Star Wars Outlaws

• 1. Introduction

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  Star Wars Outlaws is a 2024 action-adventure game developed by Massive Entertainment and published by Ubisoft. Its hero is not a Jedi. She is a young thief named Kay Vess, and her story unfolds in the gap between The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 and Return of the Jedi in 1983.

  The project also broke a long pattern. In 2013, Disney had given Electronic Arts exclusive rights to make Star Wars games. Outlaws was the first Star Wars game built without that company's involvement.

  Critics mostly liked the result. Yet the game's sales told a different story from its reviews. Who is Kay Vess, and why does a scoundrel with a stolen ship matter to the galaxy? How did a studio famous for other kinds of games persuade Lucasfilm to hand it the keys? And why did a well-reviewed game leave its publisher disappointed?

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• 2. A Scoundrel Named Kay

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  Humberly González gave Kay Vess both her face and her voice, performing the role through motion capture and speech. She had worked with Ubisoft before, on Far Cry 6. Creative director Julian Gerighty said she won the part because she could capture the many sides of Kay's personality.

  Massive wanted Kay to be a "resourceful underdog." That was a deliberate break from the trained soldier archetype in the studio's earlier Division series. To make her relatable, the team stressed her inexperience rather than her skill.

  Han Solo and Lando Calrissian shaped her persona, as did Jack Sparrow, Indiana Jones and James Bond. Gerighty described her story as a coming-of-age journey, taking her from a "street thief to a fully-fledged scoundrel who is well known and kind of respected and feared by the syndicates." Martin Scorsese's 1985 film After Hours served as one inspiration for her story. Even her broken nose and scars were designed to hint at the life she had already lived.

  Beside her goes Nix, a small creature of a species called the merqaal, which Massive and Lucasfilm invented for the franchise. Dee Bradley Baker voices Nix. He is known for many Star Wars roles, including the animated series The Clone Wars (2008-14, 2020) and The Bad Batch (2021-2024). The developers wanted the pair to blend with established characters while avoiding fan service.

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• 3. The Vault Job

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  The story opens shortly after the Battle of Hoth. Sliro Barsha, who leads the upstart syndicate Zerek Besh, murders the heads of his rival syndicates to seize power. Meanwhile Kay wants to leave her homeworld, Cantonica, and start over in the Core Worlds. Desperate, she joins a crew led by Dennion to rob Sliro's vault.

  Kay opens the vault, and then learns that Dennion's crew belongs to the Rebel Alliance. Their real goal was to free their leader, Asara Deyn, whom Sliro held prisoner. When Kay demands payment, a stun blast drops her, and she must escape alone. Sliro assumes she caused the break-in and puts a death mark on her head. She steals a ship called the Trailblazer and jumps to the planet Toshara, where damage forces a crash landing.

  On Toshara, a mechanic named Waka agrees to repair the ship if Kay earns money for parts by working for local syndicates. She must decide which of them to help and which to betray. After she salvages a replacement nav computer, Waka double-crosses her. He is then killed by the bounty hunter Vail Tormin, who is chasing Kay's death mark. The outlaw Jaylen Vrax and his droid enforcer ND-5 rescue Kay, and Jaylen proposes a second attempt on Sliro's vault.

  Kay and ND-5 travel the galaxy to assemble a crew. On Kijimi, she frees the safecracker Ank Parako from the Ashiga Clan. On Tatooine, her search for a heavy named Hoss runs into Jabba the Hutt. Hoss dies, and Kay and Vail must cooperate to escape, earning each other's respect. On Akiva, Kay helps the droidsmith Gedeek Obaz hijack the Empire's Viper Droid project for the Rebels.

  Then ND-5's power core begins to fail. Kay and Gedeek enter an abandoned Separatist factory and find Asara's Rebel cell there. ND-5 is repaired, and Asara joins the crew as its heavy. Jaylen also brings in Riko Vess, an expert slicer. She is Kay's estranged mother, who abandoned her as a child.

  Kay steals Sliro's master code and discovers that he is a director of the Imperial Security Bureau. Zerek Besh is merely a front. The heist proves to be a trap, and Sliro orders Vail to kill Kay in the vault. Vail instead knocks him unconscious and holds off his guards in exchange for loot. The crew escapes, but the prize is a codex of Sliro's information about the Empire, not his money.

  Jaylen then reveals his real plan, which is to usurp Sliro. He takes Asara prisoner, has ND-5 stun Kay, and locks her on the Trailblazer. Ank, Gedeek and Riko free her, and she finds her ship aboard the Imperial Star Destroyer Revelator. Kay slips into a meeting between Sliro, Jaylen and Darth Vader. Vader lets Jaylen take over Zerek Besh, and Jaylen reveals that he is Sliro's older brother before killing Sliro for hunting down their family.

