What does Outlaws have or do that's worthy of being AAAA or GOTY?

[JKDos]

Does Outlaws have or do anything new that we don't see from from other games, or at least something better? Is there anything innovative in this game or its engine?

The graphics are nothing new. Games like Horizon Forbidden West and Ghost of Tsushima seem to be miles ahead. If I am not mistaken, Battlefront II might even have better graphics.

The game engine as far as I can see isn't demonstrating anything extraordinary in any aspect.

The open world is rather small compared to other open worlds. Kajima can't even be explored, making it a waste of a planet, and other locations like Canto Bight and a few story locations can't be revisited. The game had the priviledge off calling itself the first ever open world Star Wars game, but it does a very good job of making the universe feel small. There aren't even Tusken Raiders on Tatooine to kill or be killed by. There are some that show in in a cutscene for the main story but that's it.

You can't swim. Even though swimming has existed in games for decades, and even games like 2013's Assassin's Creed Black Flag have swimming.

The space exploration is very weak and limited compared to an older indie game like No Man's Sky. The space combat in Starfield might even be better.

There's only 1 land vehicle. The others you see cannot be operated in any capacity.

You can't fire your blaster on speeders (minus adrenaline), and your speeder doesn't have weapons.

You have just 1 weapon. Anything else you pick up is just a temporary power up that you use or lose. There's not even any other pistols you can switch yours out for. It's the same one pistol minus any different paint jobs. Jedi Fallen Order and Jedi survivor have a plethora of lightsaber parts at the very least to change the entire appearance of your lightsaber.

There's very little customization for Player/Kay. There are a few outfits, most of which are all the same thing with a different skin. There's no different clothing options or hairstyles to select or outfits that come with different hair styles. Hell Kay keeps her exact hairstyle even under her stormtrooper helmet. Even Jedi Survivor gets this right with all their vastly unique outfits and hairstyles.

If you've played Ubisoft's Tom Clancy games or Watchdog games, you'll realize instantly at just how lackluster the stealth in this game is. It's like a game developer tried and made their first ever attempt at a Stealth Game.

You can't kill creatures/animals when you shoot at them. They're just moving decoration pieces that sponge up whatever your throw at them. Was this done out of laziness or out of support for PETA?

You can't pull out your weapons in the city. In a game with a wanted system and ability to spawn stormtroopers to your location, they couldn't even capitalize on the idea of the player causing mayhem in the cities, and getting the empire to swarm in to squelch the chaos. Even the 1999 Star Wars the Phanton Menace game got this right.

Voice acting isn't the best, and Ubisoft failed to get Billy Dee Williams to voice Lando. To put that into perspective, Billy Dee Williams voiced Lando in: Jedi Outcast, Battlefront II, and Skywalker Saga. It's pretty sad when the poor studio that made Outcast can afford Billy Dee, but mega corporation Ubisoft can't.


It's a great Star Wars adventure, but you really need to take the goggles off and ask what's going on with the game? This game feels very much like an old Xbox 360 game. It's probably on par with Mass Effect 1.

[Tux]

To be frank.
AAA titles all have very specific parameters of which indies almost never do any of.

So AAA it not a question of quality, its a question of parameters in question, what the devs consider themselves to be and what the marketing department says.
not quality

[Defective Dopamine Pez Dispenser]

I leave it to others to debate the semantic nomenclature of what does and doesn't constitute AAA and what determines that, or whether the game justifies its MSRP, etc. That's a meaningless distinction to me. All I care about is whether I'm enjoying my video game.

That said, no, I don't think there's anything particularly innovative or best in class about the game personally. I wrote this about it a few months ago, and this is still my opinion of the game:

Originally posted by Defective Dopamine Pez Dispenser:

My unpopular opinion of the day:

Star Wars Outlaws is actually great fun, and to me is essentially the contemporary analog of something like Shadows of the Empire. Which is to say, like SOTE, it isn't the best game I've ever played, and isn't trying to be a transformative masterpiece of game design the likes of which no one has ever seen. But neither is it close to being the worst thing I've played, by a huge margin.

It's an enjoyable third person action adventure that allows me to visit recreations of some iconic SW locations, and looks pretty impressive visually while doing it. It manages to pull off a surprising degree of immersion in letting me feel like I'm just wandering or driving around these locations, and the camera and the way they've framed and designed locations makes it all feel very cinematic and "Star Warsy." To a degree I didn't expect given all the consternation surrounding the game.

It's not perfect by any means, the combat is nothing particularly innovative or revolutionary or anything, I saw one or two minor technical hiccups, and it's not a seamless open world game where you can live a second life or "go anywhere and do anything."

