Star Wars: Outlaws (Ubisoft)

[Max Peck]

Yeah, the only time the checkpoint-only autosave thing during a mission was kind of a pain was when I was detected in the secure area, where the mandatory stealth rules apply, since you revert all the way back to when you first entered that area. If you get tagged after spending a considerable amount of time sneaking your way toward the goal, you have to start all over again, and you'll also lose any loot you found (although it will be back where you found it, so you can go get it again now that you know where it is). On the one hand, that can be annoying, but on the other hand it lends a certain amount of tension to the stealth activity that wouldn't be present if you could just save scum your way across the area, so it isn't all bad.

It's also worth noting that you don't need to be completely pacifist in the secure areas. You can't shoot your way out if things go sideways, but you can deal with guards by using melee takedowns, although you'll fail and get kicked from the area if you attempt it and screw the pooch.

[jztemple2]

I just went through a major mission and came close to rage quitting. I had reached a point where I couldn't let the alarm be raised. I found a way to my objective that required a clever use of Nix, then my grapple, then a running leap to get to another platform. I got the first two steps down cold, but kept failing the third step. Either I'd make that final platform but would be spotted and the alarm raised, or I'd miss the platform and fall and someone would see me and raise the alarm . I must have tried this approach about a dozen times. I finally did fall off the platform and didn't get spotted, but then I managed to get spotted further along my way

That was where I was about to rage quit. But then I reminded myself that there ought to be more than one way to get to my objective and there turned out to be several . The first couple didn't work all that well and I failed, but then I remembered the sleep setting on my blaster . And also I quit being so sloppy in stealth. And then it turned out that I had made the mission a lot harder than it was .

So I reached my objective after playing the mission for about ninety minutes with the anticipation that this was all I would need to do, but no, suddenly a whole new... objective (even a hint would be a major spoiler) came up. The mission lasted another thirty minutes or so with stealth, clever pathing, a combat situation, some more sneaking and then a big gunfight with every stormtrooper on the station (or it seemed like). But I managed to escape and some more stuff happened, including my second space combat (which is pretty cool).

So I've played for four hours forty-five minutes. No bugs or glitches at all, very polished. And I'm still having fun, the difficulties on this mission were mostly because I blindly kept trying the same solution over and over instead of trying other things. The game definitely isn't on rails for some parts of the missions, but on other parts you do follow a well structured path. But it is open world in that you can chose which missions to do, where to go, who to talk to, etc. The speedster bike is a lot of fun as well. And as I said right at the beginning, the artwork, the environment construction, the music and all the other elements are awesome.

[Unagi]

So, when you "start a mission" - you are no longer really in the open-world any more?


How, does this compare to Starfield, where one could sorta start a few dozen missions... Now even there - you could certainly be at a part of a mission that has you basically locked into that mission, but I feel like I had a lot of missions kinda 'started', but was still in the open world. What I'm hearing here sounds a little more 'official' - like you start a mission: and you are 'ON', until it's completed.

Is that correct?

[Max Peck]

So, when you "start a mission" - you are no longer really in the open-world any more?

Kind of, maybe, from the little I've seen so far. For example, early in the game you're introduced to land speeders and have to travel to a particular place. If you head off in the wrong direction you'll get a warning to return to the quest area, so you can't just freely explore the landscape at that particular point.

[jztemple2]

So, when you "start a mission" - you are no longer really in the open-world any more?

Kind of, maybe, from the little I've seen so far. For example, early in the game you're introduced to land speeders and have to travel to a particular place. If you head off in the wrong direction you'll get a warning to return to the quest area, so you can't just freely explore the landscape at that particular point.

I've found that if you aren't on a mission, you can just drive to wherever you want, or at least as far as I wanted to go. I've not experimented with just driving to the edges of the map, maybe I'll try that this afternoon.

Unagi, if I understand you correctly, when you start a mission you are locked into that mission, but this seems to apply to just big set-piece missions. Otherwise if you, for instance, are tracking a mission that requires you to search a public area for something and decided to switch missions, it is very easy, just select your Journal and change the mission you are tracking. I've done this several times, when while wandering round the town looking for A I happen to come across someone who wants me to do B. Easy to switch. You can also untrack everything if you so desire.

I'll mention a couple of other nice things of note from my earlier big mission, as opposed to the later big, big mission . In that earlier mission there were two checkpoint saves (auto-saves) tied to doing two certain actions. I did one of those actions with the alarms going off and then a little while later died. I was respawned at the checkpoint but the alarms were no longer on; I could revert to stealth mode.

