Star Wars Outlaws – Everything You Should Know Before Buying

Even after all the previews and gameplay thus far, we’re almost two weeks away from the launch of Star Wars Outlaws for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. There are still plenty of details to dig through, from the approach to world design and mini-games to the difficulty options and season pass roadmap. So, without further ado, here are 15 more things you need to know before Outlaws launches on August 30th.

Limited Exploration at the Start

There are five locations to explore in Star Wars Outlaws, but they won’t all be immediately right off the rip. It begins with Kay crash-landing on Toshara, and after progressing enough of the narrative, you can explore and tackle other worlds at your leisure. Massive leans heavily into the exploration aspect – for example, you have a map of Toshara, but it has a fog-of-war that prevents you from knowing what’s out there. Venturing to cantinas, listening to conversations and picking up odd jobs will be the key to fleshing out the world and its various sights.

Ghost of Tsushima as the Biggest Reference

Several open-world titles have influenced the design of Outlaws, including Red Dead Redemption. However, Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima turned out to be one of the “guiding lights.” Gerighty told GamesRadar, “My biggest reference was Ghost of Tsushima, which is more on the Kurosawa side of inspiration than the Western, the John Ford side of the inspiration for George Lucas.

“This is the story, the world, the character…everything fits together with the gameplay guiding everything. That’s the fantasy of ‘you are a samurai ninja in Japan.’ That was one of the guiding lights.”

World Scale

While creative director Julian Gerighty spoke to IGN about how it takes about four to five minutes to cross Toshara on a speeder, the team also put a lot of thought into the game’s scale. Game director Mathias Karlson said the title demands to be “full scale, from the very small to the very big, meaning sitting inside a cantina, playing Sabacc, being able to walk through the street, jump on your speeder or drive across the surface, literally park your bike in your own ship, take off into space seamlessly, and explore that region.”

Said scaling demands more conscious thought than grandiose design, though. “The scale of Tatooine needs, should, and does in our game feels very different. It breathes, its open sand dunes and long sightlines. It’s easy to pick up any little anomaly on the horizon, and there might be an opportunity for you, compared to the dense streets of Kijimi, which is a city in perpetual winter where people are trying to stay warm.”

While Massive wants the game to start small and then get “bigger and bigger” as Gerighty describes, it also wants to reinforce this “sense of everything growing for you…not just the scale of the galaxy, but the scale of the possibilities for you as a character.”

Can’t Kill Civilians or Steal Their Vehicles

Unfortunately, those looking to cause widespread mayhem a la Grand Theft Auto will be disappointed. After playing Outlaws for four hours, YouTuber JorRaptor revealed that you can’t steal vehicles from civilians (who will casually run you over without a care in the world). They can’t even be killed, so you have to save your bloodlust for the Syndicates and Empire agents that want you dead.

Contract Brokers and Raising Reputation

How your choice of Syndicates will affect the plot remains to be seen, but leveling up their reputation seems easy. JorRaptor noted that contract brokers offer unlimited contracts for the same, with some faction rewards including unique outfits. While objectives were described as “uninspired”, reaching higher reputation levels will unlock more dangerous options, presumably for greater rewards.

Living Space Events

Plenty has been said about World Events and emergent encounters on different locations. However, there are also Living Space Events available near specific locations. These include smuggler ships facing inspection from the Empire (which you can intervene in) and Syndicate ships facing attacks from other factions. You may even encounter wrecks with distress beacons and fall into traps. The full scale of activities wasn’t confirmed, but Gerighty promised “a lot to do,” “secrets to discover” and exploration.

Explorer Mode

Though we haven’t seen it in action yet, Explorer Mode will turn off the guiding yellow paint used in platforming sections, meaning less guidance on which parts to climb. It’s a nice compromise between having or not having it in-game, catering to those who want more organic exploration without abandoning players who want a more guided approach.

Replicating the Original Trilogy’s Cinematography

Set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, it’s unsurprising to see many familiar sights and sounds in Outlaws. However, Massive Entertainment has also implemented a special 21:9 cinematic mode. Creative director Julian Gerighty also told IGN back in July that effects like film grain, vignetting, chromatic aberration and barrel distortion give that authentic 1970s look.

