The Ringer-Verse - Is 'Outlaws' the 'Star Wars' Story You're Looking For? | Button Mash

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

Ben, Jomi, and Arjuna discuss their experiences with Ubisoft’s ‘Star Wars: Outlaws.’ They break down the big-budget title’s gameplay, graphics, and performance, as well as its open-world structure, and its portrayal of the ‘Star Wars’ universe. They then critique the broad strokes of the story (6:40), before dipping briefly (and with warnings!) into spoiler territory (1:11:20). After the spoiler section, they reflect on lessons learned from ‘Outlaws,’ assess where it ranks among ‘Star Wars’ games, and share their hopes for future ‘Star Wars’ releases (1:35:40). Host: Ben Lindbergh Guests: Jomi Adeniran and Arjuna Ramgopal Producer: Devon Renaldo Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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about Tramphia today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit Trimfair Radio.com. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Everyone knows winter is the MVP and making a mess. You don't need WeatherTech floor liners in the summer, unless you hit the beach or go camping. Then you'd want a cargo liner. Or a road trip goes sideways, ketchup goes rogue, ice cream drips. Yeah, you'd be pretty happy about those weather tech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step into the summer.

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Sure. But once we start this, we have to see it through. So, you ready? Yeah, I'm good. Let's get this over with. Great. After you. And welcome into the Ringerverse, your nexus feed for all things. fandom. I am Ben Lindberg, senior editor for the ringer, buttonmash, main, and wanted man who has the death sentence on 12 systems. Over the years, I've learned that putting together

a podcast is a little like planning a heist. You have to pick the perfect target. You have to plan the proper approach. And most important, you have to recruit the right personnel. Our target today is Star Wars Outlaws. The recently released, big budget, massively marketed open world Ubisoft game for Windows, Xbox, and PlayStation. Our approach, having completed the campaign, is to give you an in-depth review and discussion, which we will keep spoiler-free, save perhaps for a short story spoiler section at the end of the episode,

which will be clearly indicated. As for our personnel, I've assembled a small, elite team of podcast professionals. First, a returning guest from our Outlaws Preview Pod, he brings the vibes, the banter, the memes, and maybe some explanations. Jomey, junior mint and midnight boy, Alderon. Excuse me, Adeneron.

I mean, Alderon's not bad, you know what I mean? Ultimately, I do hope to blow up one day, so, you know. Nice. Well done. Also with us is a man who usually lurks out of you, pulling the ring of her strings from behind the scenes. Picture the professor from money heist if he planned podcast instead of bank jobs.

The podcast puppet master himself, senior podcast manager Arjuna, Ramgapal. Hello, Arjuna. Ben, it's an honor to join you and Jomey today to talk. You know, one of my favorite IPs, Star Wars. I'm excited. I'm ready to go.

You are an expert when it comes to Star Wars. And you've been thanked at the end of hundreds of Ringiverse episodes, sometimes even with your last name properly pronounced, less often than we'd like, and then maybe you'd like. We've had eight months. We've had eight months now. You know, it's been good. But is this,

is this your on-mic, non-ringerverse recommends full episode pod debut? It is. This is my first. Wow. My first, uh, as a guest.

Yeah. This is strange. It's strange to be on the other side. Yeah. Usually he's just taking notes in the corner. Yeah. That's me. You're a regular cave-vess.

Just making your way up from a street-level scoundrel to a criminal mastermind, and I'm honored to have this history happen on Button Nash. Shout out to another invaluable member of our crew, producer Devin Ronaldo, who's making sure that Arjuna's pod debut is preserved for posterity. Guys, the game we are talking about today

sits at the center of the ringerverse bend diagram. There's the video game circle and the Star Wars circle, and smack in the middle, there's Star Wars Outlaws. Obviously, I was watching this game's career with great interests, But it wasn't just me.

Various public player interest metrics pegged this as the most anticipated game this side of GTA6. It's been billed as the first open world Star Wars game. It's the first console Star Wars game to be released since the end of Lucasfilm's decade-long video game exclusivity deal with EA. And it could be the last Star Wars game to come out for, we don't know exactly, because none of the games rumored or confirmed to be in development are anywhere near a release date. throw in the uncertain state of the Star Wars franchise writ large, and the stakes and the excitement could have hardly been higher. That's how it started.

Here's how it's going. Devin, could you play a short clip of something I said on our July 30th preview pod after Jomey and I had each played the game for four hours? My main fear for this game going into the preview wasn't that it would be bad because outlaws just seems too big to fail. There just seems to be too much money and talent and time and hype invested in this game for it to be bad. But that it would be another Ubisoft 7.5. You know what I'm saying?

And I'll be honest, my time with the game didn't entirely allay that concern. Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen. Emperor, is that you? Excuse me. She had something stuck in my throat. Papa Palpatine himself. Oh, wow. I was worried about a 7.5.

Well, as we record today, the average outlaws critic scores on Metacritic and Open Critic are 7.6. I was way off. Now, that doesn't mean we'll agree with the critical consensus, but for what it's worth, and these days, I don't think it's worth that much, the user scores are way worse. Seemingly, thanks to those responses, Ubisoft's share price has fallen to a near- early 10-year low since the game's release. Not great.

And a JP Morgan analyst has downgraded his sales estimate for the financial year by a couple million copies. And unless you've been buying up Ubisoft stock, in which case, condolences, you probably don't care that much about how this thing impacts this publisher's quarterly revenue. What matters to most people is, should I get this game? Or am I glad I got this game? And plenty of people are having a lot of fun with Star Wars Outlaws, including us sometimes. So I want to hear what you thought, and I will share what I thought.

And we can just do our high-level snapshot, concise, blurb-level takes on the game before we dive deep as usual. Jomey, you want to start us off? Yeah, man. You know, I, here's thing, I kind of, as I'm playing the game, I kind of compare it to watching your favorite sports team. You know, so like for me, it's the Lakers. whereas, you know, 75% of the time, it's great. You're having a great time. 75 seems high, I feel like.

You know what I'm saying? The 25% where you're not having a good time, it's a really, really, really tough time, you know? To bring it even closer, it's like when you know, like, man, we're having a good two quarters. Hopefully one quarter, we don't get to that third and lose the third by 20 points. Oh, we just did.

And the game does that. It loses a quarter by 30 points. And while like when it's working, it's fun. When it's not working, it's tough to enjoy. What about Georgia? You know, for me, I love Star Wars. So I didn't get to, I know you both of you got to obviously do some of the preview stuff in July and some first impressions before you started playing the whole game. But this is my first time playing it once we got the game and everything.

And, you know, you're booting it up. have that little smile on your face. You're like, I'm going into Star Wars. I love Star Wars games. Open world Star Wars games. This is the thing that you want, right? And it just took me a long time to get into it. Like, it just didn't grab me.

The game, it took me a long time against the story. It took me a long time against the gameplay. And I just felt in those early hours, I didn't, I wasn't having fun. I wasn't, I wasn't, I didn't just had that same smile on my face of like, well, I'm in the Star Wars world. I'm like, there's probably. like five other things I'd rather be doing right now, but maybe playing this game.

Some of the frustrations, you know, that we'll get into, I think, with some of the gameplay, some of the story issues, like really cropped up early for me. That was my early impression of the game. I got into it eventually, but it did take me a while.

I was hoping there was a butt coming at some point. But then, it's like when you watch a streaming series and you're like, just get past the first seven episodes. Those last couple are killer. The last 20 minutes is, the best.

Is it, though, not in this game, I don't think. No, it's certainly not. No, spoilers. Get into that in the spoiler section. Yeah. Look, in terms of raw, total playtime, I had a lot of fun with this game. There were many hours when I was entertained and diverted

and when I didn't want to do other things, it was kind of a low-grade switch my brain off sort of fun for most of the time, which, you know, maybe that's what you expect, Star Wars or though I hold Star Wars to higher standards. We tried to around here. So I had fun just kind of in a, you know, I can run around this open world and I can find things to do and look over there. There's something I should check out and I can check that box off and I can level up a little bit. And I was having enough fun to keep going. But I would say that on the whole,

I'm not way out of line with the kind of critical consensus here. Nothing about the game surprised me, really or exceeded expectations. And to be fair, I had high expectations. And if the game was great at the basics, just the moment-to-moment gameplay level execution, I wouldn't care about being surprised, right? But there are enough failings there that it didn't quite deliver on this level. So it was definitely more of a case of like than love and kind of a lukewarm like. And there are a lot of things that we will praise along the way. And like you, Arjuna, I'm a Star Wars guy. And so if you graft a decent to good game

onto a franchise that I'm invested in and care about, that should be, in theory, an easy sell for me, right? And, you know, for the most part, it was, but I think the license was doing a lot of work for me personally. If you're not a Star Wars person, I don't know that the game alone, independent of that will be enough to make you happy that you went for this.

There's no shot. I was thinking about this as I'm playing the game. Like, there are, like, references and little stuff you notice as a Star Wars fan that can get you into it. Yeah, like, people show up or, you know, things like that nature. Like, you'll notice something. And it'd be cool. I don't know how I'm supposed to get my non-Star Wars fans into it. You know, like, if you just play video games, if you just play video games,

there's not the one. There's no way. There's no way you're going to play, like, the first couple hours and be like, you know what? Let me plan on this. Let me let me 100%. There's no shot. Yeah, this is not the super accessible Star Wars game you're looking for, I guess. Maybe if you drop your Lakers analogy on them, maybe that could get them hooked.

I don't know, once you explain it. Okay, that's a tease for the rest of this episode. Here are some teas for upcoming episodes. You want more Jomey? You're going to get more Jomey. He'll be back with Steve on Friday to talk Terminator Zero on Mint Edition. And then, Buttmatch, we'll be back to talk after. Astrobot next week, early next week.

This will be a quick turnaround between buttonmashes, maybe the quickest ever, but the good games are coming out fast and furious right now. So we will talk about Astrobot and maybe some industry developments. What did we learn from the success of Black Myth Wukong and the complete cratering of Concord? We'll also be button mashing about the legend of Zelda echoes of wisdom later this month if the Nintendo Public Relations Ferrys sprinkle some review codes on us in time.

Over on House of R, it's ring season. The Rings of Power episode four Deep dive will drop on Friday. And then Mal and Joe will meet again at the turn of the tide, aka Tuesday to talk Lord of the Rings, a musical tale. As always, you can contact us at ringerverse gaming at gmail.com. This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, reliable internet means everything for your business. And even this podcast, that's why I trust Spectrum Business.

They keep companies of all sizes connected with internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, plus 24-7 U.S.-based support, millions of business owners already trust Spectrum Business. So visit Spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Service is not available in all areas. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book-to-screen favorites you've already read twice. Off campus, L, every year after, the love hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen.

