Hi
After wringing 125+ hours out of Outlaws.. I find myself.. satisfied with my experience. With a few caveats..
The Good
Mostly the experience was uniform with the excellent EA 'Jedi' series.. with Nix being BD's counterpart. I like that Ubi have set these games up as twins of sorts.. it means they can focus on the environment and story, which I feel they did.
Voice acting across the board was superb. Direction while not perfect was far beyond competent. Writing again superb. Animation.. especially of Nix again, superb. Environments, easily on par with the EA Jedi series.. and I see no reason EA and Ubi shouldn't colab in the future to standardize environments and assets.
Chilled out moments sitting.. were relaxing. Combat was good across the board. From space battles to face to face battles, I had a good time.
Experiencing Tatooine was.. special.
The story and side stories were involving, interesting. At certains times heart pulling.
I won't mention the stories in detail, but I had a good time. As far as RP goes.. I especially enjoyed the ISB uniform.. it made me daydream about Kay joining the Empire and Kay's view on the Empire. While it's easy for us to see the top ranks of the Empire as often corrupt.. fascist.. Kay see's the Rebels as 'just another syndicate'. Kay might see the Empire as a organization that offers a way out of the slums.. offers money for work to those who otherwise wouldn't be able to get a job. Fair day's pay for a fair day's work.
Imagine if we had the option of joining the ISB as a lieutenant and working our way up the ranks of the Imperial service doing radiant quests.. but not just endless nameless quests.. marked with cutscenes and special scripted one off mission for each rank promotion. Outlaws would be a unique chance to experience this in a DLC.. as other Star Wars games we play the straight up 'hero'.
I also repeatedly daydreamed about owning droids.. many times in treasure caves, we would see R2 and C3 units and variations.. just there. I kept wishing we had the ability to repair/buy/recruit them. Currently after completing the game I have LOADS of resources for the speeder and Trailblazer. Using those resources on owned droids in a DLC I feel would be a cool expansion.. with a beginner mission of trading and buying (3PO series) 22-X's head from the Jawas on Tatooine.. and integrating her in to your Speeder.. then 22-X becoming a sort of mentor teaching you how to do basic repair on droids, being able to sell them for a profit too.
So you'd get taught the basics by 22-X, and fix the basics on the trailblazer workbench but go to droid repairs person to 'upgrade'. Build any Astromech for stealth OR combat OR mobility OR negotiation.
I would hope BD units would be included but that might cause troubles with EA.. so at least.. R-series, C-series, BX-series and perhaps Pip P-series (P1P? from Acolyte.).. there's many more.
Sound effects were good but surround sound definitely needed work. Music was OK.
The Bad
bugs. for me not too bad but still annoying. If I do loads of work to get to a spot and then the swing doesn't take me all the way over the drop.. flip! Whoever insisted on checkpoints/auto save is a flippin' genius.
Missions not completing.
Things that were never explained to me.. the stealthy and non stealthy actions.
Like why does Nix stealth attacking an enemy, say with 'detonate' why does that make everyone start looking for me? The enemies don't look for me when Nix straight up attacks them. This doesn't make sense. You could say it's just because it's OP move but that still doesn't make sense in game.
Like when does the 'fast talking' initiate? Sometimes I would just straight up get arrested or caught and only sometimes would it initiate. This was confusing.
The Ugly
Firstly.. Humberly Gonzalez (who played Kay Vess) is stunning. beautiful. But Kay.. not so much. I mean it's irregular to have 25% of your face be your chin.
They didn't just hit her with the 'ugly stick' they cut down the whole ugly tree and fashioned it in to some sort of medieval face slapping device leaving Kay's face in perpetual state of being slapped by said ugly sticks. IMO She is repulsive looking.
I mean.. even IF.. IF.. I were to accept her face.. has she never heard of soap or shampoo?? a hairstyle that lessens the impact of her face? but instead her hairstyle emphasises and perhaps exaggerates her ugliness.
Why ohw why.. can't we just have a cosmetic replacement of Ms. Gonzalez's face? put Ms. Gonzalez's attractive face over the repulsive mistake that was Kay Vess's face.
Lastly.. WHO decided it was a good idea to time out out of bounds? This is a trait from games 20 years ago.. that pretty much died and everyone went to the wake and had a party! We danced on it's grave; I believe it was Gangnam style.. when it died around 2012.
Games.. open world games.. are a 'sandbox' inside the 'sandbox' belongs to the player.. outside of the 'sandbox' does not.
The reason games had this was because of limitations of hardware. The reason Outlaws has it.. is a lack of imagination. No wait.. a lack of ingenuity.
Space battles themselves can quickly become a nightmare if you are on the edge of out of bounds. This is dumb!! It's not even needed.. modern games have already solved this problem with infinite space, like if you try to go out on the water in GTA and it just endlessly loops.. no.. I lost space battles too often because of this daft out of bounds mechanic that shouldn't exist in a modern game.
Conclusion
I enjoyed my month in Star Wars Outlaws.. I have problems on and off with Ubisoft.. back in the day with ACII and the whole 'Anti-catholic' thing.. then more recently Valhalla.. and the Isle of Skye DLC, where some insensitive flump trumpet decided to make all the Scottish people English.. they could have hired Scottish voice actors and actresses for the lines but no, they hired people English people from London.. they still used the Saxon (English) models even though, they had the models for Scottish people sitting there as Mobs. Calling a Scottish person English is as bad as using the N word to a black person. It was horrific.
I decided to boycott Ubisoft again.. but then Outlaws came up.. at first I thought it was made by EA.. until I came to purchase and saw it was Ubisoft.. it was a dilemma.. but as I missed playing the Jedi series and so badly wanted to play it's twin.. I bought it.. and not just bought it, but bought the Ultimate edition. I do this to ensure I get all DLC for a game. In this game Scottish people were represented.. which was a pleasant surprise.
I feel a little warmer to Ubisoft right now*.. we have a few DLC upcoming.. and as I have paid for the Ultimate Edition.. I assume I will be enjoying them too.
Regards from the Outer Rim
ISB Lieutenant Dava
*but still get angry over the Isle of Skye DLC when I really think about it.
