Star Wars Outlaws Looks Like a Great Open-World Uncharted Game, Though It Might Be Flawed

The game has a morality system linked to various factions or crime syndicates. Sometimes, during jobs or contracts, you'll be put into the situation of double-crossing someone, and depending on your choices, you will either grow your reputation with a faction like the Hutt Cartel or endanger your status with them.

During your many, many encounters with the Empire, you will gain a Wanted status, which will affect the gameplay. The Empire forces will start hunting you down, even using TIE fighters to blast you out of the galaxy.

Using your trusty Trailblazer ship, otherwise called the EML 850 light freighter, you will engage in space dogfights with pirates while performing skillful maneuvers. Its secondary purpose is to travel from distant unknown planets to other distant unknown planets. Yes, hyperdrive exists in the game, making the teleportation sequences on OLED TVs look all the much sweeter.

Developer Massive Entertainment created Kay's Trailblazer in collaboration with Lucasfilm Games to ensure everything's up to standard. It probably can't make the "Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs" like Han Solo's Millennium Falcon, but it will do.

The EML 850 is actually from the Clone Wars and has an interesting lore behind it. It's a transport ship prototype with great reinforcement that ensured its occupants and cargo landed safely, no matter how hot the landing zone got. It's also extremely rare because it never got mass-produced due to the high cost of building materials.

Upon landing on these new worlds, Tattooine included, Kay will explore the massive areas riding her S57 Cardinal speeder. Like Deacon St. John's awesome motorcycle from Days Gone, the multi-terrain speeder will take you anywhere. The best part is that you will have armed encounters while riding it, which looks entertaining in the trailer.

Let's hope it's every bit as endearing as Deacon's bike and that after enough mods and upgrades, it will feel more like a trusty friend than a heap of metal. Also, maybe it won't behave like Roach when you "summon" it and ends up as part of the surrounding geometry.

One way Massive Entertainment thought to use the S57 Cardinal during your many interplanetary travels is by creating ramps for fun, just like the one from Toshara, a new savannah moon created in collaboration with Lucasfilm Games.

You certainly remember the humongous rusty Sandcrawlers that also made their way into the game. They're basically mobile fortresses the Jawas use to conduct business on Tatooine's deserts. Yes, the very same that "botnapped" C-3PO and R2-D2 and got sold to Luke Skywalker and his uncle, Owen Lars.

The overall gameplay time for the main storyline is roughly 25-30 hours, but hardcore fans could spend double that amount. You can buy the Star Wars Outlaws Standard Edition for 70 bucks, the Gold Edition for $110, and the Ultimate Edition for 130 US dollars. The most basic and cheapest version contains the game and a pre-order bonus: the Kessel Runner Bonus Pack, which includes a cosmetic pack for your speeder and the Trailblazer starship.

The Gold Edition has everything from the previous edition, three days early access, and the Season Pass. The latter contains two DLCs: the "Jabba's Gambit" exclusive mission available at launch, and the "Kessel Runner Character Pack" with additional cosmetics for Kay and Nix.

Lastly, the ultra-expensive $130 Star Wars Outlaws Ultimate Edition comes with everything previously mentioned and more. The Rogue Infiltrator and Sabacc Shark bundles include cosmetics for Kay, Nix, the speeder, and the Trailblazer spaceship. There's also a Digital Art Book with the game's concept art, visuals, and unique cinematic storyboards.

Obviously, paying $130 bucks for a game is only for the most hardcore fans, but luckily, you can get the entire thing for $18 a month if you subscribe to Ubisoft+ Premium, available on PC and Xbox. Because the experience lasts roughly 40 hours on average, you can easily finish it within a month.

If you really want to max out those 18 bucks, wait until November 15 until Assassin's Creed Shadows launches and subscribe then. If you try hard enough, you'll finish both AAA games for under $20, which isn't bad, given that together, they probably cost $400-$500 million to make.

While everything presented by Ubisoft seems to add up and form a decent Star Wars adventure, some online publications that played a demo at Summer Game Fest already say that the "galactic open world feels less exciting than expected" - Eurogamer, or that it's "playing it too safe" - PC Gamer. In all fairness, they point out it's only a slice from the whole Star Wars pie, so until the full game releases, we'll wait and hope for the best.

Aside from Outlaws, the Assassin's Creed Shadows gameplay video during Ubisoft Forward was also a nice surprise. The graphics look great, and the combat style difference between the shinobi assassin and brute seems to be a great melding between the older iterations and newer ones like Valhalla. We'll find out exactly how it plays in a few months.