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All right, Jomey, Arjuna. As General Rikin says to Han Solo and the Empire Strikes Back, a death mark's not an easy thing to live with. KVess, the star of Star Wars outlaws, doesn't like living with one either. And so after a job gone wrong, put her on the wrong side of the syndicate, Zerick Besh, she decides to do many more crimes in order to amass enough money to save herself. Does that plan make sense? We will discuss that later. As the player controls K between the events of empire and return of the Jedi, you will navigate the empire and the rebellion. You'll travel to five worlds. You'll do a lot of exploring and sneaking and blasting and speeding and dogfighting, and most importantly,

petting your sidekick, Nix, who we all love dearly, regardless of whatever other thoughts we have about this game. So to give this conversation some structure, maybe we can break the game down three ways. First, we can talk about this game as a game on the basic graphics, gameplay, performance level. Then we can talk about this as an open world game, the larger structure and scope and exploration. That's a big part of the pitch here. And C, we can talk about this as a Star Wars game. So how well does it utilize the license and universe?

How engrossing is the story? And for each of those aspects, we can each share some likes and gripes. And as I said, this will be and stay spoiler-free until I indicate otherwise. So let's start with the game stuff. How does this do just as a game game? Maybe we can each just shout out some likes

and gripes and go around the room here and commiserate or disagree if we do. Arjuni, you want to start off this time anywhere you want to go with just the gameplay. I've got to start with the stealth. You guys talked about this in the preview pod. Just like the game starts with the south

and then continues with the stealth and also ends with the stealth. Just like the game forces stealth down your throat. I had to start here because this was the most disappointing aspect for me in terms of the gameplay. The stealth was just very forced it was not good.

The technical term for the stealth. Not tough. Not good. Tough. It frustrated me the most, I would say, throughout playing this game. The four stealth mechanics, the inconsistent stealth mechanics, too, where, you know, you could kind of be two feet away from someone and be facing them and they wouldn't see you sometimes. And other times you're 100 yards away from a stormtrooper and you're caught.

And it's over. So that to me was the thing that really stuck out, especially because Ubisoft, as you guys know, has made 3,000 Assassin's Creed games. And, you know, stealth is a huge part of it. It's not the greatest stealth on the planet, but I would say the stealth in those games are much better than the stealth elements available in outlaws.

That was the thing that just was just over and over again made me put the game down and be like, I got to take a break. I can't play right now. Yes and no, right? Because I don't, I'm not trying to shoot the game some bail in that aspect, but there's an ability you can get into different spots, different ways, right? It allows you to, you know, have that sense of, okay, I tried it once this way.

Let me try to get a different way, you know, let's see if I can make this work. Oh, if I can go through this way, I can come through the back or like whichever way. way. Like, you can, if you feel like me and you're, you're bad at the game, you know, you can try different things. However, there does need to be a level of consistency in how the AI treats you and how you're supposed to do, do the thing. And it's just not there, you know, ultimately it's just, it's just not. And I'll be in a situation where I'm sneaking, I'm sneaking, I'm sneaking, I'm sneaking. I'll, like, see a guy will like spot me from across the way I'm like bro there's there's no way there's no shot there's there's I lost so many hours of like equally how did that guy see me and how did that guy

not not see me yes exactly there's others like so much of that it is frustrating in that in that stealth aspect because the lot of the game I don't know how you guys like to play I'm not a shooter that's not where I'm at, especially in the imperial bases. They cook you, right? And so I'm trying to like, how can I get in and out of these spots without getting seen? And it is nary impossible. I remember I was telling you this yesterday. There was one time, Ben, I got a checkpoint in Dernestell thing.

And it's in an imperial base. And the checkpoint is like just inside, like right inside the base, but there are guards patrolling, some troops are patrolling, and the checkpoint has the door open. And so as they're walking by, I would die,

the checkpoint would load, they would see me, they would start shooting, they would align the base, and I got a loop. Yeah. Exactly. You know,

and I was just like, what, like, come on. Like, what are we doing? You know, I do, I want to play the game the right way. I do want to take advantage of the stealth, but it just,

like, for a good chunk of the game, just didn't, just didn't, didn't work the way it's supposed to, I think. Yeah, I will second and third all of that and add to it, too, because on the plus side, I guess I'm no longer worried about AI replacing us in our jobs because this AI has not advanced since Golden Eye, more or less.

I mean, that's the level of intelligence we're talking about here. And granted, we are also talking about stormtroopers who are canonically incompetent much of the time on screen, right? So I guess you could say it's true to the franchise. They were shooting me. I was down a lot. I don't know what's true. It depends.

It was very variable, as you're saying, right? So, I mean, there are segments where you can choose how you want to go in, right? You can run and gun. You can break cover. You can just take everyone out. And when given that option, I typically did, mostly because I inevitably just alerted everyone whether I was trying to sneak around or not, right? But there are also segments where you have to sneak.

And if the alarm is raised, then that's that. and you've got to reload and start from a checkpoint. If there is a checkpoint, because I got to say, sometimes the checkpointing system, not forgiving. Maybe this is a skill issue, but there were a lot of times where I was deep into some Imperial Baser research facility, and I've been sneaking around for 20 minutes. And then I got spotted and you start outside the base again from scratch. Do not trigger the alarm? Yeah.

Like when that was on the screen, I was like, all right. Yeah, that was. My next two hours right here. My next two hours. The do not trigger one that got me a lot was the heist when you have to go through one specific area where that one really started you far back and you had to go through a lot of people. That took me the longest and it was incredibly frustrating. Yes. And look, this could be a skill issue.

Clearly in Jomi's case, it's partly a skill issue. But also, I think it is the inconsistency. As you're saying, like, and Jess and I have ranted about this on previous pods, right? Like we have our issues with stealth in general, but if you're going to go full stealth in a game, then give me a dedicated stealth system, right? Like give me a fully featured, okay, I can get in the shadows. I have some idea of when I'm going to be alerting people and when I'm not. I have some sense of what the line of sight of these guards is, right?

Here, it just varies by the level, by the part of the level. You can walk in plain sight where you're like, I can see you. Why can't you see me? But I guess I'm going to go with it. And then there are other times where people will spot you through physical objects. Oh, my God. And there are times where just like the level geometry does not hide you, right? And there's no, you know, like you can crouch, you can be quieter, but you can't say hide a body, right?

So if you take down a body and it's out in the open, you know it's only a matter of time until some stormtrooper is going to patrol around and go, oh, what's how, what happened to my buddy? and then is going to run away and sound the alarm. And there's nothing you can do about that, right? You can't drag a body somewhere else. It's not that kind of game. It's sort of simplistic on that level. And sometimes simplistic can be good.

And there are ways in which I think the simplicity of outlaws sometimes is good. But in that sense, I think it's not. And it just doesn't telegraph what it wants me to do, what I need to do from moment to moment. And that was my main source of frustration. I will just say there is some sense of progression, of course, because you do unlock abilities as you go. And so, you know, you guys were mentioning the alarms, right?

So at first you can prevent someone from triggering the alarm. Later, you can have Nix or you yourself can disable the alarm. Later, you can have Nix trap the alarm, right? So it blows up in a trooper's face when they try to use it, which is satisfying. So you can't get good eventually as you get deeper into the game. But it's more of a mechanics issue, I think, than a skill issue, even as we're copping to some skill issue. Yeah, it felt like it was tacked on.

It felt like it was added later in the development of the game and they just didn't add in a dedicated stealth system, which again, is strange when you have an entire Assassin's Creed series that has dedicated stealth systems. It doesn't seem like it's too hard to port one of those over. I will say there are levels to like the, like, again, for the Imperials especially, because you spent a lot of time on a proeo basis. I don't know about you guys. Yes.

But I spent like the game, but also just me. I spent 40 hours in the game. 25 of them. Right? There's the officers. You can sneak up on those guys anytime. Anytime you want. They have no...

But they're also the ones that will sound the alarm the most often. Really? Interesting. They were the ones. And sometimes they would have the comms too. So you'd have the panel, but sometimes some of them had like the remote comms.

So you'd have to take them out. Like if you're not coming from the front Of those guys, they will not see you. Right. If you're crouching, they will not, they will never see you. How many times do you enter a room with three guys, one guy's in the middle, another guy's in the other corner, another guy's in the other corner, just tiptoe around, just take out the wood guy. Take them all out.

No one hears anything, even though there's a loud, crumpling sound, even though you punch loudly, and then you just tiptoe to the next guy and you tiptoe to the next guy, right? And, you know, sometimes there's more nuance and you need to send Nix to distract people, and then he can distract multiple people later in the game, right? But mostly it's I'm going to creep around and I'm going to knock you out and then I'm going to knock you out. And then I'm going to knock you out even though you are few feet apart while this is all happening. I could not tell you how many times I was in the room again, one person in the middle, two people on each end. You go to one side.

You try to press square for the takedown and you just punch somebody. And it goes from yellow to blue real quick. And now I got to punch you twice. Hoping your home is across the way didn't hear it. They didn't. But I don't know that. Right. And so like, you're on the, I'm like, all right, let me go back to sneak.

Oh, nobody saw that? Okay, cool. I'm going to do that two more times. Yeah. You know? It's like, all right. It worked, but I remember the first time I snuck up behind like a droid. I was like, oh, I'm going to stealth this.

And then it's the red square. And I'm like, I am exposed and then I died. Well, it was over. It was over very quick. You can't punch a droid. You can't punch a droid. You can't take down a droid. I learned that the hard way also.

That's a dengeron move. The droid and the pig creatures. The game of morians. The game morians. Learn that the hard way. Yeah. Those, the death troopers. Yeah, a few of the heavy type of enemies you can't.

Unless you get the unlockable way. I had, I had, so I'm like at the end game. They're like, do you want to continue playing? If you keep playing, you'll take you to the end of the game. And I was like, I'm going to need like 30, 30 to an hour. I need to, I'm not ready for this. I hadn't upgraded my health. I hadn't upgraded none of my stuff.

Yeah. I was like, I need some time because this looks like we're going to be here a while. And you were here a while, but we'll get to that later. Yeah. And speaking of a while, I mean, as you mentioned, Arjuna, if it feels like an afterthought, that's not great because it is maybe the main mechanic of the game. It is the main thing that you're going to be spending the most time doing. And it's a lot of time, and that speaks to a larger issue with the game, which is just the general repetitiveness, right?

I mean, there are a number of things you can do, but you're going to be doing all of them many, many times. And the charm, whatever there is at the start sort of wears off the eighth time that you're infiltrating an imperial base, right? Or going into some syndicate hideout. It's just the same sort of structure over and over and over again, and you know what you're in for. And it just wears then after a certain point. And again, if it were immensely satisfying and fun to play, maybe it wouldn't. Maybe it would never get old. But that's just not the case here.

And a big component of the stealth action is the slicing, right? Those things go hand in hand, right? So you're sneaking around. You're also constantly slicing to unlock doors and disable turrets and turn off alarms, et cetera, et cetera. And the two slicing minigames, because there are two and no more than two. You basically have your little timing mechanism where it's a little bit of rhythm game with your lock pick, and then you have your Star Wars Wordle. And individually, those are kind of cool and clever and novel.