But it's fun, feels worthwhile to me, has a ton of side content, has an impressive attention to detail and artistic scale and scope for a game that appears to be fully hand-crafted, performs surprisingly admirably on my lowly RTX 2070 Ryzen 2600 system, and tells a decent SW yarn imo that I found myself sucked into and invested in.

I've played games I enjoyed vastly less than it, and it's not even close to being the disappointment the gamersphere consensus would have led me to believe. It's one of those "fun just to go on the ride and explore its worlds" games. SOTE tier, as opposed to, say, Red Dead Redemption tier. (But with immensely higher fidelity than SOTE and with modern mechanics, of course.)

I'd feel comfortable recommending to people who are SW fans, go into it with appropriately sized expectations, and just want a fun action adventure romp to explore, unless there's something they explicitly know in advance they personally dislike about it enough to ruin it for them.

Edit: Oh, and Nix is adorable. :P

[lancelot]

Of course it doesn't feel like an XBox 360 game. This video talks a bit about why, if we're talking about advanced graphics, even Horizon Forbidden West (the main game) doesn't come close to the best current gen games. This video talks about what makes Star Wars Outlaws look so stunning (there's a transcript here[www.eurogamer.net]). Also Ubisoft games always have phenomenal amounts of very detailed animations.

Just the tournament sequence in Wild Card is already something only an AAA game can pull off: recording live action, scripting the actions of the players and the dealer, creating a million of 3D models, animations and visual effects, and then putting it all together to create an amazing set piece.

Kay has 54 abilities to unlock, 11 tools, 32 blaster upgrades, 16 speeder upgrades, 29 ship upgrades, 19 different unlocks for the card game, many different charms and outfits which grant various perks, many weapons she can pick up in the field, and several perks for Nix. Most of the abilities are something more interesting than just an extra health bar. That doesn't seem very limited to me, and also, the first impression of the stealth gameplay in SWO might be deceptive because several stealth options only become available later.

The voice acting is certainly very good. And they did a great job making the locations feel very lively with all the background chatter, musical performances and ambient sounds.

Ultimately it's all about the feel of the game -- in fact, what I like so much about Ubisoft games is how smooth the gameplay is after they iron out all the issues, with everything working exactly as I expect it too -- but one of the things that allows it to achieve that feel is how technologically advanced the game is.

[JKDos]

Originally posted by lancelot:

Of course it doesn't feel like an XBox 360 game. This video talks a bit about why, if we're talking about advanced graphics, even Horizon Forbidden West (the main game) doesn't come close to the best current gen games. This video talks about what makes Star Wars Outlaws look so stunning (there's a transcript here[www.eurogamer.net]). Also Ubisoft games always have phenomenal amounts of very detailed animations.

Just the tournament sequence in Wild Card is already something only an AAA game can pull off: recording live action, scripting the actions of the players and the dealer, creating a million of 3D models, animations and visual effects, and then putting it all together to create an amazing set piece.

Kay has 54 abilities to unlock, 11 tools, 32 blaster upgrades, 16 speeder upgrades, 29 ship upgrades, 19 different unlocks for the card game, many different charms and outfits which grant various perks, many weapons she can pick up in the field, and several perks for Nix. Most of the abilities are something more interesting than just an extra health bar. That doesn't seem very limited to me, and also, the first impression of the stealth gameplay in SWO might be deceptive because several stealth options only become available later.

The voice acting is certainly very good. And they did a great job making the locations feel very lively with all the background chatter, musical performances and ambient sounds.

Ultimately it's all about the feel of the game -- in fact, what I like so much about Ubisoft games is how smooth the gameplay is after they iron out all the issues, with everything working exactly as I expect it too -- but one of the things that allows it to achieve that feel is how technologically advanced the game is.

Are you the Ubisoft CEO? That's all ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

[Kindred Spirit]

Wow. What a surprise. Knights of the Old Republic in 2003 was more open world than this farces to be?

I'm shocked, I tell you. Shocked!

[JKDos]

Originally posted by Chief Redpill:

Wow. What a surprise. Knights of the Old Republic in 2003 was more open world than this farces to be?

I'm shocked, I tell you. Shocked!

Even though an MMORPG, The Older Republic is better open world game. The planet sizes in SWTOR are larger than the planets in Outlaws, and there are nearly 3 dozen planets to land on.

[LeftPaw]

Not really. It only just breaks into being a AAA game in my opinion. It's your typical romp through a open world Far Cry style. I think the reason they shoved on another 'A' was because it has Star Wars in the title.