It’s May 4th, Star Wars Day. Or, as we refer to it at Nintendo Life Towers, Oh-god-Jim’s-going-to-bang-on-about-Star-Wars-again Day.
Heh, it’s true, I am a fiend for all things from a Galaxy Far, Far Away, and, if I’m being honest, that has sometimes meant that I’m a little more keen to see the Light Side than embrace the more realistic Darkness. But my rambling this year isn’t an ‘Attack of the Clones is Good, Actually’ hot take, my dear Younglings. Instead, I’m about to hit you with some cold, hard facts. The kind of facts that are based mostly on my own point of view, of course.
So, here it is: Star Wars Outlaws is one of the Switch 2’s best launch-year signings, and a 2025 release will give the Ubisoft open-world adventure the second chance it so rightfully deserves.
Okay, okay, put your blasters away for just a second and let’s do some clarifying. Switch 2 is going to be home to some belters in its first year. Putting the first-party line-up aside for a moment, behemoth ports like Elden Ring, Cyberpunk 2077, and Street Fighter 6 are going to give huge waves of people the chance to experience (or re-experience) console classics from the last five years, and that’s wonderful!
But it was Outlaws’ brief, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in one of the Switch 2 Direct’s sizzle reels that elicited the biggest cheer from me. Why? Because, as great as it is to see all of the aforementioned titles make the jump to a new audience, few deserve a second shot as much as Outlaws.
If you completely missed the launch of Star Wars Outlaws, I wouldn’t blame you. This one arrived back in August 2024, from Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft. Set between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, it follows outlaw Kay Vess on her journey through the galaxy’s underworld after a run-in with a big-time crime boss sends things squiffy.
While the main quest provides a whistle-stop tour of some familiar (and not-so-familiar) locales, the game is more interested in the side content, with bonus missions, Sabacc tables, and chances to improve/ruin your reputation with the underworld’s head honchos waiting around every corner.
If, after reading all of that, you thought to yourself, “Yes, it’s an Ubisoft open-world game. I’ve played that one before,” you wouldn’t be completely wrong. I will admit, Star Wars Outlaws brings little in the way of originality to the table, and its gameplay is about as unique as the results of the Clone army’s school photo day. While I found a lot to like under the surface, this Force Dyad of playing things too safe and being a Ubisoft joint meant that the Outlaws discourse was off to the (pod-)races long before launch.
Cracks started to show from the second Ubisoft slapped the “first open-world Star Wars game” label on it. If there’s one fandom you don’t want to test, it’s the Star Wars clan, and cries along the lines of “Pffft, these guys don’t even know about the early 2000s PC MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies, what losers!!” were quick to sully the game’s reputation before it had even fired up its engines.
Tired conversations about whether the game’s inter-planetary loading screens made it truly open-world or just open-zone ensued (a topic I find about as interesting as a Gungan TED Talk), accompanied by legitimate criticism of Ubisoft’s marketing and discount practices, as the company continued to instigate layoffs and deem games ‘commercial failures’ before they were given a chance to breathe.
Not the best pre-launch picture, then. On release, things were a little more positive but remained undoubtedly mixed, and, just like clockwork, Ubisoft was quick to note how sales had “underperformed expectations” in its next six-month financial report. Sigh.
The Force was not strong with this one, but, being the Star Wars sicko that I am, I chose to pick it up on PS5 all the same. I’m aware that the game had undergone some snips to its stealth sequences before I came to it, and more than a few bugs had apparently been blasted away. But, expecting a pile of poodoo, I was surprised by just how much I was on board with it at every turn.
On the one hand, yes, the gameplay is far from original and the plot is nothing to write home about, but in the robotic other hand, it has everything I ever wanted from an open-world Star Wars game.
The side quests are varied, giving me plenty to do when the main path plodding from A to B gets too much, and navigating between them lets me live out my childhood dream of hopping on a speeder and making dust tracks under the two suns. Kay Vess is every bit the kind of Han Solo-esque ‘couldn’t-give-two-Siths’ hero you want from a non-Jedi-focused narrative (and Nix is the ultimate “Aw, I want one” alien pup companion), and every locale is packed with enough nods and references that I found myself in a semi-permanent state of that one DiCaprio-pointing-at-the-TV meme.
But it wasn’t any of this that kept me coming back for more. The thing that stuck with me the most is that Outlaws absolutely nails the Star Wars vibe. Like Spider-Man or Breath of the Wild, this is one of those games where it’s more than enough to head out into a mission-less area and just be.
My playtime was quickly over the How Long To Beat 18.5-hour mark, with less than half of the main quests under my belt. I wasn’t fast-travelling, I wasn’t rushing to hit the next story beat, and I wasn’t going into anything that didn’t interest me. Some evenings, a couple of hands of Sabacc and a stroll around Tatooine was all I needed.
Look, a lot of the criticisms levelled at Outlaws at launch were more than reasonable, but I can’t help but think that the pre-launch chatter and ‘commercial failure’ status meant that this one ended up in front of far fewer fans than it deserved.
The Switch 2 release schedule looks set to keep us more than well-fed throughout 2025, but I know where my attention will lie once September 4th rolls around. If you’re a Star Wars fan for whom Outlaws fell by the wayside last year and you’ve got your Switch 2 locked in, you’re in for a treat.
Have you already sampled Star Wars Outlaws? Will you be picking it up on Switch 2? Use your Jedi mind tricks in the comments and let me know.
