Star Wars Outlaws – Starfield’s brother from another mother (Picture: Ubisoft)
A reader explains why they’re looking forward to Star Wars Outlaws more than Starfield and how similar sounding games can be so different.
Like most everyone else I was very impressed by the Xbox Games Showcase the other week. My favourite game of the show was an epic looking sci-fi game where you get to go wherever you want in a galaxy filled with many different planets and their open world landscapes, while duking it out in exciting ground combat and space battles. I am, of course, talking about Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws, which to me looked far more interesting than Starfield.
I have an Xbox and Game Pass so I’ll end up playing Starfield anyway, but that game seems to be part of a trend that I find very unappealing in open world games, where the worlds are just too open. This started with Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, which I found to have a much too large world, with far too little to do in it. Given that game’s success the idea has become very popular and Starfield seems to have that same style, where nobody seems to be around and everything is empty and barren looking.
In the Starfield footage there was very little focus on character, partially because you make your own but probably also because the dialogue from the non-player characters was pretty weak, with Bethesda’s famously bad facial animation. By comparison, Outlaws was all about the character of Kay, who seemed like a sassy female Han Solo that I would be happy to play as.
Unlike anyone in Starfield, Kay talked like a real person (or at least a real person in the Star Wars universe) and seemed funny and likeable, not a shop mannequin with a potato for a face.
She got into scraps with close up fighting and shooting that all looked a lot of fun and very in your face, with lots of weird Star Wars aliens and Imperial bad guys.
The starfighter battles were in amongst what looked like a destroyed space station and the open world, while yet another desert planet, looked to be filled with things going on in both the sky and on the land.
In other words, it looked lived in and like a real place, while Starfield looked very sterile and, despite the good graphics, very artificial.
Each to their own, of course, and I’m sure Starfield will be good, but it’s interesting to me how two games that sound so similar on paper could appear so different in terms of gameplay footage.
Starfield has got more hype since the showcase, but I wonder what would’ve happened if Outlaws got a 30 minute breakdown as well. I’m also very curious to know how many planets and open worlds it has.
The trailer implies at least half a dozen, so if they’re all fully populated and busy, like the one we saw the gameplay footage from, that is going to be a huge game as well – not as many planets as Starfield but ones that are filled with much more people and life.
Star Wars Jedi has been good, but I’ve been waiting a long time for a proper open world Star Wars game and this seems pretty much exactly what I’ve been looking for.
I’m sure Starfield will end up being bigger, with more freedom, but I’ll happily sacrifice a little of that to have a game that looks as busy and interesting as Outlaws.
By reader Aggie
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A reader explains why they’re looking forward to Star Wars Outlaws more than Starfield and how similar sounding games can be so different.