Skip to main content

Star Wars Outlaws showcases its scum and villainy in gameplay debut

Summer Gaming Marathon Feature Image
This story is part of our Summer Gaming Marathon series.

Today’s Ubisoft Forward closed out with a whopping 10 minutes of gameplay footage for the upcoming Star Wars Outlaws, only a day after its debut trailer was released at this summer’s Xbox Games Showcase. You can view the entire gameplay video directly below, but we’re also breaking it down for you.

Star Wars Outlaws: Official Gameplay Walkthrough | Ubisoft Forward

For longtime Star Wars fans, there’s a lot to unpack here. Historically, Lucasfilm’s galaxy far, far away has been a ripe setting for video games, yet it’s been almost 20 years since the heyday of games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Star Wars Galaxies. Both of these offer the most freedom of any video game in the franchise, but are antiquated by today’s standards — not to mention, neither of them is considered canon.

Star Wars Outlaws seems exactly like what fans have been asking for, mixing elements of modern open-world games like Red Dead Redemption 2 and the Assassin’s Creed series with the signature cinematic trappings of the Star Wars universe as players eke out their own existence as interstellar freebooters. The gameplay reveal featured all the sights and sounds you’d want from a Star Wars game, from blaster combat to ground-based speeder chases to even interstellar space travel.

Star Wars Outlaws speeder vehicular gameplay gui
Ubisoft / ubisoft

It seems like protagonist Kay Vess can manually pilot her ship in and out of a planet’s atmosphere and warp across the known galaxy at her leisure. Star Wars Outlaws takes place in the canon between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and it seems like Kay Vess and her companions — such as the adorable alien Nix and droid crewmember ND-5 — will face off against enemy factions like the Empire, as well as the Hutt, Pyke, and Ashiga clans. Players will be able to make choices to influence the events during some cutscenes too.

There’s no specific release date for Star Wars Outlaws as of today’s Ubisoft Forward, but it’s slated for a vague release window of 2024. Star Wars Outlaws is set to launch for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.

Gabriel Moss
Contributor
Gabriel is a freelance writer with a keen interest in gaming and technology. He has written at several sites including IGN…
Star Wars Outlaws might be a little too close to Uncharted for its own good
A character shoots stormtroopers in Star Wars Outlaws.

The Star Wars video game universe is expanding once again. Set to release on August 30, Star Wars Outlaws is Ubisoft and Massive Entertainment's take on a new type of Star Wars game. It's a traditional Ubisoft open-world game with shades of Uncharted layered in between its sci-fi action. More crucially, it's telling a fully unique story in the Star Wars universe. It's clear where its inspirations draw from for better, and certainly, for worse.

Set between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Outlaws follows main protagonist Kay Vess, an outlaw scoundrel embarking on a series of quests to make it in this cutthroat galaxy. It's a strong concept, letting players live out their lives as more of a Han Solo figure instead of a Jedi. But after a recent hands-on demo with Outlaws, I'm not sure that the potential is paying off just yet.
Not-so-uncharted territory
Clearly drawing inspiration from the Uncharted video game series with its climbing, gunplay, and quippy characters, Outlaws feels a bit like a relic of the past. Granted, it's hard to get a sense of a game like this in one sitting. This could just be a difficult game to show a small vertical slice of when the bigger picture could be more interesting. However, the three sections I played left me wanting more.

Read more
XDefiant is getting some massive updates for its Season 1 launch
A player runs through an XDefiant map with a shield from Rainbow Six

XDefiant: Season One Reveal | Ubisoft Forward

XDefiant, Ubisoft's PVP free-to-play shooter, is going strong after a release last month, and its upcoming first season is adding a ton of new features for the players who've stuck around.

Read more
Stormgate is the StarCraft 3 you’ve been waiting for
Celestial units in Stormgate.

Starcraft was once the king of the real-time strategy (RTS) genre, but as Activision Blizzard has made a move away from that genre and Starcraft as a whole, a massive vacuum has been left if you don’t enjoy multiplayer online battle arenas like League of Legends. That’s where Stormgate comes in.

Made by former Blizzard developers at Frost Giant Studios, Stormgate is going for the RTS throne by delivering a worthy successor to Starcraft 2 and an RTS that isn’t afraid to experiment with new ideas and be much more accessible to novice players. After getting a look at the most recent playtest build of Stormgate and getting a guided demo from its developers and professional RTS players, I think Stormgate has a good chance of becoming a hit.
A true RTS
If you’re even a little bit familiar with RTS games, the core gameplay loop of Stormgate will be instantly recognizable to you: gather enough resources to create buildings and units so you can ultimately create the better army and defeat your opponent. Players will be able to do that across single-player campaigns that evolve over time, a co-op mode, and multiplayer matches. When demoing the game, I played a 1v1 multiplayer match to get a feel for what makes Stormgate stand out.

Read more