And I had fun the first 50 times, but the next 500 times, not so much, right? And there's only so much complexity to them or skill, right? And the slicing is very forgiving, which is good, I guess. It'd be frustrated if I were constantly failing, but you can't really lose. and you're just going through this little mini-game, which is almost identical over and over and over again, right? I found that frustrating too. I think to your point, the gameplay loop was kind of nuts.

Like, there's one of the first things you do on Tashara is you've got to go to an Imperial base to get a thing for the Trailblazer. And, again, you haven't played this game for no more than six hours. So you got to go to Imperial Base. You can't go through the front. There's an AT-A-T. That's not how that's going to go down, right? and you can't really sneak in because there's like a laser shield.

So you got to go through the back. Oh, but in order to get through it, you need a slicer. So now you have to go and do these run these errands for this entire like a whole like another like hour maybe like two hours. A lot of fetch quests. A lot of fetch quests. A lot of fetch quests. And then you got to come back to the main story to do the thing. Right.

Which is like again, very video gaming. That's how video games normally go. yes, yes. However, brother man, if I need the slicer, tell me I need the slicer, right? Because I go there, I spent like, I'm like, how do I get into this base? I had said Nix, but they see me, AT AT shoots me, like how am I supposed to do the thing? I goes to back, okay, I need a slicer. That's two hours you just set me on right there. You know what I mean? You could have, could have set that up in the game better. So I know, okay, I get the slicer. I go here, I do this, job, easy, piece.

I mean, the level wasn't easy, busy, but I would have felt better knowing that, like, oh, I'm not wasting my time at this base dying for like an hour and a half because you, like, I have to go find out later I need a slicer. You know, it's kind of frustrating that way. Yes, and it is very video gamey. I think that's the right way to describe it, right? It's not just that, but it's also, okay, so when you're stealthing around,

you're sneaking, there are perfectly placed vents everywhere. right, which, you know, human-sized vents, sometimes Nick's sized vents also, but very often you can just walk through them. And sometimes you might have multiple paths through a level, but it's like, do I want to go through this vent over there or that vent over there, right? And eventually it's just so much vent that you just kind of feel like... We're playing among us? What's going on? Right. It's not just that. It's like, you know, explosive barrels, right? I mean, look, we're talking about video game conventions here that we could ding any number of games for. These are

decades old traditions, right? But every time there's a fight, you know there's going to be a fight because there's a red glowing explosive barrel there. And we get a place. Back to files and grenades. Yes, of course. And gunnates. Look, Empire structural safety standards, we know not great. So I wouldn't put it past them to have explosive barrels, just laying around all over the place. But it's the kind of thing where it's just, you know, the combat is sort of a separate subject, which we should devote a few minutes to here. But that just stood out to me. Another very video gamey thing is the barks or the shouts, you know, that's the term for the monologues, basically, that these AI guards have as they wonder around talking to themselves constantly. And again, like, you hear this in basically every game,

but it was so obtrusive here, right, where these guards never shut up, even when they are alone, even when they are inside their suits and their armor and their helmets, they are constantly just saying things like, no one's getting past me. Or, you know, like if you go behind a door and suddenly they forget you exist and they're like, we've lost them for now. And just very loudly broadcasting these things, you know, in a way that I get that if they were entirely silent all the time, maybe that would be disconcerting to a player. But also, it's kind of disconcerting when, you know, you just have people saying,

I do my job and I don't ask questions. Like, no one is talking to. No one is within your shot right now. Who are you talking to? I knew somebody who's on Tatooine. That's, it's, it don't seem like a job I don't want. A lot of sand out there. Very funny.

What I will say about the combat is what we're not going to do is disrespect the explosive barrels. Okay? The only way to defeat their best. They saved yours. Yeah, you need that. Is I was, man, you, because you see the snipers, there are like levels with some snipers. And the only, like, I'm not shooting. snipers, that's not how that's going to go down.

Like, it's just not, I'm not setting my sights. I'm not, like, taking a deep breath, okay, on the second heartbeat. No, that's not how that's going to go down. However, the explosive heart, the explosive barrels, I'm like, I shoot those. That's the one-shot kill.

I mean, if there's no love for explosive barrels, I'm dead because I'm the number one fan. Change my life. Change my life. You're going to get a T-shirt of the big, Explosive. I love, eye heart, explosive. There you go.

We've been hating for a bit. We're not necessarily done hating, but let's take a break from the hate rate and say something nice. Either if you want to share a like, just to mix up with the gripes a bit. I love Nix. Nick's family.

Nix is the best. Nix is family. I can't imagine. There's a part of the game where Nix isn't there, and I didn't know how to operate. Like, I wasn't fully functioning as a human being in that moment.

I was like there's, I don't understand. Like I was, I had plans that day. I was like, all right, I'm going to get here. And then as soon as I was like, all right, cool. I got to, yeah, this is my next two, three hours right here. Like, we got to lock it. You know what I mean? And so I love Nix.

I think Nix, me, you talked about it at the beginning of the ball. Nix is a wonderful addition to the Star Wars creature universe. And frankly, we should get a NICs, honestly. You know what I'm saying? Just play his next. Just play his Nix. You know, 60 hours. Let's go.

Who says no, besides EeySoft, Star Wars, and everybody listening to this pot right now. Could be D.L.C. Yeah. No, I don't know what it says about the Star Wars Disney era that a lot of the most compelling characters are droids and or non-speaking characters. But they have really nailed those, you know? In shows, in movies, in video games, just great stuff across the board with those particular characters.

And Nick's from a gameplay perspective. I mean, it's, again, not the first time that you've done. had a sidekick who's just constantly with you and does stuff and follows your commands, but I was impressed by the breadth of things that Nix can do, that even later on in the game, you're finding new ways to interact with the environment via Nix. So in addition to his incredible cuteness and just, you know, hopping on your back when you're climbing up a ladder or going down a rope or whatever, that was great. And yeah, the cuteness factor is off the charts.

I was playing part of this game with my almost three-year-old daughter. over my wife's moderate objections. She wasn't really sure about the blasting and the fact that I taught my daughter, Poo-Pew. But she's been talking about K-Vess. She's been pretending to ride a speeder. And whenever we played together, she wanted to pet every animal.

And I will give outlaws credit for allowing you to pet not only Nix, but various other flora and fauna wildlife throughout the Star Wars universe. If you want to pet a bantha, if you want to pet a dewback, you've got a lot of options here. Yeah, I liked some of the, like, I guess to piggy back off of that point, like, I liked some of the details they put into the game, right?

I really enjoyed that it didn't feel like it was just all about the missions. It almost felt like there was more joy and entertainment and thought process put into, like, Knicks, put into some of the stuff around this to make it feel like a Star Wars game. And that was some of the stuff I enjoyed the most. like on Tashara, I spent a lot of time just kind of running around and exploring and everything and it's like, this is kind of cool and interesting. Now, as you go on, again, not to make this too negative, as you go on to the other planets, you're like,

oh, this is all just the same. Just, you know, this is the jungle version and the snow version and the sand version. The classic tattooing sand version. But I did enjoy some of that stuff. And even though like the speeder mechanics and the ship mechanics weren't my favorite.

I liked the ability to be able to do that, right? Like, it's fun as a Star Wars man to jump on a speeder and go and go really fast. You know, that's just like... We're in positive mode, so I'm not going to get into the speedy mechanics. We will not discuss that in this time. I have a lot of netpicks with the speeder stuff, but I think the idea of it and being able to kind of have that ability to roam on most planets. There are some planets where it is very limited.

is a little bit more frustrating, was really enjoyable and fun, especially on Tashara. I thought Tashara, like, of all the planets, was maybe the most enjoyable to explore. As you get into the later planets, they feel a little bit more limited.

But Tashara, because it is the first full planet you're kind of on, and because you have to do more of those kind of fetch quests to move on in the store and you spend the most time there, it encourages you to explore that part a little bit more. And there's almost a part of being that's like, They've just focused and made this a one or two planet game and like really expanded the planet and had more cities and maybe diversified a little bit more as we've talked about with like some of the slicing mechanics and just, you know, because I don't think like the slicing stuff is fun, but like it would have been fun to have more options, right?

And I think that is the overall theme here of these things are nice, but like it needs to be more than one or two. Yeah, except if they had picked one planet, you know it would have been Tatween. I mean, you got to, it's a Star Wars project. You got to go to tattoo it. Look, I meant to mention this in my big picture take, but the game just kind of feels like all of these different Ubisoft games grafted together kind of awkwardly. And if it had been less awkwardly, then that could have been a good thing, right? And Ubisoft Massive was leading the way here known as the makers of the division and

Avatar and other games, right? And, you know, if all of the studios that contributed to this game had contributed their expertise and you had the stealth of Assassin's Creed and kind of the interactivity of watchdogs and other like combat from the division. Like it could have been the best of all worlds. And instead it kind of felt like the worst of our worlds, you know, just like Jack of All Trades,

master of none. And I think that extends now that we're back in briefly hating mode. The combat is fine. You know, like everything else, I think it's repetitive. I kind of expected more from the makers of the division. And it's very simple again, right?

You've got your blaster. You can pick up discarded weapons that enemies drop, but you can't keep them long. You can't upgrade them. You can only keep your blaster by your side and upgrade it gradually. And, you know, there's depth eventually, right? You can use the ion mode and you can use a power charge up mode. And there's a little bit of tactics and strategy there, but only so much. And, you know, on the whole, I didn't mind that there aren't really elaborate skill trees here.

right? Like I kind of like a level of customization that I can wrap my head around and I can kind of get a sense of how I'm improving and what I want to devote my resources and time to. And I will say, I do enjoy the experts system that's kind of the core of the leveling up and the upgrading here. Right. So instead of just having a skill tree that you allocate upgrade points or XP to, you meet various experts in the world who have their sorted specialties. And then they have unlockable abilities that you can say, okay, I have to do this a certain number of times or I have to go here and get this thing. And yeah, there's a fetch quest aspect to it. But also you will sort of by accident just stumble across some of these things and fulfill some of those objectives. And that's satisfying, I think. And that actually felt somewhat original and a deviation from the formula. So I appreciated that. Yes.

Again. Wow. You can be one one word. Yes, but. Yes. But when you, if you're like, if you're, I mean, I guess for us, different. We're trying to play the story

so we can get to the podcast. But if you're just like, if you're not really into the open world and into the story, you're going to miss all the upgrade stuff. You know, you're going to miss upgrading case health. You're going to miss upgrading how many

back to vial she could put. And you might stumble upon a thing here or there. Like the story might give you like an ion module or power module or whatever. But ultimately, unless you're like going around and looking for stuff and playing like, all right,

I'm going to just mess. I'm not, I'm not going to think about the story for a minute. I'm going to just focus on this, or I'm going to go do this. You might miss an upgrade or two. Because I was shocked how much health K can get. I was like, you can get up to six bars.

What's going on? I know it was like this. Whoa. You know, but again, like we were playing, you know, for the pod, so maybe it's different for me. To be positive, though. The other thing I did like about the game was, I think, like, some of the conversations between, like,

Kay and the crew were kind of fun. I remember one that made me, like, actually laugh out. loud is when you're with ink and to try to pitch ink on the, on the highest at ink in case like, yeah, man, you know, we're going to go do this thing. And Hank's like, for money, it's usually money. And it's really, it's really funny. Like, it's just like a really funny beat.

