Star Wars: Outlaws gameplay trailer demonstrates its merchandisablity

The Outlook is strong

It is a time of unrest. In the Star Wars universe, that’s all the time. But apparently, that’s important in Star Wars: Outlook – I mean Star Wars: Outlaws – which was shown off by Massive Entertainment as part of Ubisoft Forward 2023.

You play as Kay Vess, a thief who has a bounty on their head. She sneaks around and sucker-punches some dudes who don’t look like her. Her furry axolotl can be commanded by her to fetch weapons in the midst of combat. It’s actually pretty cute. Very merchandize-able.

She then takes off into the open world. Yeah, it’s open world. Normally, this isn’t much of a bulletpoint, but for Ubisoft, it’s a warning. So, this whole thing is just accomplishing a side-quest delivery, and then returning to the quest giver. She then takes off in her ship, which, again, is the most unimaginative-looking ship I’ve seen in a while. There’s some space combat. Quest complete.

I mean, it looks nice. It sounds nice. It’s very Star Wars-y, which I mean as a compliment. Still, though, the whole vertical slice of gameplay is so Ubisoft that it gives me pause. A lot of the features of Star Wars: Outlook, uh, Outlaws look pretty cool. I just don’t want to be using them to accomplish a bunch of shallow, repetitive nothing missions.

We’ll see for sure just how it turns out when Star Wars: Outlaws release sometime in 2024.