  Kay removes ND-5's restraining bolt, and the droid kills Jaylen to protect her. With help from Asara's Rebels and the syndicate Kay is closest to, they destroy the Revelator. Asara returns to the Rebel Alliance with critical data, Ank and Gedeek plan casino heists, and Vail is paid with a copy of the codex. In a post-credits scene, a disguised Kay helps Riko escape an Imperial prison.

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• 4. Syndicates and Skills

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  Four factions rule the underworld Kay moves through: the Ashiga Clan, Crimson Dawn, the Hutt Cartel and the Pyke Syndicate. The player's choices change Kay's reputation with each one. A high standing opens up locations, assignments and shop discounts. A low standing can bring mercenaries to her door.

  A six-level wanted system sets how fiercely Imperial forces pursue Kay. The player can escape by hiding, bribing officials or eliminating enemies. Dialogue trees add another layer, because the answers Kay chooses can change how missions end.

  Four planets are open to explore: Akiva, Kijimi, Tatooine and Toshara. Cantonica appears only in certain story missions. The player crosses planetary surfaces on a speeder bike and travels between worlds aboard the Trailblazer. Players can also explore the orbits of planets and moons and fight in space with a laser cannon and missiles. Space stations serve as hubs for trade and extra missions, and credits earned along the way buy items and gear.

  Kay's blaster has several firing modes, including an electromagnetic pulse. She can also use melee attacks, sneak past guards, or turn explosive barrels against enemies. Her Adrenaline ability charges during combat and slows time so she can fire a rapid series of shots at marked targets. A grappling hook and an electronic hacking device round out her kit, while Nix can scan, interact with objects, and distract or attack enemies. Upgrades for Kay, Nix, the blaster, the speeder and the Trailblazer come from seeking out experts and completing their assignments.

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• 5. Pitching Scoundrels

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  At E3 2018, David Polfeldt, then CEO of Massive Entertainment, told Disney representatives that the studio wanted to work on Disney franchises, Star Wars among them. Disney had already put Massive on its shortlist of developers. The studio had its own motive, since it wanted to move beyond the games as a service model of its earlier titles.

  In 2020, Massive pitched a "scoundrel fantasy" to Lucasfilm Games, a subsidiary of Disney's Lucasfilm. The pitch promised a seamless open world. Lucasfilm responded well, and Star Wars Outlaws grew from that meeting.

  About 600 developers from eleven Ubisoft studios, Massive included, eventually worked on the game. Julian Gerighty led as creative director, known for Tom Clancy's The Division (2016) and its 2019 sequel. Mathias Karlson was game director. Navid Khavari, whose earlier work included Far Cry 5 (2018) and Far Cry 6 (2021), served as narrative director. Nikki Foy, known for Watch Dogs: Legion (2020) and Far Cry 6 downloadable additions, was lead writer. Lucasfilm Games supported the team throughout.

  Lucasfilm itself suggested the setting, the stretch between the second and third original films. It called the period a "perfect starting point." The choice let the story step away from the Rebel Alliance and into the criminal underworld, a subject the franchise had not explored in depth.

  The team followed the design principles of Ralph McQuarrie, the conceptual designer of the original trilogy. They studied animated series and books. They also went back to the sources that inspired George Lucas: spaghetti Westerns, the films of Akira Kurosawa and classic war movies. McQuarrie's concept art, Joe Johnston's storyboards and Phil Tippett's creature designs were all on the reference wall.

  Toshara was invented for the game and inspired by African savannas, especially those of Tanzania. Tatooine was harder, because existing Star Wars material about the planet created challenges. The team included it anyway. They relied on Dorling Kindersley's Star Wars visual guides to rebuild the city of Mos Eisley and the planet's dunes and canyons.

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• 6. Matinee Craft

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  The developers wanted a feeling they called "matinee action." To get it, they used vignetting, film grain, lens effects and ultrawide resolution, taking cues from the look of Rogue One (2016). They also wanted a world that expanded gradually and felt "conscious" rather than merely huge. Ghost of Tsushima (2020) was a particular inspiration.

  Combat was meant to offer varied tactics, and not a narrow routine of "precisely taking cover and taking headshots." The speeder's handling drew on motocross, and Kay's speeder was modeled on a Swedish motocross bike in a simplified, retrofuturistic style. Her starship took cues from 1970s toys. For space combat, Massive worked with other Ubisoft studios experienced in arcade flight and combat simulators. They aimed for intuitive controls and a slower, more intense fight, drawing on Starlink: Battle for Atlas (2018) and a space sequence in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (2014).

  The game runs on the Snowdrop engine, enhanced for three design pillars: dense and dynamic cities, wide landscapes full of activities, and exploration of outer space. The team handcrafted every environment and rejected procedural generation. Gerighty called the aesthetics of the 1970s and 1980s "timeless," and the visual design leans on them.

  Nix's design started with lemurs and monkeys, which gave the creature its ability to manipulate objects. Reptilian features highlight Nix's "tough side." The look blends the developers' own pets with armadillos and axolotls. A puppet captured Nix's movements, and the 3D model uses shaders that mimic latex.

