There’s really something to be said for staring down the barrel of a stormtrooper’s grenade launcher, as you dip and dive from cover to cover. The pew pew pew of missed shots, narrow openings and reloading weapons feels equal parts invigorating and nostalgic. This is what many of you grew up with. This is adrenaline personified. This is what Star Wars means.

As such a beloved property, the collective grip that Star Wars has on fans means that breaking new ground can feel risky. Vocal dissent from the worst part of the internet is not uncommon in this community, and so developing an open world game with a female protagonist that largely tries not to get too involved in the conflict of Jedi vs. Sith… It could have gone either way.

As a fan of both Star Wars and open-world games, I knew I had a pretty strong chance of enjoying Star Wars Outlaws. I had a great time with the preview builds, I was fascinated by the worldbuilding, and I’ve honestly spent more time cuddling with a Nix plush than I’ve had real human contact over the last few weeks.

My expectations were firmly up in orbit, hovering somewhere between the brightness of Tatooine’s two moons and the thrill of a perfectly executed blaster shot from the hip. What I didn’t expect, however, was for the game to exceed even those expectations.

Star Wars Outlaws tells the story of Kay Vess, a two-bit scoundrel from Canto Bight who finds herself in some serious hot water when a job goes downhill, fast. With a deathmark on her name and nowhere in the galaxy to safely hide, she and her merqaal companion Nix team up with a slew of unexpected allies in an Ocean’s Eleven-esque heist that could change all of their lives.

And I cannot stress this enough: it’s some of the most fun I’ve had in a game all year.

Star Wars: The Busy Work Strikes Back

For all the pre-release talk about this not being a typical Ubisoft open-world game, Star Wars Outlaws sure feels a lot like a typical Ubisoft open-world game. You play as Kay Vess, a street thief quietly living off her guile until a lucrative heist goes wrong and she ends up stealing a spaceship, then crashing it on the remote moon of Toshara. From here, she must survive by working for the galaxy’s many criminal gangs, playing them off against each other and building a rep for herself as a skilled mercenary and thief. This is where things become familiar. You’re instantly plied with main story quests, dozens of optional minor tasks and also the opportunity to take on side jobs for various smugglers and ne’er-do-wells, usually involving travelling somewhere and fetching things or blowing them up – like in Assassin’s Creed. Or Far Cry. Or Watch Dogs. It’s Star Wars: The Busy Work Strikes Back.

Found Family And The Star Wars Universe

They say that winning is the friends you make along the way, but not since Mass Effect 2 have I felt that sense of crew accumulation and found family. Kay is an enigmatic character who, sure, doesn’t always make it easy for her friends to trust her. But once she’s on your side, she’ll stay there – and boy can she accumulate a rag-tag bunch of miscreants.

Whether it’s her relationship with Nix (who is far and away the best character in the entire game, even when I take hot droid ND-5 into account), or it’s the newfound sense of loyalty and vulnerability that she discovers with the wider heist crew, Kay is a vehicle for growth – both for the player, and for the team.

It could’ve easily felt like drudgery to be traipsing all over the universe, seeking out shadowy figures who inevitably want you to scratch their back before they scratch yours. It could also very easily have felt ill-won to have the crew’s relationships suddenly thriving without all that effort. Star Wars Outlaws straddles that line well, with enough connection and pay-off to make the questing seem engaging, and the relationships organic.

I didn’t expect the game to delve so keenly into the found family versus real family trope, with flashback snippets demonstrating exactly why Kay has such a chip on her shoulder when it comes to relying on anyone other than herself. But that conversation is handled with a degree of nuance that was unexpected, even if some of the supporting characters could’ve been fleshed out more.

A World Of Star Wars Lore

There are key differences, though. Here, you’re aided by your beloved pet Nix, who you can send off to distract guards, fetch useful objects or crawl through tight spaces to unlock doors. It’s cute and serves to add emotional depth and jeopardy to Kay’s otherwise lonely life. But more importantly, the game expertly weaves in Star Wars lore, so that the buildings you’re breaking into are beautifully realised Imperial research stations, ruined Republican spaceships and sleazy Hutt strongholds, all filled with intricate visual and narrative details drawn from the original film trilogy. Everywhere you go, there are treats for fans, whether it’s familiar droids, nuggets of history or beloved spacecraft. The streets of Mos Eisley are even patrolled by Stormtroopers riding those monstrous dewbacks.

