With its promise of the ultimate Star Wars scoundrel fantasy, Star Wars Outlaws has looked like a promising prospect for as long as we’ve known about it, and with its release now right around the corner, Ubisoft and developer Massive Entertainment are continuing to offer extensive looks at the game and its open world offerings. Recently, we had the chance to spend over three hours of hands off time with the game, with the gameplay that we saw entailing everything from Star Wars Outlaws’ stealth and combat offerings to many of the locations we’ll be exploring throughout its vast, open, interstellar setting. Here, we’re going to go over some of the new things that stood out to us in our hands-off session with the game.
MIROGANA
Star Wars Outlaws will see players exploring several locations that we’ve seen before in previous Star Wars media, but the game will also offer up some entirely new locations as well- such as the moon of Toshara. A good portion of the gameplay that we saw took place here, with its capital city of Mirogana also getting plenty of screentime. Necessitated by Toshara’s harsh winds, Mirogana is nestled within a large rock formation in the heart of the moon’s savanna, and at least visually, it’s looking like an interesting city to explore. From its dense environments to the NPC interactions available here and there, what we saw of Mirogana looked quite promising.
THE WILDS OF TOSHARA
Outside of Mirogana, Toshara is characterized by vast, rolling savannas, and plenty of what we saw took Kay to these locations as well. Here, traversal is seemingly going to be much more reliant on Kay’s speeder, given the fact that you’ll be travelling larger distances, and to account for the speeder, you’re going to find naturally formed ramps scattered throughout the landscape. Made up of an amber-like substance and swept in the direction of the moon’s strong wings, these ramps should ideally make speeding through Toshara much more interesting. Speaking of which, it looks like speeder races are also going to be available, for those who want to seek them out.
IMPERIAL BASE
A lot of what we saw in our hands-off time with Star Wars Outlaws was set on Toshara, but we did get to see a handful of other locations in the game as well. A couple of hours into what we saw, for instance, Kay flew her ship into a massive Imperial station, where, upon landing, we were able to see the faithfulness with which Outlaws is recreating the iconic and instantly recognizable Imperial aesthetic of the Star Wars universe. As you would expect from the Empire, we saw plenty of clean, white panels in brightly lit corridors, TIE fighters, Stormtroopers, and everything else you’d expect to see in an Empire-related Star Wars location.
KIJIMI
Another familiar location we saw in our time with Star Wars Outlaws was the planet of Kijimi, which was first introduced in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (a movie that many understandably want to wipe from their minds). Unlike the savanna-like landscapes of Toshara, Kijimi is frigid and icy. With squat, stone buildings, much dimmer daylight, and less density of crowds in general, the vibe in Kijimi’s capital city felt decidedly different than that of Mirogana. We’ll be reserving judgment until we’ve explored the city ourselves, of course, but what we’ve seen so far has certainly piqued our interest.
SPACE
While hopping to and from moons and planets scattered throughout the galaxy is obviously going to be a big part of Star Wars Outlaws, exploring and flying through outer space is going to be just as pivotal. In our hands-off session with the game, we saw a fair bit of space gameplay as well, and based on that, it looks like things will be pretty combat heavy. From space pirates to different factions to, of course, the Empire and its patrols, we saw plenty of hectic space combat encounters in our time with the game.
TRAILBLAZER
Kay’s ship, the Trailblazer, is something we’ve seen plenty of in in everything that Ubisoft has shown of Star Wars Outlaws to the world so far, and during our hands-off session, more interesting new tidbit about the ship emerged as well. For instance, we now know that Kay got her hands on the ship only because she was able to steal it. The Trailblazer is, interestingly enough, also described as a particularly well suited ship for space combat, which is awfully convenient, because Kay is going to have plenty of enemies after her at all times throughout Outlaws’ vast galaxy.
CANTINAS
Star Wars Outlaws is hoping to thoroughly immerse players in its seedy underworld of scum and villainy, which, of course, means you’ll often be spending plenty of your time in cantinas as well. One of the early missions that we saw sees Kay heading into a cantina in the city of Mirogana, where she is hoping to strike a deal with Gorak, an underboss within the Pyke syndicate. We got a good look at the interiors of the cantina itself, and for Star Wars fans, it looks like there will be plenty to like in these locations, including unique NPC interactions, easter eggs and impressive attention to detail, and even plenty of minigames.
KAY’S TOOLS
Stealth, cover-based shooting, and open world traversal will be the core components in Star Wars Outlaws, but Kay’s nature of work as a thief and outlaw will see her using plenty of tools beyond just her blaster. She can, for instance, use a lockpick (that she carries in her hair) to get through locked doors, a grappling hook to swing across gaps, a Slicing kit to hack into terminals, and more. Beyond that, you’ll see her climbing through vents, doing some Nathan Drake-style climbing, and more.
LOADOUTS
Aboard the Trailblazer, Kay will have the ability to customize her loadout in various ways. In addition to cosmetic options for what clothes she’s wearing, players will also be able to equip Kay with a limited number of charms, each of which will have different effects. How many charms we can expect to see in the game remains to be seen, but it seems like an interesting way to inject some added level of customization. Of course, build variety and customization isn’t something that Star Wars Outlaws is meant to be focusing on, but there will be a little bit of that sprinkled in there. Whether it will meaningfully impact gameplay remains to be seen, but we’re hoping to get more details on that front in the lead-up to the game’s release.
ADRENALINE
Star Wars Outlaws’ combat will primarily take the form of a cover-based shooter, and we saw plenty more of it in our hands-off time with the game. Early on during the demonstration, in fact, a new Adrenaline mechanic caught our eye. When your back is against the wall in tense combat situations, Kay’s adrenaline meter will slowly fill, which, once filled up, will allow you to essentially pause the action, mark your enemies, and then quickly take them out with a flurry of shots. If it sounds like Red Dead Redemption’s Dead Eye mechanic, that’s exactly what it’s looking like so far.
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