The other nice thing I noticed in both big missions was that there wasn't infinite spawning of stormtroopers on those levels. If I eliminated a guard and then had a checkpoint save, when I respawned at that checkpoint save that guard was still eliminated. And I ended up taking out all the guards on that level in the mission and there was no magical respawning. This isn't true every time, but is appropriate for the intent of that part of the mission.

[Max Peck]

I've found that if you aren't on a mission, you can just drive to wherever you want, or at least as far as I wanted to go. I've not experimented with just driving to the edges of the map, maybe I'll try that this afternoon.

I expected that would be the case. I was still in the tutorial mission phase of the game when I was being kept on the short leash.

The other nice thing I noticed in both big missions was that there wasn't infinite spawning of stormtroopers on those levels.

On a related note, during a fight more enemies can spawn in, but you will see that someone is sounding the alarm and I believe that there is a window of opportunity to neutralize them before the reinforcements are summoned. There is a very similar mechanic in Avatar: FoP (which was also developed by Massive). I ran into this in the First Big Mission™ that we keep referring to, after "going loud" in the area immediately following the secure area by way of fumbling a grenade and having to deal with at least one wave of reinforcements before gaining control of the situation.

[jztemple2]

On a related note, during a fight more enemies can spawn in, but you will see that someone is sounding the alarm and I believe that there is a window of opportunity to neutralize them before the reinforcements are summoned. There is a very similar mechanic in Avatar: FoP (which was also developed by Massive). I ran into this in the First Big Mission™ that we keep referring to, after "going loud" in the area immediately following the secure area by way of fumbling a grenade and having to deal with at least one wave of reinforcements before gaining control of the situation.

Yes, I forgot to mention this, you can take out a guy before he sets off the alarm, a very cool mechanic. Also you can sabotage their alarm stations, preventing them from setting off the alarm there. I haven't noticed if they still run to the alarm station before they notice that it has been sabotaged.

Additionally, on that big mission , I was on a high platform and noticed that when the alarm goes off, the additional guards came out of a squad room door which previously had been closed. And cleverly, there is an explosive barrel next to the door

[jztemple2]

I really like how this game deals with providing the player with information on your reputation with the various factions. They let you know that mission X is going to hurt your rep with one faction and help it with another. And the game clearly delineates what each level of reputation means regarding access, rewards and other items.

I did run into one oddity. I went to a faction leader looking for a job. The faction leader explained how he had come across some information regarding another faction's plan to do him harm. I know he had this information as I had just brought it to him a while ago . But that's OK, the devs have to do so much work to allow the game to handle the player doing the missions in so many random ways that occasionally something like that will happen. And maybe the faction leader is just absent-minded

[Max Peck]

Heh, I had a better offer for that information. What he doesn't know probably won't hurt me.

[jztemple2]

Played my first game of Sabacc, the card game. Seems more complex than it really is. I might indulge a few more times but I have a lot of other things going on, like trying to improve my rep with everybody

[Daehawk]

Sounds like you guys are having fun. Thank you for no spoilers. I can play Friday I think.

[wonderpug]

Sounds like you guys are having fun. Thank you for no spoilers. I can play Friday I think.

I forget what time zone you're in, but I believe the release time is 12am Eastern. If you're further west, it unlocks late Thursday night.

[jztemple2]

Overall I'm still finding the game to be enjoyable, but this being a typical Ubisoft open world there are some items to consider. For instance, there are a plethora of small jobs which can be somewhat overwhelming to manage and also repetitive. But so far it is manageable.

[Max Peck]

I feel like someone wrote this headline just for me. I don't even hate the clickbait, just this once.

Star Wars Outlaws is the most Star Wars a Star Wars game has been since Star Wars Galaxies

When I first fired up Star Wars Outlaws, I was looking forward to getting stuck into two of my favourite hobbies: being disappointed by Ubisoft open world games and being disappointed by Star Wars. Well, Ubisoft, you've really screwed up my plans this time, haven't you? Because Outlaws is a very good time and a very good Star Wars game.

The Disney era of Star Wars has made it very easy to dunk on the galaxy far, far away, but Star Wars has still inspired a heck of a lot of great games. Few of them, however, have truly made me feel like I'm inhabiting the galaxy of the original trilogy.

[naednek]

Some of this is true. I don't have Any issues with the look of the NPCs. The lock picking is lame, but I do enjoy the splicing mechanism when jacking computers .


https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/ ... s-outlaws/


Sent from my Pixel 9 Pro XL using Tapatalk

[naednek]

duplicate post

[jztemple2]

The lock picking is lame, but I do enjoy the splicing mechanism when jacking computers .

And you can bypass these both in the Gameplay settings if you wish.

