Star Wars Outlaws – is it what fans want? (Ubisoft)
A reader imagines his dream Star Wars game and comes to the conclusion that publishers can no longer afford to make it.
If this is shown on the right day, then it’s Star Wars Day today – May the 4th be with you! I know that because I’m a massive Star Wars fan and always have been, well mostly always. There were some dark days there, during the prequel and sequel era, but something to reignite my passion for the series always comes along sooner or later, but unfortunately it’s rarely a video game.
Don’t get me wrong, there have been some great Star Wars games over the years, from the old Atari coin-op on up, but less nowadays and always much more small scale than I would prefer. Star Wars Jedi is good but… there’s something about it that doesn’t work for me as fan. It feels too much like it would only take a small redesign, something a fan could create as a mod, to just wash all the Star Wars out of it and it would just be an ordinary sci-fi Soulslike.
Star Wars: Squadrons was great but short and quite low budget. Star Wars: Battlefront was good as well but despite the amazing graphics didn’t have the scope and variety of the old PlayStation 2 games. The modern games are mostly good but none of them are great, and I worry that’s going to include Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws too, which doesn’t look anything like the dream bounty hunter game I always imagined.
The closest thing in recent years to what I would deem the ultimate Star Wars game is Starfield. That may seem an odd thing to say as Starfield is a pretty flawed game, but it at least has the scale right. Flying around the galaxy, doing whatever you want, is exactly what I want from a Star Wars game, expect ideally with good combat in space and on the ground.
To my great disappointment, Starfield doesn’t have any space trading in it – things are worth the same everywhere in the galaxy. That seems a ridiculous decision to me, as it’s vital for a good Star Wars game, where you’re playing an ordinary person, and not a Jedi or part of the military.
The Ubisoft game looks great, but it seems to be a pretty straightforward third person shooter. Maybe there’s more to it – they haven’t really shown much of it, despite it being out soon – but it doesn’t seem to offer much freedom, even if it is open world.
For years there’s been rumours of a bounty hunter simulator but that’s not what this is. The main character barely seems to be a smuggler let alone anything else. I always imagined being able to create your character so you could be a droid or an alien or a human and having a huge range of outfits and equipment, to be like any of the many characters or your own thing.
Then you’d be free to fly around space being relatively above board by doing trading and taking bounties. Or you could choose to be naughtier and smuggle illegal goods, or you could go full villain and just be a straight pirate. All things that are shown or at least implied in the original films.
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But no game has ever let you do these things, and I don’t think they ever will. It would require a huge budget and I don’t think anyone would spend that on a Star Wars game, ironically, because it’d be so expensive to get the licence you’re stuck having to do something thing safer, like Outlaws.
But my idea is something you could build on. If live service games are the fashion now, then feel free to add in new planets and new roles as you go. Maybe you could sign up to the Rebellion or quest to be a Jedi after all, in an expansion. It could be the everything Star Wars simulator, rather than the very small slices of the universe that the current games go for.
I’ve pretty much lost hope of it ever happening but I still dream that one Star Wars Day, my ultimate game will be announced.
By reader Cuspo
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