Star Wars Outlaws is an impressive but messy game. It’s offers an incredibly immersive open world but puts clumsy stealth at the center of its gameplay. The beginning is slow and easy to fall off of. In the words of one Kotaku writer: “it’s a crappy masterpiece.” Publisher Ubisoft seems committed to trying to turn it into an unqualified GOTY contender though and has announced a string of big updates coming in the months ahead.
“Our team is currently working hard to address your feedback and deliver new content,” the game’s developers at Massive tweeted on Friday. “More title updates will be heading your way in the coming weeks along with the release of our first story pack on November 21st.” An attached roadmap teases three upcoming updates, as well as the already-announced Lando Calrissian DLC pack arriving in November.
An October 3 title update will address bug fixes and general improvements. Later that month, an October 24 update is supposed to bring quality of life improvements. Then on November 21, alongside the Steam release and first story pack, Title Update 4 promises combat and stealth improvements as well as additional free contract missions. The plans are vague but it’s clear Ubisoft is scrambling to try and turn Star Wars Outlaws into a bigger hit.
The publisher pointed to “soft” sales in a press release yesterday that announced Assassin’s Creed Shadows would be delayed in order to further polish the blockbuster and employ learnings from Outlaws to the game originally set to arrive in November. While pushing the game out to February may improve it, allowing time for the types of fixes that Outlaws is now only getting post-launch, it also clears room for Ubisoft to make the its open-world Star Wars game the main focus of its big Black Friday holiday push.
Based on my existing time with the Han Solo-inspired story about the sci-fi universe’s criminal underworld, it gets a lot better the deeper in you get as more places and abilities are unlocked. A lot of its interesting world building and story wrinkles are also nestled in the back half. Improving systems and polish will make the game a better experience overall, but I’m curious to see how deeply Massive is going to go in and rework the underlying game.
That’s what CD Projekt Red ended up doing with Cyberpunk 2077, overhauling core systems and adding crucial new mechanics that helped make its world and story a lot more engaging to explore and interact with. Star Wars Outlaws is not at all in the state Cyberpunk was when it launched and was infamously removed from the PlayStation Store for the PS4, but I do think it could benefit just as much from a longer-term retooling that goes beyond some of the surface level player feedback and complaints.
I’d also love to see it eventually get a massive Phantom Liberty-sized expansion at some point. We’ll see how the rest of Outlaws’ fall’s updates go first.