy which had a boring ass story and a boring ass gameplay


Like at this point I feel like continuing it just so I can finish it.

 

Honestly I really don't get the criticisms of the gameplay at all. I think it's great. Maybe it's just how I'm playing it, but with such a variety of different abilities you can use, it turns the whole thing into like an aggressive stealth game where you have to always be making moves, which is how a rogue should play!

Sneak into an outpost, sic Nix on the nearest guard, take out his partner before finishing off the one Nix is distracting, another enemy group sees the bodies and starts to investigate, use Nix to detonate a smoke barrel, rush in and beat them down before they can react, move on the objective, slice into their camera system, get spotted, keep the enemy talking before hitting them with my stun blast, grab the loot, make my escape.

It's so much fun.

 

just watching other people play on YouTube, the gameplay looks fine, a good mix of exploration and stealth works for me

but I totally get what @Jedi Ben is talking about, sometimes the gameplay just doesn't work for whatever reason, I had a horrible time with the last battlefront game, and I'm not even talking about the live gameplay, just the story missions which is all I was really interested in, I'm not kidding when I say it probably took me a hundred attempts for some of the missions lol

for whatever reason I usually have an ok time with the kind of stealth gameplay this looks to have

 

Anyway final thoughts reposted from the kit forum.

basically the story improves greatly in the last few missions. Enough to boost the overall score of the game to a low 8 although I still don’t like the gameplay


Okay that’s a wrap for the main quests. 36 hours. I have a feeling I could have gotten it done in under 32.

now I have to amend what I said about the game.

the story does pick up near the end. I wish it was just that level a bit longer.

however this game is filled with twists and turns some that I guessed literally straight away

Spoiler

I guessed the family twist coming from literally the moment we met Jaylan lol

other twists I did not see coming

this game has a lot of similarities to Jedi survivor. Hell even the story beats are semi similar.

overall I think the story is a high 8, but the gameplay needed some work.

I almost wish the story was working for one of the syndicates throughout the entire game instead of doing this solo adventure

By the way can someone with low or poor crimson dawn rep confirm this for me when they beat the game

Spoiler

does Qira show up in the end to save you or is that just me because I had max rep.

I do hope this game gets a sequel. As I feel like they could make a much better game if they do.

so that’s my thoughts after 36 hours. A good story especially near the end. Gameplay could have used some work. If you love games for the story great. If you want something a bit more fun in the gameplay department than not the best thing ever.

did I have fun? Yes.

also the credits were Uber long. But I saw you that one dude from Kyiv who worked on this game. Although really I just saw Kyiv in the credits. Ubisoft has like a billion sub studios

 

Anyone else turn off the wide-screen cinematic aspect ratio? It looks cool and Star Wars-y but after just 40 minutes I am tired of squinting at the icons

 

Throwing in my usual flag - those posts are not reviews, they are of the moment.

Do have a new theory I need to test later, along with the new perks, too.

 

Yeah, cinematic aspect ratio is a bit harder to play with than traditional fullscreen imo, turned off right from the get go.

I managed to have a little gaming session today, and I really like how things play out once you’ve got the Trailblazer’s hyperdrive working and are free to go anywhere. The first stop they recommended was Kijimi, so jumped over there. Started following up the main storyline but then ND-5 tipped me off that an ex-mercenary was nearby who could help out. This was part of the “experts” system which is how you unlock new abilities so I was keen to follow up. Turns out this washed-up mercenary had a mission for me on a little old planet called Tatooine.

So of course I’m eager to blast off to the place where it all started and see how it looks. Man, rolling off the cargo ramp in the speeder and just gunning it across a salt flat feels awesome. I pulled up the map to see where the mission would take me, but noticed on the north end was Mos Eisley, so of course I’m going there. On my approach I see some hills/mountains around the settlement so of course I race for them, hoping to find a cliff where I can recreate that classic frame from A New Hope where Luke and Obi-wan view the settlement. To my dismay every mountain seems to be off-limits, climbing them gets you a “return to map” warning before booting you out. Very disappointing.

Anyways, I headed over to the cantina, and it was awesome. All of Mos Eisley is great, feels very atmospheric, they nailed the vibes.

 

One funny story cropping up is people being addicted to Sabacc.

 

That would definitely be me, can’t get enough Sabacc

 

I did just win big at the Fathier races finally! Bet big and won big which I needed because I threw away about 300 credits on bribes

 

I never bet unless I already know who's gonna win.

 

Ahaha I'll have to look into it eventually I'm still traumatized from the door code hacking minigame

 

I've been playing with it. Switched it off for the short run I just did and it makes a deceptively major difference in how the screen reads. I was driving far better for instance.

 

You know I wonder what the order Ubisoft thinks is ideal for each planet? Do they want you to do Tatooine first? Last?

the reason I ask is while the game works well no matter what planet your going to or even if your hoping between planets all the time like I was. I feel like they definitely want you to do kijimi last. Just the fact that

Spoiler

qira is there as well as the most consequential moral decisions of the game makes me think they want you to do it last.

I would love to see if you guys agree when you beat the game. But again it feels like they don’t really care if you do Akiva or Tatooine first or second but the game feels like it flows better if you do Kijimi last.

 

Out of curiosity, decided to look at the trophy stat percentages for Star Wars Outlaws on PS5.

First story mission completion is nearly 86%. But the completion for the quests on the first planet Toshara? Just over 27%! And it only goes down from there.

Based on the mostly very frustrating hours I have had with it, yeah, that does track. I can see a lot of people bailing on this game.