Star Wars Outlaws Deserves a Second Wind in a New Format

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home January 2, 2025 7 Views 7 Min Read
Star Wars Outlaws Deserves a Second Wind in a New Format



Summary

  • Star Wars Outlaws’ unique premise of featuring an everyday scoundrel is a bold design choice for the franchise.
  • A change in studio could benefit a do-over for Star Wars Outlaws due to Ubisoft’s tarnished reputation.
  • A reboot of the game might improve without heavy reliance on stealth gameplay, and instead focusing on more flexible playstyles.

Regardless of any criticism it has faced, Ubisoft and Massive Entertainment’s Star Wars Outlaws is one of the most distinctive Star Wars titles ever made, simply on account of its premise. Whereas most Star Wars games tend to gravitate toward featuring a Force-using protagonist, Star Wars Outlaws‘ willingness to have an everyday scoundrel lead its story is not only a bold design choice, but it’s also a sign of what Star Wars games are capable of if they are daring enough to venture into such territory. Unfortunately, Star Wars Outlaws is one of the more well-known downfall stories in recent memory, but that doesn’t mean it all needs to be thrown away.

Arguably, the whole idea behind Star Wars Outlaws is just too good to give up, so to simply let it slip away into the past would be a massive missed opportunity. It brought a fresh and worthwhile experience to Star Wars in the gaming space that deserves a second chance, but it would most certainly need to change its format if it hoped to succeed.

Star WArs Outlaws Speeder

Related


The Star Wars Outlaws Brand Hopefully Won’t Face the Reaper

Star Wars Outlaws may not have made the waves Ubisoft intended it to, but the game’s core concept is too good to be left gathering dust.

Star Wars Outlaws Deserves a Mulligan

A Change in Studio Could Benefit a Star Wars Outlaws Do-Over

It’s a bit painful to admit, but one of the most significant hurdles Star Wars Outlaws had to overcome is the fact that Ubisoft is attached to its legacy. For some time now, Ubisoft has garnered significant criticism for releasing unfinished games, employing unsavory business practices, and, most recently, its Assassin’s Creed series, which the controversy surrounding Assassin’s Creed Shadows has only served to exacerbate. While Star Wars Outlaws was developed by Massive Entertainment and only published by Ubisoft, the association of Ubisoft with the game may have been enough to taint its reputation from the beginning.

In light of that, perhaps a different developer would work for a Star Wars Outlaws do-over, not necessarily because Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft didn’t do a great job with the game, but because Ubisoft’s reputation has been so tarnished as of late. For example, Rockstar Games could possibly do wonders with a premise like Star Wars Outlaws‘, especially given its history with outlaw-centric franchises like Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto. BioWare, Naughty Dog, and CD Projekt Red might even be solid studios for heading up the development of another Star Wars Outlaws, as each of them has proven their expertise with similar worlds and gameplay.

Star Wars Outlaws Might Be Better Without Stealth

Development studios aside, one of Star Wars Outlaws‘ biggest problems is its gameplay. The idea of a Star Wars game featuring an outlaw on the run is a noble one, but Star Wars Outlaws ironically requires a lot less running and a lot more sneaking. Even as soon as players depart from the first planet in Star Wars Outlaws, its gameplay loop may begin to feel a bit repetitive. This isn’t necessarily due to the content available on each of the planets or the way each area is executed, as Star Wars Outlaws does improve Ubisoft’s open-world formula to a degree by holding players’ hands less and leaving discovery largely up to them. Instead, Star Wars Outlaws‘ repetitiveness is more so due to the core gameplay loop of Star Wars Outlaws, which revolves around stealth almost every step of the way.

Rockstar Games could possibly do wonders with a premise like Star Wars Outlaws‘, especially given its history with outlaw-centric franchises like Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto.

Star Wars Outlaws is one of those games that initially looks like it might occasionally employ stealth mechanics. However, it relies on them even more so than most classic Assassin’s Creed games, which are actually intentionally designed to be stealth games. Of course, players aren’t technically required to approach every situation stealthily in Star Wars Outlaws, but since getting caught in a restricted area can quickly lead to players being swarmed by an overwhelming number of enemies, stealth is not only encouraged, it’s all but forced.

In light of that, perhaps Star Wars Outlaws could get away with a second chance if it focused less on stealth gameplay and more on the playstyle flexibility that the developers seemed to want players to have from the beginning. Gameplay more akin to the Uncharted and Tomb Raider series might be better for Star Wars Outlaws, which generally incorporate a healthy mixture of stealth and open engagement into their gameplay mechanics. This, as well as possibly a different studio heading up the game’s development, might be enough to give Star Wars Outlaws the mulligan that its intriguing premise deserves.

Source link