Star Wars Outlaws aims to be the Han Solo simulator we always wanted

As I walked down the stairs of the Belasco Theater in Los Angeles, the location of Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws demo event at Summer Game Fest 2024, my supervising PR person asked me the question. I’m sure she asked every reporter who walked down the stairs with her, “Do you like Star Wars?” A simple question, and yet for me personally a strangely difficult question to answer in 2024. Andor was a revelation, but I can still taste its ash The Rise of Skywalker in my mouth. And so, when I answered yes, I forced my brain to remember why I liked Star Wars in the first place.

As a child, it was Harrison Ford’s fantasy adventure films that played on repeat in my household not Star Wars; it was Indiana Jones. For that reason, I was stunned when my twelve-year-old self finally saw Star Wars – previously ignored in the Myers household. I thought I’d seen the coolest Harrison Ford character possible, and yet there was Han Solo So much cooler that it destroyed my entire barometer for coolness. All future ‘cool’ characters would be compared to him in this.

When I told this story to this polite, probably bored PR person, I realized I was summarizing how difficult a situation it was Star Wars Outlaws actually faces. Imitating Han Solo’s coolness is no easy feat, and Solo: A Star Wars Story unfortunately showed how difficult it is for anyone who isn’t Harrison Ford to create anything close to his alchemical coolness formula. At this point, the whole idea of ​​an open-world Star Wars game where you play as a Han Solo type is the utopia that idiots like me have been saying they want for years (and even almost happened once). That means the stakes are even higher – and the few trailers we’ve seen for the game have given the impression finebut not great.

Now that I’ve played three 30 minute parts Star Wars OutlawsI have some hope that developer Massive Entertainment can actually pull this off.

When the demo loaded, the intro screen promised me “villain gameplay,” a hilarious phrase that admittedly put me in the right mindset. The first series started in an Imperial base, where heroine Kay Vess and her little alien friend Nix are sneaking around. Nix has a similar gameplay function to the droid companion BD-1 in the Star Wars Jedi games, but has the same lax moral code and ride-or-die BFF sensibilities as Chewbacca.

Every time I was able to call Nix for help, a small blue circular indicator would appear on the screen, either to distract an enemy or to retrieve a valuable item for me. From the moment I saw Nix throw his tiny body at a stormtrooper’s face, I fell in love with my badass little friend. Then I took advantage of almost every moment I could to call on Nix, because it was much more fun to watch him run around picking up stuff for me than to walk over and do it myself. Of course, Nix isn’t exactly a powerhouse in battle given his size, but he can certainly throw off bad guys and grab health packs.

It’s possible I could have sneaked past this first part, but I’m about as good at that as Han Solo would be (“I prefer a fair fight to all that sneaking around,” as he says). So by the time I reached the station dock, I had caused a firefight with Imperial troops. When my own spaceship arrived to rescue me, I ran right past the laser fire and flew out of there with the Empire hot on my heels. Then it was time for a dog fight. I sent out a few TIE fighters and flew to a communications satellite, which I then hacked to clear my ‘wanted’ status so the Empire wouldn’t keep chasing me. Mission accomplished.

Image: Massive Entertainment/Ubisoft

The second 30-minute part seemed to take even more significant inspiration from the Star Wars Jedi games, which featured a host of parkour-based environmental puzzles. Before that bit started, I was able to explore a more populated hub area, where I could see question marks on the waypoint marker at the top of the screen and overhear conversations with NPCs that could probably have led to side quests. Once I got to where Kay needed to go, I found an excuse for some parkour and platforming while Kay followed Nathan Drake’s signals (you know, the other character inspired by a performance by Harrison Ford).

People who hate seeing handy yellow paint on different surfaces to help you see where your character can climb won’t be fans of this aspect of Star Wars Outlaws, but as someone who constantly gets lost in games, I appreciated it. Kay doesn’t have Jedi powers like Cal Kestis, but she sure went to the same rock climbing school or whatever. She also has a grappling hook and an electric mode on her side arm that allow her to activate elevators and other devices to solve puzzles. Almost this entire sequence consisted of enemy-free platforming and exploration, where you climbed over various hazards to flip switches. It was fine; you’ve played something like this before in a number of third-person action games in the post-Uncharted landscape.

The third and final 30 minute portion of this demo is where I really got my villain. In this section I was stealing an artifact – an artifact that had apparently previously been stolen from another faction, to whom Kay wanted to return it. This sequence was much more clearly intended as a straight-up stealth mission, and I stayed undercover for at least the first few minutes, crawling Samus-style through air shafts and taking out silent guards until one of them dropped a key card I needed. Soon there weren’t that many enemies left, and I’d noticed some conveniently placed explosive barrels, so I decided to go for a full-on Han Solo-style shootout (with Nix’s help as usual). This was considerably louder and much more fun. After clearing the room, I grabbed the artifact and blasted my way out of the rest of the building.

As she walked, Kay had a nice conversation via her communicator with one of her shipmates, a mysterious droid ally named ND-5. What I remember of the conversation was Kay being mocked for assuming that by returning this artifact she would not assume that she herself was the original thief. ND-5 told me to be ‘terrified’. Kay responded with the equivalent of “fuck it, we balls.” I couldn’t see how the rest of the scene played out, but I really liked the whole setup of the heist, and the banter was refreshingly snappy.

Image: Massive Entertainment/Ubisoft

The best thing about the “Han Solo simulator” concept is that you play as a Star Wars character who doesn’t have much power – no Jedi powers, obviously, but no social or structural power to speak of either. The actual power fantasy here is that you’re a cool person with high charisma because that’s really all you have. Well, also a grappling hook and crazy good parkour skills, but you get where I’m going with this. It’s part of the why Andor was an interesting slice of the Star Wars pie; it was about ordinary people, even if they were ordinary people who became rebels instead of assholes. It’s fascinating to see what the Star Wars universe looks like on the ground rather than from an epic space opera vantage point – and that’s what an open-world Han Solo simulator could potentially achieve, provided it has some decent story beats and a good storyline. lines along the way.

Based on what I’ve played, whether you like this game will partly depend on whether you like the Uncharted and Star Wars Jedi games. And yet these aren’t open world games, and I haven’t seen enough of the hubs or side quests to know if Star Wars Outlaws will be as immersive and overwhelming as some of Ubisoft’s other open world games (looking at you, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey).

The biggest responsibility of all – namely the Han Solo at the center of the simulator in question – rests on Kay’s shoulders. I am now very curious whether she can take on that challenge on August 30 Star Wars Outlaws will be released for PlayStation 5, Windows PC and Xbox Series