Difficulty Presets and Custom Settings

Whether you’re seeking a more challenging experience or want to witness that classic Stormtrooper marksmanship first-hand, Outlaws has multiple difficulty options. Massive didn’t outline all of them, but there is a Story Mode noted to be “extremely forgiving.” You can also customize settings like the Wanted difficulty, enemy difficulty, and Kay’s health. There are also options for auto ledge grabbing, auto-dismounting after grappling, health regeneration for your Speeder, and even adjusting the mini-game difficulty.

Sabacc, Arcade Cabinets, and Fathier Racing

Speaking of which, Star Wars Outlaws is currently confirmed to offer three different mini-games to partake in. Sabacc is the card game which allows for wagering in-game currency (and using Nyx to help look at other players’ cards). The arcade cabinets allow for playing an old-school style shoot ’em up and racer, and you can also wager credits on Fathier Racing, which is like horse racing.

25 to 30 hours for Story Completion

As important as the scale of Outlaws can be, Massive Entertainment is aiming for 25 to 30 hours to finish the story. Even if you opt for a completionist path, a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural, it will take about 50 to 60 hours. Gerighty told VGC last June that it’s “not Assassin’s Creed epic, 200 hours’ worth of gameplay,” allowing the team to “really focus on the detail. It allows us to focus, maybe with a smaller team, on executing something manageable.”

Season Pass Roadmap

What would a Ubisoft title be without a season pass? Star Wars Outlaws launches on day one with an exclusive Jabba the Hutt mission and Character Pack that includes a Han Solo-style outfit for Kay. The first story expansion, Wild Card, arrives in October, wherein Kay infiltrates a “high-stakes Sabacc tournament.” Series favorite Lando Calrissian is also present, though he seems to have his own agenda.

Players also receive two new packs – the Hunter’s Legacy Bundle and the Cartel Ronin Bundle, containing new outfits and cosmetics for the Speeder and Trailblazer. A Pirate’s Fortune is the second story expansion, launching in Spring 2025 and featuring a meeting with Hondo Ohnaka, a space pirate who needs help dealing with a rival gang.

PC Requirements

If you baulked at playing Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora on PC due to its requirements, Star Wars Outlaws is even more demanding. All configurations require Windows 10/11 64-bit, DirectX 12 and a solid-state drive with 65 GB of space. To run the game at the Low graphics preset at 1080p/30 FPS, you need an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz or an Intel Core i7-8700K, 16 GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 (6 GB), AMD RX 5600XT (6 GB) or Intel Arc A750 (8 GB, with ReBAR enabled).

To play at 1080p/60 FPS on the High preset, a Ryzen 5 5600X 3.7 GHz or a Core i5-10400 2.9 GHz, 16 GB of RAM, and a GeForce RTX 3060 Ti (8 GB) or Radeon RX 6700 XT (12 GB). Finally, for 4K/60 FPS on Ultra settings, a Ryzen 7 5800X3D 3.4 GHz or Intel Core i7-12700K 3.8 GHz, 16 GB RAM and GeForce RTX 4080 (16 GB), Radeon RX 7900 XTX (24 GB) or better is required. All of this also requires setting the upscaler to Quality mode.

Nvidia DLSS 3.5 Support

Those with supporting hardware can leverage Nvidia DLSS 3.5 with Ray Reconstruction for even more fidelity. As showcased in Nvidia’s trailer for the same, it allows for more realistic ray tracing and lighting while still delivering solid performance. A closer inspection of higher-quality footage will be necessary, but the preliminary results look promising.

4K and HDR10 Support on Consoles

Massive hasn’t officially revealed the graphical modes for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S as of this time. However, the Xbox Store listing confirms 4K Ultra HD and HDR10 support. Quality and Performance modes will likely be available at launch, potentially to deliver 4K/30 FPS and 60 FPS on Xbox Series X and PS5. However, packaging a 40 FPS mode a la Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora post-launch would also be pretty nice.

DualSense Features

PS5 players rejoice as Star Wars Outlaws features support for the DualSense’s adaptive triggers and motion aiming. Along with adjusting the intensity of the triggers, you can adjust the sensitivity, smoothing strength, and more of the latter in the settings.

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