And there's a couple of those around that I'm like really like, okay, this is kind of fun. I like interacting with these characters. Yep. I will also say another core component of the gameplay is platforming. And the platforming is not fun to use another. technical term right here. I mean, it's very uncharted-esque and yet just not implemented as smoothly, right? And the animations are just a little jerky. There's no. It's repetitive. It's repetitive. You know, there's a certain set number of, okay, here are things I can climb on. Here are things I can swing on. Right. We're familiar with this. And a lot of that is very clearly telegraphed, maybe two telegraphed, right? The famous, infamous yellow paint is everywhere and arrows telling you where to go. Now, To be fair, you can customize that. You can turn that stuff off if you want to.

I found that I needed it at times, though, because the world itself didn't clearly convey what was and wasn't interactive, right? Like there were times where you're supposed to jump to a wall that you can cling to, and there'd be some surface below that that looked like you should be able to cling to it, but you can't, right? And it just didn't do a great job of conveying that, I thought, without needing to just actually hold your hand or have an arrow mysteriously placed there

telling you, go this way, go that way, right? There's no cover mechanic in the game for the combat so you can crouch, but you can't actually take cover and it's tough to stay in a crouch, I found often too. If you're climbing something, you get up to a ledge, you're crouching before you get on the ladder. When you get off the ladder, then you're not going to be crouching anymore, right?

And suddenly you're making a lot of, like a lot of little touches like that that just didn't make it a very smooth experience. And, you know, when you're supposed to swing from something or grapple from something, very often I just couldn't see the thing that I was supposed to hitch my like, slingshot thingy too, right? And whenever I would run into a dead end and be like, where do I go from here? I would look up because I'd feel like, oh, there must be something out of sight right now, right? And then I would look up and pan the camera up.

And then the thing would like give me the interactive graphic, like press this button to do that, but you have to be very precise. Same for like interacting with boxes and doors and stuff. Like you have to be perfectly positioned, right, in the right place to trigger that interaction. And that gets old again after you're picking up like thousands of items without knowing what they are, but just running around grabbing stuff for your inventory, right? And you just have to be standing in that particular place. It's just like little quality of life stuff like that. That annoyed me a lot where they gave you the limit on like your back to vials and grenades, but It's like as much stuff as you want, you can carry on your person.

You want some transparency. Yeah. You have a transparency in your pouch that you're carrying. Like I thought, you know, really leaning into the smuggler, you know, your smuggler and everything, they would really focus on that mechanic of you have to be really selective of what you can carry to keep your kind of load light and everything. They really were just, they just encouraged you to pick everything up. They didn't have to be selective with anything. Actually, I love the platforming. because that was the one part of the game

where nobody was trying to kill me. And so I was at peace. Except the environment itself. Except your reflexes. And again, there's a lot of, there's a lot of yes but in this podcast. Yes, but, like, there was one point where I lost like 30 minutes

because I got on a swing. I was like, where do I go? And then I was like, well, I just got to jump somewhere. Okay, cool. That's, I got to go start back. I started at the beginning. Okay, no checkpoint there? All right, cool, cool, for sure, for sure.

Right. Yeah, great. This is awesome. I love it. I'm so happy to be here right now. Yeah. It's like that type B. Yes.

Now, we should talk a little bit about the performance. Now, I was playing on Xbox. You guys were playing on PlayStation. And I don't want to dwell on buginess and jankiness because sometimes the shelf life of those complaints isn't long, right? Because these things will be patched unless the game is just broken beyond all belief, which happens sometimes then I'm inclined to say, okay, let's give them a chance to fix this. Plus, sometimes you're playing pre-release.

You don't know if there's going to be a day-one patch that clears some of this stuff up for people. Also, I'll give some slack if you're building an enormous open world that's interactive because that seems miraculous to me that anyone manages to do that, right? So I can tolerate some level of jank. And I will say that for me, at least, the game performed pretty well when it came to frame rates

and just sort of, you know, like moment to moment. I played this game on quality mode, not performance mode, which is unusual. I almost always play on performance mode because I like the frame rate as high as possible, but it seemed to make no perceptible difference on Xbox at least. So I was playing in quality mode, and I was sort of surprised by how smoothly it ran,

except when it stopped running entirely. Which did happen. Now, I encountered fewer crashes just outright quitting to the main menu than you guys did. That happened to me once or twice, but boy, bugs. There were some bugs in this game. And what were the funniest bugs that you guys encountered or the weirdest or wildest ones? Because, you know, sometimes it's like, this is ridiculous.

I have to restart this section, but also this is funny, you know? There were multiple times where I would crouch behind something or shoot one of those, like, electric circuits to open a door. And then I would just teleport into that thing. Like, there was one part where I was just in a crate and that there was no way out. And then, like, there was stormtroopers surrounding me. And shooting, but they couldn't, I wasn't hitting me because I was in the crate. And then just like magically teleporting into things, you know, like an event that you're not supposed to get into. It's like not rendered at all.

And Nix is on the other side. And some of your other characters are there. And I'm just like, well, I'll see you later. I'm stuck here forever. I had to use all of my grenades multiple times because I was stuck in a wall. And I could see out, but I couldn't leave. And so, well, I'm like, well, let me just die and get to the next checkpoint. You know, one of the, it's funny to, for everybody else, it wasn't funny for me.

One of the last missions, you're going to get some deaf troopers. And I was like, I had one stunned. I'm like, all right, cool. Last one. I'm going to kill it with my thing, my elite thing, and I'm great. And I do, except for the fact that it throws me off the level and into the, and I got to start from scratch. And I was like, great.

This is awesome. This is why we're here. You know what I mean? Yeah. This is what it's all about. My favorite glitch, there's a part where you have an encounter with a rancor, which is probably not a massive spoiler because you know Tattoine is in the game. You know Jabba's in the game.

It's a Star Wars game. Of course, there's going to be a rancor. And of course, you can't kill the rancor because, again, not a spoiler, unless you haven't seen Return of the Jedi. But that rancor can't be killed yet, right? But you still have to escape the rancor. And there's this rancor boss fight where you, basically have to have the rankor break down a door, right,

and deek the rancor into ramming the door over and over until the rancor keels over and you can walk out. One time I'm fighting the rancor, the rancor just walks through the door and pieces out entirely of this hangar where I'm fighting, leaving me alone in the hangar with no rancor to fight and no recourse whatsoever, no way to progress. I'm just like, all right, rancor's gone, I guess. Did Boba Fett summon him to help him in his fight?

Yeah, maybe. Maybe that makes sense. That was one of my favorites. Another, there was this bug, this glitch where after I was doing this particular side quest, every time I would die and come back after getting to this point, even after I'd move beyond this mission entirely. But whenever I was on this planet, doing anything else, K would say, that's the last of the deliveries. Now I can get paid, which is the last line where.

when you complete that objective in that mission that I had completed hours ago. And somehow this was just a ghost in the shell. This is just like stuck in the system, just repeating over and over again. Again, like not that meaningful, but just funny and just kind of indicative of the level of jank here. And the only problem with that is that it saps your confidence, right? It's not so much about, oh, I might have to restart this section and lose a few minutes here. It's that whenever you do get stuck, it plants a seed of doubt in your mind. Like,

am I stuck here or did the game break? Right? Like, do I need to reload here or do I just need to actually find the prescribed path? Right. And that's always kind of lurking in the back of your mind when a game has that level of buggyness. Yeah, I found myself manually saving a lot when I could, just because of that lack of confidence of, oh man, the game is going to crash. If I'm relying on my auto save and has an auto saved in 10. 15, 20 minutes. I don't want to lose all of this this time. I feel like the game did a lot of auto saving.

There was one glitch, or I mean, it happened a couple of times, actually, where I would die, try to infiltrate a base, and it would send me like one or two checkpoints back, right? And so not that, like, the game would reset in time. It would literally just, I'd have the same objective, but I'm like, two kilometers away. I'm like, great, this is awesome. You know, let me go across the map again.

There was one time on Akiva where it literally sent me to the opposite end of the map. And so I'm trying to get to this imperial base, but it's sending me to the back. I'm like, this is not, this is not where I, what's going on? Guys, hey, let's let's figure this out. And one that I thought was less funny was, so we talked about like the progression systems. One of them is the speeder jump. you know, to get a speeder jump, you have to do 60 meter jumps without falling off. Right.

I did about 140, right? Because sometimes my meter would say, I would do it and go 45 out of 60, 46 out of 60. Then it would be like 22 out of 60. And I'm like, yeah, you're not being serious. Yeah, like, I just went further. And you're saying I did half the distance. Like, I'm like, I'm like 10 away. Now I'm 30.

What are we doing? Like, what's going on? Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't even say attention to detail because I feel like there's just like big things that. Like, all right, come on, you know what I mean? Like, what are, why is this happening in a AAA game? It's unfortunate, but like it just happened often, way too often. Yeah.

And before we move on graphically, right, there are likes and gripes here. I think this is kind of emblematic. Are there are likes? I think there are likes. I think this is emblematic of the game as a whole where there are some strengths and then there are some nitpicks that detract from those strengths. But you talked about this in the preview pod, Jomey. I mean, the cutscenes, the dead-eyed looks, the lack of facial expressions,

the kind of jittery artificial animations. It's just not looking great, you know? Nix is doing his best with his incredible cuteness, but it just doesn't do a great job of conveying character and emotion, right? Like these character models aren't up to a task. Had a lot of lip sync issues where, like, just lips weren't moving in certain scenes. I was like, well, this is tough. This, and this is why I said at the beginning,

like, this is only a game for Star Wars fans. Because there's, I'm not a graphics, like, guy like that. It doesn't, doesn't bother me too bad. Like, you know what it is what it is. I'll play a game if it's enjoyable, it'll play or whatever. I can't imagine anybody picking up this game, looking at the graphics in 20204 and one. Hell yeah, man, like, give me 60 hours.

And paying, like, $60. No shit. You know what I mean? Like, that's, it's an investment. It's just, there's no way. Graphics, like, if you told me this game came out on 20, 2013, I ought to believe you. Am I wrong, though, Ben?

Am I wrong? I will say, maybe this will segue into our open world discussion, which we've sort of started already. I think when the game opens up and the world opens up and you get some vistas, right? There are some stunning moments, I think, where I sort of pause the game or just sort of stayed put for a moment and drank in the world around me. And there is kind of an incredible level of detail, I think, even in just the more densely populated urban environments, which was true in the division games, too, that these are packed with detail. Now, a lot of it's all for show and it's not really interactive and it quickly breaks down. You know, once you watch some NPC perform the same repetitive action over and over again or say the same thing over and over again. But the illusion lasts for a while and when you are speeding over some landscape and the wind. is blowing and the sun is setting because they're full day night cycles here.

