Star Wars: Outlaws was one of the biggest games at Summer Game Fest 2024, because it was shown at pretty much every major showcase and it was one of the many games you could actually play if you were lucky enough to be at the event.
It’s the latter part of that however that’s become a point of issue for the game leading up to its August launch. While early previews agree the game looks good, there are some who have written negative previews based on what they played.
PSU also published a preview for Outlaws, but we were unable to be there in person at SGF, so ours comes from the perspective of someone who got to check out an extended look at gameplay prior to it being shown during the Ubisoft Forward 2024.
So our preview reads a little differently than Eurogamer, who called their time with the game “worryingly dated” and compared it to Uncharted: Golden Abyss for “its near total lack of character, flair, invention, detail, or style.”
In response to those negative previews per VGC, creative director Julian Gerighty advised those with concerns to have caution, and that what people played at SGF 2024 is only an “amouse bouche” to the main course of the full game.
“I think coming into a show like this, while you’re closing a game in terms of production, you have to make a lot of choices, and our producer was like, you get one demo for all of the shows that we’re going to go to during the year, so Gamescom, ComiCon [etc].
And they’re consumer plus journalist focused, so we had to choose something that was 20 minutes, bite-sized, lots of variety, lots of representative systems, but not the open world experience, because we’re going to expose that during the studio tour, in the preview event over here.
So we’ll spend a lot more time on those things, so this is an amuse bouche, it’s a starter rather than the main course for the game. I think we have a very compelling overall game and just a part of it is represented here.”
Outlaws arrives on PS5 and other platforms at the end of August, which means there’s still time for people to see more of it, and critically that means it’ll arrive after Gamescom 2024.
So we could very well hear the same concerns by the time Gamescom rolls around even if Ubisoft has shown more of the game.
The hope of course is that Gerighty is accurately representing Outlaws in that what people got to play this weekend is just a small taste of what’s possible, and shouldn’t be taken as such.
Interestingly, PSU’s preview praises the games visuals and attention to detail, though lacking the hands-on experience advises a cautious optimism, since Outlaws could very well fall into more than a few open-world gameplay traps and tropes that could sour the experience.
Source – [VGC]