What makes a video game bad? I would normally describe it as an experience that plays or looks terrible, or constantly gets in its own way with poorly developed characters, narratives, or game design where levels and mechanics are a frequent frustration. So many things have to go wrong for a game to be truly bad. But when standards are so high, that doesn’t matter.
During the review period for Star Wars Outlaws, a friend turned to me and asked what score I planned to give Massive’s open-world scoundrel simulator. Without skipping a beat, I threw out a 7/10, the score I eventually awarded. This is a respectable score, and one I have given to plenty of decent games over the years. By TheGamer’s review guide, a 7/10 is ‘Good’. But to many, it has become a sign of mediocrity. If something isn’t scoring at least an 8 or higher, it isn’t worth playing and is a lightning rod for criticism.
Thanks to its status as a Ubisoft open-world game and having the gall to star a woman that isn’t supermodel levels of attractive, Outlaws was already public enemy number one ahead of release. I was frequently scrolling past videos on TikTok that unfairly edited gameplay to portray the experience as borderline unplayable, when the reality is far more commendable.
Whoever was uploading these compilations was never going to give the game a fair shake, and their agenda from the very beginning was to label it as garbage without laying a finger on it. This, sadly, isn’t an uncommon practice. If a certain group has an agenda against any game, they will make it their mission to let their audiences know.
Or the opposite, much like how right wing grifters gravitated towards Stellar Blade and made playing it an anti-woke pilgrimage. When critics were incredibly positive about it, they looked a little bit silly.
Ubisoft didn’t throw Star Wars Outlaws much of a bone either. Just a month or so after its release, it threw it under the bus as one of the key reasons for delaying Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
Critics weren’t especially kind to Star Wars Outlaws, but the response was far from damning. I had a blast exploring its myriad planets and was impressed by the variety in gameplay, but occasionally put out by how it doesn’t push its best mechanical ideas far enough or develop protagonist Kay Vess into anything more than a Han Solo knock-off.
But even with its flaws, what sits at the centre is a competent open-world game that in many ways is also a welcome breath of fresh air. It isn’t overcomplicated or needlessly ambitious, it stays in its lane and does a nice job of it. But unless you’re a masterpiece, it’s impossible to avoid being dragged into a bizarre culture war or unwarranted critical mauling.
It reminds me of Mad Max from Avalanche Studios, which received a small revival earlier in the year thanks to Furiosa’s theatrical release. Nothing about it set the world on fire, and it’s clearly riffing on the tried-and-true formula of open world games at the time. But it was good fun, and had an intimate awareness of George Miller’s universe and how to bring much of it to life. Taking over the sandy wasteland was a flawed joyride through the apocalypse we have seen thousands more come to appreciate since its release almost a decade ago.
Star Wars Outlaws occupies a similar space, and seems to have already been forgotten just days after its developer unleashed a roadmap detailing what it aims to fix, update, and bring to the game over the next few months. Most of us will have walked away by then, or decided not to give Outlaws a shot because it isn’t enough of a masterpiece. But not all games need to be.
Kay Vess’ adventure provides us with a sense of place that Star Wars has never had before, even in recent adventures like Fallen Order and Survivor. Walking its locales as a fresh face whose entire destiny isn’t folded into the Jedi Order is a breath of fresh air that cements it as a journey of relative normalcy that in any other instance is larger than life. Hacking into a terminal, knocking out Stormtroopers, and chatting with shopkeepers feels new and exciting even if the mechanical innards bringing it to life don’t live up to the hype. But I found all the flaws easy to forgive when the immersion was otherwise so pronounced.
In the present day, Star Wars Outlaws has been cast aside as a forgettable failure thanks to our standards being so high and the industry being stuck in a destructive cycle of needing every single triple-A game to be a flawless masterpiece or a catastrophic failure. The culture allows little wiggle room, and gamers are so expectant these days that if a game falls out of its good graces even once, it might as well not exist. Minds were made up about Outlaws a long time before its launch, and that’s not fair. It’s an attitude that spits on hard work and refuses to acknowledge the hard work that goes into making games a reality.
Years from now, I have a feeling we will look back fondly on Star Wars Outlaws, though with a lump of regret in our throats for not seeing its worth at the time.