Ubisoft and Star Wars Dress-up.

 

There's a certain idea that a company called 'Ubisoft' are the bottom-feeders of the Games Industry, and I don't want to make it sound like I'm supporting that brazen attack on the companies honour! I would never think of Ubisoft so highly as to believe it a being of sentience. Rather I believe them to be soulless automatons crushing every bit of personality and soul through the rigors of their metal-robot innards like a steel-press: delivering factory-print games delivered to an increasingly bland specification. In an industry of artists, Ubisoft have become the creative equivalent of that cloudy smudge that gets plopped onto your plate at the school cafeteria. It's unspecific, formless, tasteless and you only really eat it because you're used to it by this point. If anyone offered you something with the slightest amount of flavour, even dust scrapped off the floor, your tastebuds would enter cardiac arrest from the shock of having to actually work again. That's Ubisoft.

Which is probably why I did not give them the time of day when it was announced they were working on a Star Wars game, no more interesting then that Avatar game they made and then put out to absolutely zero culture impact. To it's credit I've actually heard that Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is not just a Far Cry clone, however, but a Far Cry clone with a bit more sprinkled ontop for the sake of interest. The game tries to have a bit more depth in the way it handles the gameplay loop and even the action has some differing quirks to it. Non of it is achieved to any impressive degree, but you have to cut the team some slack. They're only newbies to game development, right? I'm sure they'll start settling into a rhythm with a few more games under their belt. (Hmm? They were founded 27 years ago. Uh oh...)

Massive Entertainment are the team that are going to be behind Star Wars Outlaws too- which is why I can at the very least hope this game isn't more utter toxic sludge spewed from the same factory flaw as core-Ubisoft titles most commonly are. That being said- these guys still have a way to go to prove themselves a serious contender. Which is such a shame because after all these years I am just starved for Star Wars games, I should be flocking to this like a flea on a starving seventeenth century peasant- but I'm not. And that's because when I look at this game, at the open-world slathered with places I'm sure will be stuffed with open world fluff, the bustle towns of certainly space-filling NPCs and the obvious padding story-block cutscenes they're stupid enough to actually publish in their preview trailers- ("You're new to this world, come back when you're not." Who wants to bet that's immediately followed by a 'increase you reputation to X in order to unlock this story mission' objective?)- I'm not seeing 'Star Wars'. I'm seeing Ubisoft playing 'Star Wars' dress up.

I guess when it comes to modern action games within the Star Wars license, the biggest comparison we have to put Outlaws against is 'Jedi: Fallen Order' and 'Survivor'- to which Outlaws feel at best like a younger brother trying to mimic it's older sibling's natural swag and personality. There's a genuine character to the gauntlet-like wild vistas of the 'Star Wars Jedi' series, with it's plethora of challenging and gameplay influencing enemy types, parkour break-up sections, mutable combat abilities and a decently serviceable plot. I'll say it- I really enjoy those games and what they bring to the franchise, even if I have Umbridge with some of the narrative directions that Survivor took. Outlaws, so far, does nothing for me. It looks like it has 'anti' personality. And that's saying something, looking at how Jedi features a protagonist so generic looking it was literally memed before people realised it was actually modelled on a real actor who just happens to look at like. (Apologies once again, Cameron Monaghan.)

And that doesn't even touch on one of the most shocking parts of the game footage I've seen- the actual vocal performances. I'm not an acting snob by any stretch of the imagination, but there's a certain level of general performance I expect from higher budget games that just isn't there. The protagonist in particular sounds perpetually bored to be reading her lines, and she does sound like she's reading them. Honestly it reminds me of the performances from a lot of the side cast in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which I chalked up to the game being so garishly unwieldly that the team just didn't have the time to brush their QA brushes over the entire development process. Does that indicate Outlaws is going to be yet another unfocused mess? I certainly hope not. (I barely survived Valhalla.)

Perhaps the biggest sin I fear from this game is the one Ubisoft are most common of, and for which all of Star Wars is currently suffering. I fear that the game will be boring. The Jedi series spread it's wings a little bit and stretched out with Survivor- I can see a potential for interesting directions with a fun cast of characters that I'm interested to see develop. Outlaws has a slight chance to achieve the same, but it's going to have to overcome the Ubisoft cliché of 'style-over-substance'. From Far Cry 6 to Valhalla and double so for Legion- these concepts travel furthest on the design documents but wilt and die in the writers room. Characters who spout out empty affectations in place of character development, narratives that meander pointlessly and muddle potential set pieces into more bland action and themes that get lost and fail to meet us at the finish line. Outlaws doesn't spark hope in any of these directions thus far.

Maybe that's just the way of things. Afterall, we know that Ubisoft are going the 'smash and grab' route with the selling of this one. Triple digit editions with pre-marked out post game DLC and cosmetic packs stitched atop the package, as well as Three Days Early access for a single player game for literally no other reason than the rubes down in marketing saw some other games doing that and thought it would be cool. (That they think their game has nearly enough hype for that to be some sort of serious consideration is honestly adorable.) There is no faith in this game being solid enough to build the sort of traction that we've seen the best sellers of this year doing, so instead Ubisoft resorts to their faithfuls. Hard upselling at the door to rank up sales figures. True cretins, those Ubisoft are.

Now, I actually do want Outlaws to be good. I don't think it will be- but considering this is the only payoff to those years of rumours of a third person shooter Star Wars game- I'm willing to take the hit to delivery if the final product is at least serviceable. I'm told that in skipping Ubisoft Massive's last game I actually unintentionally skipped Ubisoft's last serviceable game in order to feast on their slop, so in reputation alone I have to put my faith in the better than trash team currently up to bat. But this marketing campaign has been a balloon of deflating expectations with every other reveal. And I already know this is going to be the kind of title I get in a year or so at serious discount. Which is a shame, honestly- I wanted a Star Wars game this year.