Is Star Wars Outlaws Not Taking Enough Risks with its Gameplay?

Specifically where Massive Entertainment is concerned, Star Wars Outlaws is treading new ground. Though The Division is not the only thing the studio has ever worked on, it is a team that is associated first and foremost with live service looter shooter experiences, so it’s fair to say that with Star Wars Outlaws, Massive is heading into territory that isn’t necessarily familiar for itself. Sure, it’s open world, and sure, there’s still plenty of third person shooting happening, but as a single player, narrative driven, sci-fi game based on a major license, Outlaws isn’t the kind of experience that Massive usually works on (though to be fair, a lot of those same words can also be used to describe Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, which released last December).

But though the studio will surely have had to pick up a lot of new tricks during the development of Star Wars Outlaws so that the game could successfully achieve everything that it was trying to achieve, for the actual players, the situation is looking almost entirely different. We have seen quite a lot of Star Wars Outlaws over the course of the last year or so, and from its combat and stealth to its open world, factions, characters, and more, all of its core pillars have received plenty of details in the lead up to launch. A lot of it has looked great, some of it has sparked some skepticism- but this isn’t even about whether it has looked good or bad, because to many, the problem is that the game has looked maybe a bit too… safe, so far.

Let’s pause and take stock of what we have seen of Star Wars Outlaws so far. Cover-based shooting, the sort of stealth mechanics that will be familiar to anyone who’s played any open world game with stealth elements in recent years, dog fighting when you’re in space, zooming across large maps on a vehicle, climbing mechanics similar to Uncharted, and of course, a quippy protagonist with an adorable furry companion- all of these are elements that Star Wars Outlaws has hit heavily in its pre-launch marketing, and every last one of them is individually something that we have seen either in other games or in other media countless times.

The question, then, that many have asked is this- is Star Wars Outlaws playing it too safe? Sure, Massive Entertainment is stepping outside of its usual comfort zone by not developing a live service looter shooter, but if you have played any number of AAA open world action adventure games or third person shooters in recent years, is the game doing anything that you will not have seen before in numerous other games? For the most part, based on what we have seen of the game so far, the answer is probably no.

But – and there is a but – that doesn’t have to be such a bad thing in all cases without exception. Earlier, I mentioned that this isn’t about whether the things that Star Wars Outlaws is doing are good or bad- but let’s fact it. It obviously is, because ultimately, that’s what anyone playing the game is going to care about. Yes, it has all of these systems and mechanics that make it seem, at least on face value, like the game was designed on a conveyor belt by the Super AAA Committee™ or something, but if those systems and mechanics are well implemented and fun during gameplay, the fact that the game maybe lacks in originality is going to matter much less.

By that same token, however, if the game fails to nail the fundamentals with those elements, people are going to be much less tolerant of its unwillingness to take risks and do new things, especially given how saturated the AAA open world action adventure space is. In a genre where competition is that stiff, if a game isn’t meeting a certain threshold of quality, chances are it’s going to get either ignored (at best) or slaughtered (at worst), big, shiny license or no. Just look at how things went down for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.

Or, if you want to take a more positive outlook, you can look at Star Wars itself, and Respawn Entertainment and EA’s single player cracks at the property in the form of the Star Wars Jedi games. Fallen Order and Survivor are both games that liberally borrow elements from a variety of different games, from their Metroidvania design and their Soulslike elements to their traversal mechanics and more, but in spite of the fact that they’re not necessarily reinventing the wheel with anything they’re doing, both games are critical and commercial hits, thanks to the fact that they’re both incredibly well made games that are well worth playing even if you’re not a huge Star Wars fan.

Whether or not Star Wars Outlaws can replicate that sort of success is the big question right now. Based on everything that we have seen of the game so far, it certainly has got a lot of promise, and – credit where credit is due – it’s not like it’s not going anything interesting that we don’t see an awful lot of in open world titles of this ilk. The Reputation system is what Outlaws is building its entire gameplay framework on, and it’s looking undeniably promising, especially because of how well it can potentially facilitate the game’s promise of the ultimate Star Wars scoundrel fantasy.

There has, however, also been some skepticism surrounding the game in the lead up to its release. A lot of that has been down to the game’s perceived unwillingness to step away from the established AAA framework for the genre that it’s in, but it hasn’t helped that Ubisoft has made some typically Ubisoft missteps with the game as well, whether that’s the ridiculously high price of its Ultimate Edition, or the fact that it is locking a bonus Jabba the Hutt mission behind paid DLC, or the fact that its physical disc is going to require a download. Again, these are practices that we have seen multiple times in the past, either from Ubisoft itself or from other major publishers in the industry, but when all of those annoyances add up and combine with a game’s showings not landing for everyone, there’s going to be more bad press than usual in the lead up to release.

The good thing is that Star Wars Outlaws is now not long away from launch. Due out at the end of August for current gen consoles and PC, the open world sci-fi title is finally within touching distance now, and questions about whether or not it’s going to be able to live up to its many lofty promises will soon be answered conclusively. Our hope is, of course, that Outlaws is able to prove the skeptics wrong, because honestly, the prospect of an big budget single player open world Star Wars game is a salivating one that we’ve been dreaming about for years and years. Fingers crossed, right?

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.