I was pretty impressed at times with the way that these fully realized open worlds looked. Maybe I'll say, I said there's nothing like. There's one thing that's like the cinematics look good. There's maybe like four in the entire game. But the cinematics, when the game like, I was all right, here's a little, here's a scene for you. Here's a little like thing. Those, those do look good. Those are good.

So I'll give it that. And Arjuni, you were touching on this too, that I think when you go off the beaten path a bit, I think that's when the game is at its best. And unfortunately, it takes a while to get off the beaten path, right? And that's what you have to be prepared for going in is that you don't unlock the Trailblazer, the ship immediately. You can't take off of Tashara right away. You can't go everywhere. Now, it's not that the game is gated exactly, but there are some areas that you just don't have the skills to access immediately. right and it takes several hours at least for you to have the ability to just go anywhere you want at any time and do missions in any order to want.

It's like halfway through the game. Yeah. It takes its time. You spend a lot of time without some of the key characters who are important to the story for like a good chunk. And then there are just some abilities you really don't even unlock until the very end of the game. Like right before you're kind of in that final mission where it's like you run in, if you're doing some exploration, you run into a, thing. And you get the red, you know, like R3, it's like, you don't have this ability. And you're like, well, okay. Right. I guess not. Tough. Who we guessed? Yeah. And the navigation can be confusing too, right? You have your arrows that kind of tell you the general direction you want to go in,

but not always how you navigate to get there. And granted, maybe that encourages you to explore a little, but this is not a game that rewards exploration in the same way as, say, Breath of the Wilder Tears of the Kingdom, too, right? Like, you're going to stumble across stuff, but a lot of it is going to be kind of busy work, you know, or just sort of randomly generated mission types that repeat over and over again, there are some side quests that I found very fulfilling and compelling, right? Just stuff that had nothing to do with the 20-something main story missions where you're just kind of digging deep into the lore and following some plot lines, some progression, some subplot that actually did grab me. And when those moments were happening, I was into it. Or when there's

weird stuff, right? Now, I'm not someone who plays card games in real life or in digital virtual life. So I wasn't much of a Sabak guy, really. But if you are, if you're a Queensblood fiend in Final Fantasy or something, you can get into Sabak. Like, it's pretty good, I would say. And, you know, some of the just like little weirder moments that I wasn't expecting, that's when the game just started singing for me. Like, there are these places where you can eat food with Nix, right? You can stop at these stalls in a market. And suddenly you're in this extended quick time event. where you're like collaboratively eating soup or something, right? And it's like pressing buttons to eat soup.

And at first I was like, what the hell is going on here? But it just goes on for so long and there's actually like a lot of character. And the food is very appetizing in an almost like anime way where I'm like, I would eat that. Please prepare that for me. There aren't that many moments like that for me. But when you would stumble across something strange that just felt really like crafted by a person, then that I was into. Yeah, I thought like some of the intel chains

were like really fun just in terms of how they progressed and the weirdness like you said Ben it gave depth to the to the world itself that you know that's where the details felt like they had been given more love than the main aspects of this game

you know with some of the game play and some of the story itself and I really I really enjoyed some of that especially in the beginning of the game especially when you first get to that stuff on Tashara you know, like you said, running into the food stuff. Seeing the food, I was like, man, I want, like, a Star Wars cooking game. I want to see all the weird foods.

Like, you can see, like, this is, like, corn on the cob, but it's, like, a Star Wars version. This is their version of, like, soup and then spicy food and whatnot. I'm like, this is cool. Like, this is the stuff that gives it the depth that the game kind of needs if it's going to be open world. I just wish there was more of that stuff, you know, like we've kind of been saying. You guys going to try Spachka? Star Wars Spachka. Sure.

There was a lot of Spachka talk. Well, yeah. I think one of the first missions they send you on is like to get a Spotchka recipe, right? They don't tell you the Spotska for Crimson Dawn. You get there and it's like, well, this is a recipe for Spachka. What are we supposed to do? Yeah. So I'll try it.

I'll eat it. Cooking Mama Star Wars edition. Cookie Mama Star Wars? Yeah. Yeah, it'd probably be less buggy than this game. But, you know. One more minor graphical complaint I had is the skyboxes. you know, when you look up into the sky,

the clouds are weird, man. The clouds are weird weirds. Are they real, Ben? I don't know. Are we not in a dome? Look, it's not real, Ben. This particular planet. I don't know what alien skies look like,

but something weird with the clouds going on in this game, something very like low fidelity clouds happening here. A lot of the moons and when you would take off from a planet and like the moon would kind of render first, and that was like the only thing for me when I'm taking off and going through the clouds was very strange. That was another graphical kind of, oh, this has taken me out of it a little bit

where this is not smooth. But Tatween had two sons, though. I was impressed by the twin sons, you know, because most games on Tatween, and that's like basically every Star Wars game, very few of them, except I guess Star Wars galaxies a couple decades ago, have had a day-night cycle. So they haven't actually had to show

where the twin sons are in the sky, which we never get a great look at, really, for an extended portion in the shows and the movies. I actually inquired with Ubisoft massive to see if I could speak to the person who, like, determined the orbital path of the twin sons. And they were like, sir, this is an Arby's. Like, what are you talking about? But I was nerding out about that, at least. Anyway, you know, I appreciated the off the

beaten past stuff, although there were times when I found it frustrating where like all of a sudden you'd get a message, like, return to quest area, 10 seconds, right? Did you guys run into that? where it's like, I thought this was an open world. Like, I thought I could go wherever I want. And granted, those are on specific missions or while you're trying to do specific objectives, but it felt weirdly limiting. And that happened often in orbit, too, like in the space fighting dog fighting sections where it's like, I thought I could just like jump to hyperspace or I could like go hide

in this asteroid field or I could go back to the planet or something. Like, give me some freedom. That's supposed to be the point here. And it's like, return to designated area. And, you know, by that point, like three seconds of a lapse and you're like, where do I go? I don't know. mission over, I failed. Yeah.

I felt that with some of the choices that you got too. Like it felt like they're, you know, they obviously introduced some of the choices you can make with a lot of the syndicate missions and kind of which syndicate you're kind of siding with. But that, again, like many elements of this game, didn't feel like there were enough and it was diverse enough in terms of like it always felt kind of binary of just like you really only had two choices.

And it was just like, you're either going to make the huts have. happy or, you know, Crimson Don or the Pikes or whomever. And then, you know, I don't know if this is really spoilery, but when you get to the kind of end part of the game, that just completely disappears. And part of the game, brother, man. You have that one decision on Kajimi and then you never touch it again. Yeah, that's it. And then it's just, it's gone.

It's gone. And then you're just on rails essentially with the story. It is a linear game. I mean, the open worldness just kind of. I mean, you can take contracts and do other things. I'm sure, and I'm like, maybe there are decisions there that I haven't seen yet. But, like, in terms of, like, choosing your way through the story, there's maybe, like, two, maybe three. After the first, like, 10 hours, that's done.

And you obviously get to choose the order you do part of the story. But in terms of like the game giving you an option, like, do you want to help these people? Do you want to help these people? Like that's like you take 10 hours, that's over. Like Nets of the Old Republic came out 21 years ago. And that felt like it had more impactful choices than like I lost it, truly. It's true. Yeah.

Even though that was kind of a binary system, at least it had an impact in how the game ended, right? And the larger path and progression. And granted, we've each only played through this game once fully. and we haven't seen everything, but I got the sense as I got deeper into the game, that this was all sort of surface level, right? Like, I don't know about you guys, but I was going mostly in a Crimson Dawn direction.

Mostly just justice for Lady Kira, hashtag, make solo two happen. I want more Kira in my life and, like, the comics lore at this stage of the time frame with Crimson Dawn is pretty compelling, so I wanted to see more of that. And there were hints of that, too. But ultimately, it's just kind of, you know, you have this sliding scale. affinity system for the syndicates. Some hate you, some like you, depending on whether you backstab them or double-crossed them

or do their bidding. And it just basically amounts to, are they going to shoot you on site or are they going to let you into their base? Are they going to give you discounts and good merch or are they not? And that's kind of it, right? And you can easily change it. That's the thing, right? You have the contracts that easily change it where there's no long-term impacts.

Like Crimson Dawn as well for me was the. the best, the syndicate I had the best reputation with by the end of the game, but I crossed them so many times at the beginning of the game. Like, I was almost at the, like, the very end of the scale, and by the end, it was, it was, like, to the opposite end. It's like,

there's no, there's no repercussions for anything I did. So you guys are both team, team Crimson Don. Yes. The Shiga clan over here, gang. Shegi clan, let's go. Those signs of Shiga clan, you know what I'm saying? But everybody was lowest on the huts, right? Yeah, the Hudson of Pikes

The Hudson real love for me. Hell, nah, I was not messing with those at all. I mean, Java is my op forever. We have real beef. You mentioned the Kira thing is funny because I'm sure, again, to bring it all the way back, I don't know how non-Star Wars fans

are going to enjoy the game because we see Kira, we're like, Hey, Solo, we remember Amelia Clark. Yeah, okay. If you're playing a game, Kira's up. You're like, all right. Who's that?

Okay, just the leader of the Chris comes down. That's it on. Right. Okay, new character. Okay, cool, cool, cool, cool. Right. And then you leave, you leave a Kijimi and that's done. That's just a little Kira cameo for the solo fans out there.

Yes. And that's always going to be an issue with these interconnected universes and these sprawling properties, right? Like some of us know too much, you know? And like, we're always going to be into the lower stuff and other people aren't. And so how do you navigate that handholds? introducing the nobs and then the deep lore nerds like us, right? And I don't know how well this game always walked that line, but maybe that can kind of transition us to our last way of breaking down this game,

which is as a Star Wars game specifically, right? So did this convey the feeling of being in Star Wars? Did it give you that adventurous, I'm a scoundrel, I can go anywhere, I can do anything, and this feels like Star Wars, it smells like Star Wars. Did you get that feeling from Outlaws? Arjuna, do you want to go first? Yeah.

Yeah, like I think the elements of that was there, but as we've discussed in the pod, there just wasn't enough. There was just a lack, there was a lack of the, of like diversity in terms of like those types of things, right? With some of the elements to really flesh that stuff out, to make it feel like a real open world, to really go off the beat,

path to really dive into the story and the characters. Like one thing I found limiting was there were a lot of, a lot of characters that were introduced throughout the game. And, you know, some of them were interesting. Some of them had like kind of interesting stories and ideas, but they were very planet specific. And you would just completely drop them after a mission or two, right? And I think back to like my favorite Star Wars game,

which is Knights of the Old Republic, the first co-tour. And that was a game where very similarly, you could obviously move around a bunch of different planets. There were different characters, but those characters would pop in and out of the game on different planets, on different things. And it felt like this was a big universe, but there was a sense of connection to it.

And this game felt like there wasn't necessarily that full connection throughout with some of the different characters and the elements. I think I'm higher on it than you. I think, you know, being in those worlds and again with the stormtroopers and some of the aliens were familiar with from the movies and like all the canon.