[Max Peck]

If you don't want to completely disable the lockpicking minigame, there's a visual tell (aside from the one you can turn on in the options) that makes it a fair bit easier. Using the flashing light doesn't help me a lot since it's already too late to click when I see it, but if I focus my attention on the mechanical moving parts in the UI that are bouncing in and out in the same rhythm then I can usually open the lock relatively quickly. They start to move just before I need to click, so it becomes a matter of a sort of QTE with a reasonable reaction time rather than needing to memorize the timing for the entire pattern.

[Jolor]

Are there any space battles a la Starfield? I get disoriented in "3D" on a flat screen so this would give me pause. I had to abandon Starfield as it was non-skippable.

[Unagi]

Is QTE something I should know? I'm a not knower. Help me know.

[ydejin]

If you don't want to completely disable the lockpicking minigame, there's a visual tell (aside from the one you can turn on in the options) that makes it a fair bit easier. Using the flashing light doesn't help me a lot since it's already too late to click when I see it, but if I focus my attention on the mechanical moving parts in the UI that are bouncing in and out in the same rhythm then I can usually open the lock relatively quickly. They start to move just before I need to click, so it becomes a matter of a sort of QTE with a reasonable reaction time rather than needing to memorize the timing for the entire pattern.

I couldn’t figure out at all when we were supposed to click things until I turned on the flashing light. I knew there was the rhythm, but then when exactly do we pull the trigger, when the rhythm sound starts, in the middle of the sounds, at the end, when the side light flashes (and what’s up with the two color lights), nothing seemed to work and I couldn’t figure it out. I think having it on one of the controller triggers (playing on Xbox) isn’t helping, since there’s a relatively long pull time and the triggers just aren’t as quick responding as buttons. But mostly I just suck at it and couldn’t do it at all without the light indicator cheat — at this point with the visual indicator on it’s not so bad I’m tempted to completely turn it off.

I do appreciate all the individual difficulty settings they gave us. I desperately need a jump timing difficulty setting in Jedi Fallen Order, I suck at platforming and the jump timing is a big part of why I haven’t picked up Jedi Survivor yet.

[Anonymous Bosch]

Is QTE something I should know? I'm a not knower. Help me know.

QTE = Quick Time Event, as illustrated below:

[Max Peck]

Is QTE something I should know? I'm a not knower. Help me know.

Quick Time Event.

Technically, what I'm describing isn't a QTE, but it reminded me of QTEs because it provides a visual cue that starts just before you need to click whereas the flashing light seems to happen when you need to click. When I was trying to use the flashing light, I needed to remember the rhythm and try to time my clicks to match it. Using the moving parts of the lock mechanism lets me react to to the motion rather than relying on my poor timing to anticipate. I'm probably not explaining it well, but it did go a long way to making lockpicking work well enough that I didn't need to turn it off despite being horrible at rhythm games.

[Unagi]

TY, both of ya.

I actually had a guess in my head that it stood for 'quick timed event', so I'm kinda happy about that. Or perhaps I've heard about it before and forgotten.

[jztemple2]

Are there any space battles a la Starfield? I get disoriented in "3D" on a flat screen so this would give me pause. I had to abandon Starfield as it was non-skippable.

There are 3D space battles which are similar to Starfield. I don't know of a way to turn it off but there are accessibility settings which make space combat easier.

[jztemple2]

10 tips to get started in Star Wars Outlaws

Searching for some Star Wars Outlaws tips? Like most Ubisoft games, Outlaws isn't all that complex—you ride around on your speeder, committing crimes with your cute companion, Nix, and blasting anyone who gets in your way. Stealing and general unlawful behaviour is the name of the game, literally, but Outlaws does have a few more complex systems to contend with.

If you want the best contracts and rewards, you'll need to maintain your Syndicate reputation, which is a careful balancing act of who you backstab and who you help. The abilities system also revolves entirely around discovering experts and unlocking abilities with them by completing a number of tasks.

If you simply blast everyone regardless of the consequences, you'll quickly find yourself in a tough position where you struggle to get access to Syndicate areas, and enemies are constantly hunting or chasing you. That said, here are ten Star Wars Outlaws tips that'll help you understand the game and how to get going.

[Max Peck]

I guess there's a flood of these articles/videos.

[Daehawk]

Thats a very good 'to know' video. Thank you. I can play tomorrow I think.