  The game offers 60 accessibility options, including audio cues, visual aids and customizable controls. The team worked with players with disabilities and consultants, and ran user research. Partnering with Descriptive Video Works, they added audio description for cutscenes, a first for a Ubisoft game.

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• 7. Release and Expansions

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  Ubisoft first announced the game in January 2021. A full reveal came at the Xbox Games Showcase in June 2023.

  In April 2024, Ubisoft announced two special editions, priced at $110 and $130. Both included a season pass with a bonus story mission, cosmetics and future story expansions, and one added further cosmetics. Pre-orders came with vehicle cosmetics and early access several days before launch. Some members of the gaming community criticized the pricing and what the editions contained.

  That same month, Ubisoft partnered with Intel to bundle the game with select 14th generation Raptor Lake processors. It also shipped with select Nvidia GeForce RTX 40 series graphics cards. Journalists tried the game hands-on at Summer Game Fest in June, and it went gold in July 2024.

  The game launched on the 30th of August 2024 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows through the Epic Games Store and Ubisoft Connect.

  On the 21st of November 2024, the PC version reached Steam together with the Wild Card expansion. It struggled to draw players there, peaking at just 834 concurrent users. In Wild Card, Toshara's Imperial Governor Thorden blackmails Kay with a fabricated hologram of her as an Imperial. He wants her to enter a Sabacc tournament on an underworld luxury cruise ship and win a valuable moon called Okala V. Thorden's mercenaries steal the map first. Kay and Lando Calrissian plot to take it back from his secret base, which hides his plan to turn the moon's resources into a weaponized gas for the Empire's eventual fall. Lando distracts Thorden while Kay steals both the map and the hologram. Lando pays her and warns her to watch for the day the Empire falls.

  A second expansion, A Pirate's Fortune, arrived on the 15th of May 2025. A message about legendary pirate treasure in the Kephi system lures Kay and ND-5 into ionized fog, and the Rokana Raiders capture them. In prison, Kay meets Hondo Ohnaka, the man behind the message, and he helps her escape. They steal half of the key to the Vault, while the Raiders' leader, Stinger Tash, holds the other half. Depending on dialogue choices, the crew either mutinies and follows Hondo, who refuses to open the Vault after realizing it holds ancient Battle Droids, or Stinger opens it and the droids kill the crew. Either way, Hondo and Kay escape empty-handed with ND-5's help. The Nintendo Switch 2 version followed on the 4th of September 2025.

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• 8. Verdict and Sales

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  Metacritic labeled the reviews "generally favorable." OpenCritic showed 66% of 175 critics recommending the game. In Japan, four Famitsu critics each gave it 8 out of 10, for 32 out of 40. Player reaction was colder. The game held a "generally unfavorable" user score on Metacritic during release week. GameStar called it polarizing, though it worried that many negative reviews lacked thoughtful feedback.

  Tristan Ogilvie of IGN gave it 7 out of 10. He faulted its lack of original ideas and its numerous technical issues, and found the stealth and combat rigid and repetitive. He praised the syndicate system and Nix. His verdict compared the game to the Millennium Falcon, "a bucket of bolts held together with repurposed parts and prone to breaking down, but at its best it's more than capable of jolting your pleasure centres into Star Wars fan hyperspace."

  During release week, Reuters tied a drop in Ubisoft's shares, to their lowest level since 2015, to the "muted reception" of the game. J.P. Morgan analyst Daniel Kerven lowered his forecast by 2 million units. He noted that the development budget was 30% higher than that of Assassin's Creed Mirage. Twitch data showed the new game underperforming Mirage by 15%.

  In September 2024, Ubisoft called sales "softer than expected." The company delayed Assassin's Creed Shadows and decided to put that game on Steam at launch, unlike Outlaws. In October 2024, Ubisoft's half-year results stated that sales "underperformed expectations."

  The charts were less grim. Outlaws debuted as the 3rd best selling game in the United States in August 2024. It ranked 9th in a revenue top 20 across the US, UK, Germany, France, Spain and Italy, and was the 2nd best selling title in Europe that month. On PlayStation 5 it was the 5th most downloaded game in the USA and Canada and 3rd in Europe. In the UK it led sales in the last week of August. Insider Gaming reported 1 million units sold in the first month. Over all of 2024, it ranked 47th among Europe's best sellers.

  In July 2025, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot told shareholders that the game missed its sales targets. He blamed the Star Wars brand being "in a bit of choppy waters" and "a few items that needed to be polished."

  Awards bodies kept noticing the game. The Game Awards 2023 listed it for Most Anticipated Game, and the Golden Joystick Awards 2023 listed it for Most Wanted Game. González's performance as Kay appeared in categories at The Game Awards 2024, the Golden Joystick Awards 2024 and the British Academy Games Awards. The music was listed for the 67th Annual Grammy Awards, with the Wild Card and A Pirate's Fortune scores listed again at the 68th.

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