I think it was like, yeah, I was, I'm sorry. You know, we go to Tatooine all the time, but you're on freaking Tatouin, you know, you're in most icily. Ultimately, I think as a Star Wars exercise, if we're looking at it's like, did this thing make you feel like you were in, you know, George Lucas's universe?

Yeah, I think it did a pretty solid job. That's probably one of the better things the game does is allow you to feel like, yeah, you're really in, you're really in the outer realm. just like living life as a scounder. I think that's one of the highlights of the game. I would agree with that.

And I think that the worlds, again, like some areas are very densely designed and handcrafted and they have that feeling of Star Wars. You can smell the Star Wars, right? Other areas are much more bland and much more sparsely populated. And I think that's kind of a product of the design, right? Because you have these large open worlds

and they could be too large. They're not unmanageably large. like some former Ubisoft Open World games. But I think as a function of the speeder, which I didn't have that big problem, honestly, driving the speeder like you guys did, I think. But because you can cover a lot of ground quickly with the speeder, right? And because of that, you can't actually pack the worlds

with tons of detail and stuff to do because, you know, and granted, if you're on Tatween, like a lot of Tatween is just an arid desert, deserted, right? So, like, that's true to Tatooine that we know. okay, but also like a lot of that square footage, that real estate is essentially window dressing, right? Like there's not a whole lot to do or see there, right? But some of the details really did catch my eye. Now, there are, of course, a lot of cameos. And I might rant about that for a second when we enter spoiler territory briefly. I was about to. I'm glad. I'm glad. I'm glad.

Gotta save it. Let's hold off for a second there. I would just say that, you know, K. as a character. Again, like big shoes to fill, you know, any scoundrel is going to be comped to Han Solo and Harrison Ford. And that is tough. I would say that the performance is fine. The writing is fine. The individual lines and dialogue. I don't have a big problem with it. But Kay as a character, I just didn't find particularly compelling. Kay's arc to the extent that she had one, what her goals are, why she wants to do this heist, what this mission is for. None of that really drove me through this game in the way that I wanted it to. And yet at the same time, and maybe this was a marketing thing.

But, you know, I kind of had the sense of like, okay, you've got the empire and you've got the rebellion. But that just means that this is an opening for the underworld. And we can kind of play in the semi Star Wars Underbelly while the big players are going toe to toe and while this galactic conflict is playing out. But it does not take long for K to become deeply enmeshed in that goal. eclectic conflict, right? And, you know, I would say that this game avoids the worst Star Wars impulses where it's like, you don't end up, you know, flying the trailblazer at the Battle of Endor or something, you know, like that's not happening here. She's not a secret Jedi. I thought, no, like, she's not a secret Jedi. Spoiler. The worst impulse would have been,

ah, nah, what's this laser so doing here? Well, I got a mission with this. Yeah. You know, and then she starts force choking stormtroopers, and we're like, Yes. Star Wars Outlaws, too, Fall in Order, type beat, you know. When Yoda said there is another, it wasn't Leah. It was K. I did appreciate that Kay at least pays lip service to the idea of remaining neutral. You know, she's not in this for the cause, right?

And, you know, Han Solo doesn't hold out very long either. It's not long before he becomes a general in the rebellion, and goes from smuggler to general in, you know, 60 seconds flat, right? Kay holds out, and I did like some of the lines where she's like, I don't work for causes, just credits, right? And, you know, she kind of, she's speaking to one of the rebel characters, and she's like, you're just another syndicate, taking what you think is yours, right? And that's her perspective on this, and that's a perspective.

We don't see that often on screen in Star Wars. And so I did appreciate that. And yet, and maybe we can slightly stray into spoiler. territory here and we'll timestamp when we returned to the light here. But, man, the cameos, look, some of them are subtle as Star Wars goes. You know, if you're creeping through Jabba's Palace, there's one part where if you're creeping through a vent, one of the omnipresent vents, and you look to the side through an opening, you see BobaFet in a conference room. But if you don't happen to look that way, you don't see BoaFat. And at least in the mission's eye plades, you don't

really interact with Boba Fett. Okay, they showed some restraint there. And granted, okay, there's going to be Java in a game about the underworld and smuggling and everything. It makes sense, okay? Can we please stop putting Darth Vader in every video game? That was tough. It can't do it.

Can't do it, Ben. Can we please one time. You can't do it, man. I'm sorry. Nah, no, no, it's kind of like, it's kind of like the, you know, it's kind of like the guy who, um, the driver when you get the, get the McDonald's. got it to the fry. Got to have a fry.

The death, just the tax. The Darth Vader tax. It's a Star Wars video game and Darth Vader's alive in it. He's going to be in it, man. Yeah. I get that this is set during the original trilogy era. I get that Darth Vader's running around, but that doesn't mean we have to cross pass with the Dark Lord of the Sith.

Okay? Yeah. As we're in the story as we're in the story spoilers, I did like the twist of Zerick Besh being ISB. you know, I just feel like for, you know, Ben, as you're well aware of, like, ISB is just, it's like having this moment in Star Wars, like right now where they're right. Right.

It is like, it is being, it is just in everything right now. I was like, okay, this is kind of cool. Yeah, there was some sort of indoor inspired architecture, which, yeah, and I appreciate that too because like, as a lore nerd, I was like, Sarah Bish, like, where did they come from? How are they the dominant syndicate at this era of the galaxy, right? But it's all explained, okay. That was possible. Oh, okay.

this actually makes sense. Yeah, there's a lot of plot twist and backstabbing, and that's all perfectly appropriate. But yeah, the Vader, the Vader inclusion really undercut it for me, where it's like, oh, you just did this so Darth, like, you could have Darth Vader,

like, show up, and I'm like, this is... We were so close to a game without force powers, without Jedi, without Sith, and, look, it's brief, but it was there. Didn't use a lightsaber, though. Didn't use a lightsaber.

It just crushed the glass. Didn't use a lightsaber, though. No lightsaber is in this game. And KVS is just like, I don't know what I saw. No, man. I'll tell you something because she's in the vet, right? And the graphics can't get. I'm like, oh, yeah, here we go.

We're going to see some. Yeah, we were to see some. You're like, you're like, I'm like, yeah. Yeah. And then the crushes of glass. Speaking of spoilers, the brother revealed did not surprise me. Because game starts and Sliro's like,

we made Chipsaw, Karelia. And then the first thing Jaylen says was, me and my family. made chips on Crayal and I was like, I'm familiar with your game. These two have so much in common. Everyone knew Jalen was going to double cross. That was especially because we knew nothing about Jalen suspiciously, right? Like, he's not like, I'm Jalen, here's my story.

Here's why I want to do this heist. At no point is there any explanation supplied, which just kind of was a blinking arrow like we have all littered all around this world. Like, hmm, there must be more to this story, right? at least these were original characters, Slyro and Jalen, so I kind of got to give them credit for that, I guess. But, you know, the number of just encounters that you have

with sort of the central original trilogy characters, it undercuts, I think, the mission of the game, which is to make this seem like a big galaxy. There are characters who say that explicitly. This is a big galaxy, right? And a lot of times you have the sense that this is a big galaxy,

but then, of course, K comes across Darth Vader, right? And the contrived cameos could have been worse. Like, we don't get Luke or Leia or anything here, right? But we get Vader, and it's one of the worst Vader voices I've ever heard, by the way. If you're good, like the respeachian ain't move, man. It wasn't. Give me the re-speecher.

Please, I will sign up for the respeach. If this is the alternative, give me AI, James Earl Jones, citing his life rights away. Fine, I'll take that. The only good use of AI. Please. We'll take it. This was rough.

And I'm just, I'm reaching a breaking point with the need to tie every new Star Wars story into old Star Wars stories. And look, it's a fairly minor point of the game. So it's kind of a cumulative effect where I'm still pissed from like Yoda being the last shot that we'll ever get of the accolate, right? We don't need this. You know, and I get that it would be boring to not do or meet any of these characters we care about. And every time a new storyteller or a new studio gets its chance to play with this universe, they turn back into kids with their action figure. right? And they want to make them go up against each other. And I get it. I'd be tempted to also if someone gave me the keys to Star Wars, right? But someone just has to exercise restraints and say,

not this time. We get plenty of Vader and Jedi survivor. Okay, it kind of makes sense there. You're like surviving Jedi. He'd be hunting you down. But here, it's just super shoehorned in. I could see that. For sure. So I want to go back to the K thing because this goes to like the end game, which I want to talk about a little bit. So K as a character, I think at least for me, worked better when I realized that she's really bad at this,

like just completely awful at the scoundrel thing. She's like pretending to be somebody. She's kind of not. Because I don't know if you guys are, like, when she's trying to, like, talk away out of a situation, and she's the worst liar I've ever seen. For somebody's supposed to be like a master criminal. She'd be like, oh, yeah, yeah.

You know, you know so-and-so, right? Oh, you don't? Oh, no, he sent me over here. Completely unconvincing. I don't buy it at all. But somehow it all works out. You know what I mean? It's like, you're not built for this.

You're probably better off with the rebellion, right? I felt her being naive. Her, like, this is a whole new thing. I think in terms of her story, what it was for her was, she gets the death mark from Zerick Besh. The syndicates are all in the eye. out like in the outer rim, right?

You go to the core worlds. It's not a lot of syndicates out there. Nobody's going to recognize you. You're probably, you're safe. If you can pay your way to get there with all the money she would get from the highest, supposedly. You would be safe from Zerick Beshe. You could live a nice little rich, little life out in one of the, the core worlds, I think was her plan. And so her being somebody who's just like not really built for this world, but kind of has to be there and survive it.

Ultimately, like somebody who's just like somebody who's just like somebody who's just like, was like really soft and really caring for Knicks obviously and for whatever reason ND5. Man, we got to answer that. Because I get it to an extent, right? Andy saves her life against Eric Besson Vale on Tashara. Okay. So there's a level of maybe I owe him.

But that's not what the game does. games like man me and indee man we've been in the mud just to jump you feel me and i knew and d since man back when i was back at indiana state you know i mean we came up together we were doing g-e classes together you know he's my brother from another mother and i'm like yo we just met this robot rich we just met this dude we don't have to die for him bro we don't have to do this yes let's go walker's your co-pilot for like almost half the game before like his before he walker Even Waka's like, actually, that's another interesting. I was like, why is Waka helping me?

And it's like, oh, okay, he's not. Okay, fine, that makes sense. But I'm totally with you because, like, the found family formula, it's a familiar formula in this franchise, but I fall for it every time. You know, if well executed, it does not get old for me. But it does really not ring true to me. I'm not buying the found family aspects of this story because it's not a fan family, right? these people are not together.

There's nothing bonding them together except the job and the credits, right? And as soon as you complete that mission and you beat the game and you can go clear up all the SideQuest stuff, you know, most of your crew is off somewhere else, right? Like there are only so many people with you. And, you know, ND5, like you just meet him and he's a cool character. And I like the idea of like droid autonomy and restraining bolts and what are his true feelings and everything. But also like, this is a combat droid.

like assassin enforcer, are we sure? Like, he has a softer side? I don't even know, right? But it's just felt to me like, okay, this is a mercenary crew getting together to do a job. And you're sort of selling it to me as like this heartwarming, you know, just people find in their way through the galaxy and plucky getting together. And I just, it wasn't really resonating for me. They didn't do enough to justify it, right?