[gbasden]

If you don't want to completely disable the lockpicking minigame, there's a visual tell (aside from the one you can turn on in the options) that makes it a fair bit easier. Using the flashing light doesn't help me a lot since it's already too late to click when I see it, but if I focus my attention on the mechanical moving parts in the UI that are bouncing in and out in the same rhythm then I can usually open the lock relatively quickly. They start to move just before I need to click, so it becomes a matter of a sort of QTE with a reasonable reaction time rather than needing to memorize the timing for the entire pattern.

Maybe it's just having been a musician for a long time, but I can listen to the rhythm a couple of times and then hit the beats. It hasn't been too difficult so far.

[Max Peck]

If you're looking for guides, Polygon has a whole collection of them already.

Hopefully most of them are better than "How to play Star Wars Outlaws three days early."

[Isgrimnur]

Hopefully most of them are better than "How to play Star Wars Outlaws three days early."

Early Star Wars Outlaws PS5 players paid $110 only to have Ubisoft issue a new patch and tell them to start a new save file or face game-breaking bugs

Again, the bug only seems to affect PS5 players, and only if you started a game before the 1.000.002 patch was issued. Eurogamer reports that one of its reviewers was already on the 1.000.002 patch a few days before launch, so it's unclear why that update had not yet rolled out to all players.

[jztemple2]

If you're looking for guides, Polygon has a whole collection of them already.

Hopefully most of them are better than "How to play Star Wars Outlaws three days early."

Being almost 71 and never any good at lateral thinking anyway, I've gone to the internet a few times for help, mostly on how to get to locations on my speedster. Turns out there's almost always a ramp somewhere

[GreenGoo]

[Max Peck]

Turns out there's almost always a ramp somewhere

Evel Knievel has nothing on Kay when it comes to jumping canyons.

[Daehawk]

Snake Canyon Snake Plissken, Kay will jump anything.

[Punisher]

Played some more as work was done early. I'm not a huge fan of sneaking. You can tell your rodent pet to distract but he doesn't always get them to turn away from you so if you try to approach you get caught. I must have started over 10 times. And the checkpoints could be more frequent

Sent from my Pixel 9 Pro XL using Tapatalk

You can aim him so just aim here where you want the other person to end up looking.

[Daehawk]

Well I can do everything but play the game. I can go into settings and change them all around. I can remap and bind keys. I can look at neat Division 2 stuff thats supposedly out now and free....which I will do.

But when I click NEW GAME it dumps me to desktop with just the Ubisoft Connect launcher open. No error no nothing. Ive restarted my PC and totally shut it down and restarted...same thing.

I bought this back in Jan or Feb and looked forward to playing now.....and cant...hmmmmm.

[Punisher]

Did you try updating your video drivers?

[Daehawk]

not yet but can do that now.

EDIT: Did it. Rebooted. Done it twice actually. Now when I click the icon or click PLAY from the launcher it brings up a black screen like its going to do something but never does. I can move my mouse pointer around freely in the black and Im cooking a steak right now while Im doing all this and it never moves from that. I have to alt-ctrl-del to end task on Outlaws to get back my desktop.

[Skinypupy]

I put in about 4 hours today. A few initial thoughts.

Kay's movement feels very slow and janky, with all sorts of really weird quirks. Things like randomly turning around and facing the direction I jumped from every time I latch onto on a grapple point. Or randomly vaulting up and over cover at the slightest movement. Or taking 3/4 of my health as fall damage from any drop over 6 inches. I'm also really struggling to figure out exactly what textures I can and cannot jump onto in the environment or finding the single small vent that you need to crawl through to proceed. Got stuck for a good 15 minutes on one mission because I had no idea that I could jump onto a specific part of a wall (ended up doing it entirely on accident).

The stealth feels incredibly squishy, often leading to getting spotted from halfway across the map while hiding from the two mobs 10 feet away. Having to restart missions if you get seen or die is already on my nerves. Spent about 20 minutes sneaking through an area, decided to blow up a barrel to take out a couple guards, misjudged the blast radius, and had to start the whole thing over again. That feels like the game is simply wasting my time.

I know it's by design, but I don't like the feeling of just randomly stumbling into missions and quests. I've already started ignoring some of the "Hey you" as I run by because I don't want to add to my already bloated quest list. I'm not finding Kay to be a particularly interesting character, but am hoping that will improve. I'm also seeing lots of performance issues with texture pop-in and frame rate issues on PS5.

On the plus side, they absolutely nailed the Star Wars aesthetic. Everything looks fantastic and the world is very well done.

I was hoping that the Star Wars theme would overcome my general dislike of open world games, but I'm doubting it will. The comparison to Red Dead feels very apt here, as my initial impressions are about the same. The world is absolutely amazing to look at but I don't really enjoy doing any of the things in it. Hoping it's just today's mood and it clicks a little better over the weekend.