Star Wars Outlaws’s critical reception has been a little bit more mixed than creative director Julian Gerighty would have liked, and though the action-adventure title has seen praise from many for everything from its open world design to how it well it captures the Star Wars aesthetic, other aspects of the game have come under fire from many. One element in particular that has been commonly criticized are the game’s insta-fail stealth sections- which even the aforementioned Gerighty admits are “incredibly punishing”.
Speaking in an interview with GamesRadar, Gerighty spoke about one of the game’s earlier insta-fail sections, admitting its issues, and adding that developer Massive Entertainment is currently working on fixing the issues.
“You’re probably thinking of one of the early missions in Mirogana, which is incredibly punishing,” he said. “And for me, that is a mistake, and this is something that we’re going to work on improving. I don’t think it means removing the fail state completely, but I do think there are millions of low hanging fruits where we can make it so much more enjoyable and understandable.”
Gerighty went on to add that the goal wasn’t to make the section feel “unfair” as it does in its current form, which, he explained, was something that “crept in in the last week or so” of the game’s development. The patch that fixes said issues, meanwhile, will arrive sometime in the next 10 days, as per Gerighty.
“We just don’t want it to feel unfair. And today, I think it feels unfair,” he said. “And believe it or not, this wasn’t our intention. This is more of something that crept in in the last week or so, and that we’re correcting already for a patch that’s coming out maybe in 10 days.”
Director Mathias Karlson went on to explain how Massive Entertainment approached balancing stealth sections in the game, before adding that if the existing balance doesn’t work as intended, the developer will listen to players’ feedback.
“[We want players to be] in that knife edge range between, ‘okay, I’m completely in stealth, oh s**t: They’re about to see me. They saw me, but I can still do something about it, as long as I don’t raise the alarm. I can create chaos locally to be able to avoid that happening.’ However, if that turns out to not connect with its current tuning and with enough people, it’s, of course, something we take very, very seriously, and we’ll consider.”
Gerighty echoed that sentiment, saying, “If you tell me today that that’s a blocker for people enjoying the game, then we’re going to tweak the narrative context, right? We’ll have an announcement on the PA saying [does pretend PA voice] ‘well, stormtroopers have gone down Toshara and now we have the skeleton crew on site.’ The context will change, just so that we can get people to enjoy those moments as much as possible.”
In our review of Star Wars Outlaws, we gave it a score of 6/10, saying, “Star Wars Outlaws boasts strong open world design and the swashbuckling and improvisational vibe of a classic Star Wars scoundrel story, but from technical rough edges to some dated design decisions to clunky movement, it’s got more than a few significant issues that weigh it down.” Read the full review through here.
Star Wars Outlaws is available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