The only mission you really do with ND5 is the legacy mission when he's malfunctioning. And you have to go to the joy. factory to kind of, you know, fix him. And that's the first time you really see K be like, I care for this droid. And it's just like, but every other mission, he's just the guy in your ear. He's not there with you doing these missions.

And they have a little bit of banter back and forth. But there's nothing definitive. There's no moments they're kind of put in together where you're like, oh, this is, but outside of a couple moments where they like come together, like, you know, ND5 saves her for some of these missions. But again, it's for the highest. It's not necessarily because, you know, there's this deeper connection.

And obviously some of that's alluded to, but there just needed to be more to justify it. They talk about the restraining bolt a couple times. Yeah. But none of it's like, she's like, yeah, you could be free, but it's not in the guys of, I want you to live your best life. It's more like, if you've got those training boat, Jalen can't shoot me and I can go and do what I need to do. You know what I mean? And so, again, it's a droid, you know what I mean?

But, you know, maybe they have some dinners together. You know what I'm saying? They're out in the town. You know, day and a drink. And it's like, hey, man, what were you doing during the Clone Wars? Or some of that, to that effect. But there isn't that. And so I guess when they're like saving him the first time, it makes sense because you need him for the heist.

Totally. You know, feed goes away. You're kind of lost. I would that make sense. But then after the heist, when it's like, right, got to go free and D. I'm like, guys, clock's ticking. We don't, I don't care. I mean, look, I care a little bit.

care that much. They did a much better job of establishing the relationship between obviously K and like Nix, right? Because they show a few flashbacks, they have the full mission. Nick's is with you the entire game. You utilize Nix as like a part of the game play. So you get so much more time

with that character where it's like Nick should have been the end game in terms of the relationship. Save Nix. I'd be way more into that. Yeah. I wanted to kill Selaus Crum so bad. Like how dare you take my son? How dare you? From Jabba's menagerie was way more suspenseful and intense to me than rating Sliro's vaulting.

When Kay is like, we have to save him no matter what, I'm like, this rings the most true. Yes. It's just like, I got to do this. Let me tell you. I got a clip. I got a, I clipped it. When, when Haas dies, I unloaded eight clips. Eight clips to his dead body.

Don't miss my son. Don't touch my son. Haas was the word. Oh my God. I cheer like the Leger's one to chip. I was like, let's go! I'm sick at him. Let's go.

So this, I think, is a dropback of open world's nonlinear storytelling, right? It's just it's hard to do well because you can go in any order. You can recruit these people in different order. You can go to planets in different order. You can, you know, ND5 is malfunctioning and yet you take this other side quest where he's not malfunctioning yet. And it's just weirdly sequenced, right? So that's kind of a problem that you have.

to work around, but it's that underlying relationships among the characters and really the main motivation for the game, which, okay, you just need some pretense. You need some sort of McGuffin here. But it kind of fell apart for me where it's like the whole heist, the whole plan here, okay, this job went wrong. We're robbing Slyro. So we have a death mark here. And our plan now is to re-rob Sleero so that we can do away with this death mark. But wouldn't he just be even more upset that we robbed him for real this time. Like, is the idea that you can just buy your way out of the death mark? Okay, maybe, but like, aren't there better ways to do that? Right. And then when there's the big reveal at the end where we realize that Zerick Besh is just a front for the ISB, then they're

still going ahead with this final heist rate. And I'm like, if this has all been fake, why do you even think there is a fortune in this Zerick Besh vault? Like, why would you think that is not just a cover story too, right? And ultimately, that is exactly. the case, but it's just some intel hidden in there, not, you know, vast fortunes, right? And you could excuse all of this, I guess, by, as you said, Jomey, Kay's inexperience, right? And she's kind of in over her head and she's being manipulated. Fine. I guess that's a little undercut for me, though. And this is an element that you get with a lot of games where there's like a dissonance between the story and the gameplay where the idea of Kay as this, you know, rookie who's like a hot shot, but doesn't know

her way around and just learning the ropes and everything is kind of undercut by the fact that I'm like wasting entire battalions of stormtroopers all the time. Right. So it's like literally she's kind of capable by this point. Yeah. I mean, Jalen's like when they don't have the heavy, he's like, well, you could be our heavy. Yeah.

You're well versed in a blast. Right. I guess I wish there was more, you know, obviously there's a progression in some of her skill sets, but I wish that night, like the naiveness that she has and like the experience that she has in particular, you saw that change as the game goes, where she is more confident and she is able to kind of talk her way out of stuff that You don't really see that, though, in this game. It is tough.

I think to her as a character, I think, again, it worked for me when I was like, just like, oh, yeah, she stinks. This is not what she's supposed to do, but she has to. I think in terms of her, like, death mark, yeah, it's ultimately just one of those things where I do see your point in terms of ISB does it, or Derek Bess doesn't exist, this is the ISB. Those are not, that's not the syndicate. They can follow you anywhere.

You know what I mean? but I think Derek Best is operating as a syndicate front. And so if you go to like Corrason, whatever, you know, I'm sure there might be Pikes there, but they're not going to like start shooting up Corrissant, you know what I mean, or whatever it may be. And so I feel like she feels safer there than she does at the edge of the system where syndicates are running rampant. You get caught up as you're dead.

You know, like people are less likely to go find you in, you know, the core world than they are. on the outer rim, I feel like for her. Yeah. And look, I can forgive a lot of these minor nitpicks that we have here if I were more grabbed by that central story in these relationships and not just because of my preexisting investment in Star Wars, right? And so, you know, would I be pissed that there are always like power off switches right

next to the security cameras? Maybe. Who designed the security system here, okay? But we know that imperial security systems always have fatal flaws. Randy! Is it annoying? that you always have to turn on three switches and flips before you power something up to unlock a door. Yeah, okay.

But I could ignore all of that if I were just more grabbed by these characters and their relationships with each other. And there are attempts at that, you know, like Kay's attic room on Cantonica at the canteena with this long-suffering bartender who's just totally taken advantage of by this family. I feel bad for him. Like, they're like, they owe him like decades of rent their inner rears. Like they're bringing crooks of the law to his place. He's getting shot in the shin, this poor guy. But, you know, you have a room there and it kind of feels like Calcestis's basement room and your hub world and Jedi Survivor. And I like that you can walk around the ship and see people tinkering with stuff.

And, you know, I like other aspects to this. I like that you, you know, don't lose reputation points with a faction if you aren't detected stealing. So you can sort of sneak in and sneak out. And if no one catches you, then you can get away with it. And lots of these little moments, they stick with me. But that deeper story work that this game had to do just fell flat for me. And I say that as someone who loved a lot of the little lore nods. And, you know, Arjuna, you're a lord nerd like me.

So I'm sure you saw lots of this stuff. I do lore segments on House of R, not on Buttonmash, but I could do lengthy lore segments on this game because, you know, lots of deep cut shoutouts, right? I mean, to like expanded universe to legends, to like, you know, Theron books, previous games dash Rendar shoutouts, shadows of the empire and Project Swarm and Battlefront and Star Wars adventure comics and high republic ships and just lots of nice little touches like that. This was clearly a game made by Star Wars fans, right?

And people who are well versed in the entirety of the catalog, whether that is, you know, the expanded stuff or canon itself. So that was really nice to see. And I think, like, to Jomey's point, near the top of the show, this is a game for Star Wars fans. Like, this isn't a game you, like, necessarily give to a video fan who is, like, iffy about Star Wars or not super into Star Wars.

This is firmly a game where it's like, if you're a Star Wars fan, this is a game that you could take and you could play. And you should be able to enjoy mostly. Are we still talking spoilers? What you got? Kay's mom shows up. Oh, Rico.

Oh, yeah. We should, this isn't even, well, all right. I guess this is sort of a spoiler. But we're still in spoiler territory. Yes, there's a whole arc with Kay's mom. We should talk about that. In the last like five hours of the game. Yeah.

She's doled out in little like flashback instances, right? Just like maybe I want to say two, maybe three. So you're like, okay. All right. Oh, this is how you found. Knicks. This is how she got the coin. Cool. And then her mom shows up as part of the team, right? Just like Jaylen's just like, hey, I found your mother, actually. Yeah. Of all the slicers in the universe. Of all the slicers. She was the one. You talk about the Star Wars universe

being being big and small at the same time. That's the tiniest galaxy of I've ever seen. Yeah. If the best slicer is also our protagonist mom, right? Exactly. Of all the cantinas and all the towns. That's classic Star Wars. Star Wars has always done. Which is cool, right? Yeah. I know I'm sounding hipster here with like,

don't force feed us the same stuff other than the force, but. It's, I mean, it's fine. Right. I can get there, you know, to the point where it's the worst mother I've ever seen in a long time. Long time. It sells her out to Jalen, right? When they get the, when they get the info, she's like, well, this belongs to the, the

rebels. And then she actually, actually, daughter, that's not how that works. Stuns her, or she gets stunned by Andy or whatever. And then apparently gets caught because the mid-credit scene. Yeah.

Is Kay going to rescue her mom? Yeah, she had them marked credits. And it's like, hey man, so you got to pick aside. You got to pick aside. Because clearly you have,

be with your mom, you and your mom don't get along. there's like one of the first missions at the endgame is to go to the Imperial Base and you spend the whole time just being like I don't like you mother you were there for me They kind of bond at the end of though

But it's not a lot It's not so different you and I It's not enough But then go back to an Imperial base For that yo That's everything with the game That's everything with the game Right?

It's just like Arjuno was saying Yeah crucial characters disappearing You know all this stuff kind of being crammed in right Like that arc, if that arc had been a central peg of the game, great, okay? Like we meet the mom early on and we're trying to reconnect with her. Fine. But as it is, it's all just sort of fast forwarded where it's like, oh, I never want to see you again.

And then by the end of the game, it's like grudging respect and okay, we're cool now, kind of, right? It helps her escape. Yeah. Yeah. It's super accelerated, right? So that was kind of frustrating. But, you know, look, I guess we're out of spoiler territory. And, you know, for me, it's just.

look, yes, you see Han Solo in the carbonite, and we know that from the promotional materials, but that's not what resonates with me. I like, you know, there's this little local mob bus who has his brother in carbonite as a desk. Yeah, that was crazy. That's cool. You know, that makes me feel like, okay, this is an interesting use of something that's well established in the story, right? So that sort of thing stayed with me. And some particular missions and adventures I had were memorable.