An Expansive Open-World

Possibly the most striking thing about Star Wars Outlaws is just how expansive it really does feel. The open-world was a new, potentially risky endeavor – there have definitely been games that have claimed the descriptor before yet didn’t quite live up to the mark, but there was no disappointment on that front here.

Not only are there countless quests, intel hunts, mini-games, contracts, experts, and more, but there’s a whole lot of space to explore too. With “only” four orbits – Toshara, Kijimi, Akiva and Tatooine – you’d be forgiven for thinking the world may feel somewhat limited. Instead, the expanse of star-dotted space feels open, like a yawning mouth of pirates, debris and planets.

Each of the visitable planets has its own distinct biome and flavour (which we were very fortunate to hear about in advance at a preview event), and it helps take your mind off the fact that you’re likely once again heading into one compound or another to piss off one faction or another. Environmentally, thematically and practically, it never feels as tired as it would have every right to feel.

A New Kind Of Levelling Up

One aspect that truly does feel fresh about Star Wars Outlaws is the Expert system of levelling up. At no point do you ever see a number to signify Kay’s growth, nor do you see progress bars of XP rise over the course of the game. Instead, you are asked to locate and grow alongside Experts in chosen fields.

From mercenaries with heavy artillery through to slicing experts that can help you hack into more advanced systems, these Experts don’t require payment in the form of credits – they simply have tasks that you must achieve in your regular gameplay that unlock further abilities.

This could be as simple as landing a headshot 15 times, getting a perfect score on the lockpicking mini-game three times, or even simply making Nix jealous by petting another creature (which I won’t lie, did wound me to do).

Again, this system helps foster a growth trajectory that feels organic and mindful, rather than haphazard. It makes sense from a narrative perspective as much as it does a practical level, and for that I would easily mark it as one of the best inclusions.

A Nostalgic Thrill

Nostalgia is a funny thing – there are times it just swoops in out of nowhere like a TIE fighter and blasts you right in the guts, leaving you confused and in pain. An hour into playing Star Wars Outlaws, I didn’t expect to become emotionally overwhelmed during a minor quest that involved buying spare parts from a group of Jawas. But then I rode my speeder out into the Dune Sea and saw their transport there, black and monolithic under the low suns, and then those little chaps were scuttling about, fixing droids … and it took me right back to being 12 years old, watching Star Wars on VHS in our living room, eating a bowl of Monster Munch my mum had brought to me, repeating the lines along with Luke. There are many moments like this in Ubisoft’s sprawling adventure, and they save its life on more than one occasion.

Gripes And Glitches

There are still tiny gripes, as there are with pretty much every game – at one point a glitch meant my enemies went unintentionally invisible for a minute or so, which admittedly did raise the stakes considerably. A lot of the vent environments feel identical, and if you look exclusively at the core gameplay loop on paper, I can see why it’d feel repetitive. Nevertheless, it had a grip that kept me well and truly entertained, and that’s all I want out of a Star Wars game.

Not to go too inside baseball, but when you’re reviewing a sizeable game like this, a lot of your free time goes into making sure you’ve uncovered every rock and stone. While I’m incredibly conscious of the privilege, for some games, this can feel almost like a chore.

For Star Wars Outlaws, I felt genuine excitement every time I booted up the console. It’s not perfect, but neither are the scoundrels that the story relies upon. Where some might look at a lack of polish and feel wanting, I feel comfortable.

Returning to this universe every day for the past week was something I felt eager to do, not just obliged in any kind of way. What Massive Entertainment have achieved is genuinely impressive.

A Triumph Of Nostalgia

In The Empire Strikes Back, Han Solo says the iconic line, “Never tell me the odds.” In a year where we’ve all been waiting for a standout game to rise up, I feel like – at least for now, and without anyone saying it out loud – Star Wars Outlaws has beaten the odds.

Four-and-a-half stars: ★★★★½

Star Wars OutlawsPlatform(s): PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Microsoft WindowsDeveloper: Massive EntertainmentPublisher: UbisoftRelease Date: 30 August 2024

A code for Star Wars Outlaws was provided by the publisher and played for the purposes of this review. GamesHub reviews were previously rated on a five-point scale. As of 29 July 2024, they have been rated on a ten-point scale.

Steph Panecasio is the Managing Editor of GamesHub. An award-winning culture and games journalist with an interest in all things spooky, she knows a lot about death but not enough about keeping her plants alive. Find her on all platforms as @StephPanecasio for ramblings about Lord of the Rings and her current WIP novel.