Again, not so much the scripted ones, but when shit went sideways, right? You know, when I'm like dank ferricing my way through something, when the wanted level was high because there is a wanted system, sort of a, you know, kind of half-ass janky wanted system. But sometimes it really worked well where I had these just like kind of crazy escapes, you know, at a certain point when the wanted level is all the way high, then you have to like search out the death troopers to like erase your wanted info and do away with that. And at first I had no idea what that meant because it's like, it's like, really. the death troopers. And it's like, I don't want to go toward the death troopers. Why do I want to do that? It seems like the opposite of what I want to do. But I did that once where I snuck across the entire map like I was inside a base and somehow I got out of there like by the seat of my pants and I made it past all these imperial patrols in imperial territory. And then I made it to the death trooper

HQ and I'm like wasting these guys with my blaster and I'm down to my last liver of health. And it's like one on one and I take down this guy. And it's again. sort of silly that the melee system is like the same three animations over and over it. You could just punch people out easily. But I just made it out by the skin of my teeth. And the wanted level was gone. And I grabbed their E-11 blasters and I mowed them down with their own weapons. And I was like, hell yeah.

That was really fun. But that was not something that was planned. That was when things ran off the rails. And I think that's when Star Wars outlaws is its strongest. Yeah. When you got to improvise, it can be fun. Fly casual. a lot of improvising for me with the stealth sections.

And so like trying to, you get your heart bumping a little bit. Oh, someone who might see me. Oh, I got caught. Oh, I got to run here. Part of like, and this is like the game, we talked about the game's bugging is earlier. You know, you can choose a checkpoint here or there. You know what I mean? Get a little some checkpoint and reach.

Oh, I died. Now it's like completely reset and you can, you know, get your way out from there. But ultimately, yeah, there's a part of it where you're just in the game. all right, I got to figure this out. How do I make this happen? And there is a level of like satisfaction when you escape undetected or you've like escaped from a death trooper or a stormtrooper or something like that. Yeah, there's a level of, well, I did that. Awesome.

Yeah. All right. Briefly and lastly, any summary thoughts here? We can close any lessons you learned from playing this game or that you hope developers of future Star Wars games learned has this affected. your hopes for the franchise or future video game implementations of the franchise where would you rank

Star Wars outlaws in the voluminous pantheon of Star Wars video games give me any last big picture and thoughts are you I think for me like this is middle of the pack for Star Wars like this is like

firmly in like the C tier of Star Wars games right there are elements here that I think are enjoyable and fun and I think there's like a pearl of a good game in there if things had been developed a little bit more right if they made a sequel to this game

the emphasis would be like continue to lean into the Star Wars part of it continue to lean into the choices and the environments and the weirdness of it and make that a part of the game and and do

more with it right like with the slicing you know with the combat with the stealth just like make it a more fleshed out and realized game And I think that this could be like really a really fun game and a really fun series or franchise. But yeah, it's it's middle of the pack for me. It's it's probably one I don't think I'd like revisit or replay, but it is one that I enjoyed playing at the time for sure. I think the lesson for me is I should have played Blackson Wukong.

I'm just saying. I'm just kidding. I do have to at some point get into that apparently. You just melded Blackson. Sun, the Star Wars Syndicate, which is not featured in this game with Black Myth Wukong. Friday in the Star Wars slip. Look, it happens. It happens, you know.

No, I think ultimately where it comes for me is probably Mailupak is right. You know, I haven't played like a ton of the older games. I think I had more fun with this game than like the first battlefield. You know? but I really like the Jedi Fallen Order runs. You know, Survivor, Calcastas, this is the homie. You know, so ultimately, like, probably fall somewhere, like, in the middle. I had fun when I had fun when it worked.

The problem is it didn't work all the time. And when it broke, it really broke. So, you know, it's tough. But I think ultimately, as an exercise, there's good to be had. If you're a Star Wars fan, you're going to enjoy a lot of this game. If you're video game fan, I don't know why you would be here because it's not very firmly an IP title.

Very firmly an IP title. Very firmly an IP title. And it does mostly well by that IP and if you're a Star Wars fan, you'll get a lot of enjoyment out of this game, right? I was entertained but not impressed, but mostly entertained. And from a pure dollars per hour of entertainment's perspective,

it's not a bad proposition, right? There's a lot of game in this game, but not too much. It doesn't totally overstay. It's welcome for Ubisoft to buy Ubisoft standards, right? They went with moderation here to some extent. But yeah, ultimately, it's a little deflating for me because I had higher hopes than this game ended up delivering.

And I don't know what the lesson to take from that is, you know, partly it is that Jedi Survivor is a tough act to follow, right? And that's fresh in our minds. And not that dissimilar a game, right? like does a lot of the same things. Combat, platforming, exploration, but does pretty much all of them better than Outlaws does, you know? And I guess if you had to hand it to Outlaws to say,

like, you're something this game does that no other Star Wars game does or does as well, like Ackleite did combat better than we've seen Star Wars do in decades, maybe, let's say, you can find strengths and positives and silver linings. You know, this bills itself as the first open world Star Wars game. Maybe there's some slight exaggeration to that if you count MMOs and everything. But these are pretty rich, large, fully fleshed out worlds. You know, we didn't really even spend that much time talking about the dogfighting and the space stuff, which I guess is reflective of the impact that that had on me because it's fairly forgettable, right?

I mean, you're in. I was about to say, it sounds, you know, you kind of tacked it onto this podcast, just like they've tagged it on to the game. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I mean, you know, you go to all these different planets and the space above these planets, but it's not really that different. You're kind of flying through space and there are some asteroids flying around and there are some space stations and you can get into random encounters and everything. But ultimately it just feels then. And maybe that's the lesson to take from this.

As much as I want an all-encompassing Star Wars game that does everything well and just says, here's the galaxy, go get it, right? and is a little less complex and maybe more accessible than an MMO, let's say. Maybe that's biting off more than you can chew realistically, right? Given development AAA timelines and developmental costs, some of the best Star Wars games do one thing well, right? I mean, great Star Wars flight combat games, great Star Wars shooting blasting games, great Star Wars platforming games, a Star Wars RPG RPG, right? If you try to do everything, then that gets me excited. but the ambition, maybe it's just,

you know, over promising under delivering, right? It's biting off more Spachica than you can swallow. When Rockstar is done

with Grand Theft Auto 6 in 2035, I say we let them take on Star Wars outlaws, too. Yeah. You know?

I say it was. I would, Doddy Dog. It's basically, it's basically uncharted. The game is basically uncharted. I mean,

uncharted is not open world, but if you just like, frankly, you strip away the open, world, make a linear story, like an uncharted game, I think you have a great game because I'm playing the game and it, like, not reminds me in like a happy, like, man, just like in a, oh, I see Uncharted 4, you know? I'm trying to reference a meme.

You guys do not understand. Wow. You're calling us old? I just, I don't know how online you guys are. I think we were just called old. I don't know how online you guys are, but it's the meme of somebody who's played the, the The only game they've ever played is Uncharted Four. I'm getting Uncharted Four vibes from this, you know?

Right, right. It's like you're doing all that platforming, all that cover shooting third person. You know, it's like, oh, okay, I see the Intcharted vibe. I think if Noddy Dog make this game, we're talking about it like, oh, this is, you know, maybe like in the game of the year conversation, right? But of course, uncharted mostly linear, right? So it's not as heavy a lift. If it's all scripted and fairly prescribed path, then you can kind of curate it.

it, you can handcraft it so that it works super well. Whereas if you're trying to do everything, ultimately everything ends up coming up short. Can I have a confession, guys? Yes. It's just the three of us in this little trust circle, okay? This little trust triangle, okay? We're a crew.

We're a found family. That's right. Until this podcast ends and we immediately disperse and go our separate ways. Let me take everyone in Star Wars outlaws. Let me take something right now. If they're like, yo, I got to take the restraining ball off one of you guys. I'm not doing it. I'm leaving.

I'm going home. It's not worth it. It's really not. If I'm actively trying to kill you, I forget. Kay was out there wild and trust Triang right now, my crew. Yeah.

I don't really like open world games. Ouch. I just, just give me the story. You want a linear. You want to be on the path. You want your handheld. God of War is open world,

but not really. You know what I mean? Not really in the sense of, you can just play the game, right? And you can advance your character. You can find, like, is all like upgrading your health, upgrading your character is like baked in

in a way that like doesn't feel like, well, I gotta go do this now if I wanna do this or I gotta go way off the beaten path to figure it out. Like as you're advancing in the story, it gives you very simple options to upgrade your thing. In this game, you gotta like, all right,

forget all that, forget, forget to get, forget to get. We gotta go over here and do this and go over here to do that. And so while, I'm not mad about it, I just like a game to carry me from beginning to the end, honestly. Yeah, what often happens with an open world game

is it's a mile wide and an inch deep, right? And lots of Ubisoft games are a mile wide and a mile deep too. It's just a little too much. Whereas, you know, they cut back and they paired off some of that bloat. And I admire them and salute them for that. And yet at times I felt the lack of it

and the absence of it. So ultimately, look, we had fun. We had some good time. We had some good times talking to each other. Star Wars outlaws worth playing if you are a Star Wars head like we are and you have a lot of time to spare, but not necessarily a must play, especially if you are not someone who is still coming back to Star Wars again and again as we are, even if it's a Charlie Brown and Lucy football sort of situation sometimes these days.

Star Wars Outlaws came up short. This podcast did not come up short, but just as we have completed Star Wars Outlaws, we have also completed our podcast about Star Wars Outlaws. Jomey, from your preview video to our preview pod to today's episode, it's been great to go on this journey with you. I've had an absolute blast, Ben. Look, when the next Star Wars game come out in 2095, I'll be here. I'll be ready.

You know, GTX-S is coming out, what, 2027? Don't, don't say that. Wait for them to delay it before you. No, it's getting, Ben, Ben, it's the biggest game of all time. It is, I'm not a betting man, you know what I'm saying? I don't have no accounts on a fan duel. You're not going to see me getting run up by no mafia type folk. That game is, I would put the house on that game getting delayed.

You will not go broke betting. What was the last Rockstar game that wasn't delayed by? Well, it has been delayed, I guess, informally already. But still, yeah. See, man? You see what I was in? You will not go broke betting on big video games to be delayed. It's usually a fairly safe bet.

And so, look, Arjuna, you're a natural, a true team player, not hogging the ball like the Lakers. They do that, right? Jomey, just bringing things full circle. Sometimes you want LeBron to hug the ball. I want LeBron to hog the ball. Yeah. Because LeBron might not have a fix. He might not have a sidekick.

Do you respect them? I respect them, especially Deelow. Okay, have some respect for my son, all right? Well, I think you passed the audition for yourself, I guess. you're the podcast manager, so you're the one who ultimately decides whether you get to keep going on more podcast. But I enjoyed it. Maybe you should seize the mic more often. Maybe.

We'll see. This is enjoyable. Thanks for having me on. Thanks to Devin Renato for producing today's episodes. And this is where I would normally thank Arjuna, but I already did. This is weird. Me too. Stay tuned for Terminator Zero, Astrobot, Rings of Power, and much more.

Write to us at ringerverse gaming at gmail.com. Keep your nixes close and your syndicates closer. and remember, hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side or even a bad blaster before you level it up. More mashing next week. Talk to you then. The moment you leave, the empire is going to throw everything they can at you. We'll shake them. If you don't, we never met. The fate of the galaxy could depend on it.

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