When we talk about a game with a sense of place, it’s often about how cleverly it hides the necessary lies of a world designed to accommodate the player character. It’s the good kind of lie. One with a purpose, like Lucas smearing Vaseline over the camera lens to cover the wheels of the landspeeder. Star Wars Outlaws is a strange case, then. Because while its planets and cities feel fake as living places, as movie sets they’re pretty incredible. That’s your job here. This is what the game is about. You don’t so much play it as you play your part in a series of loving, enthusiastic callbacks. That’s a Star War. This is a Star War. Oh, hey, I know! That’s one of my favorite Star Wars.

“To the burglar, every building is infinite, endlessly weaving back into itself,” writes Geoff Manaugh in A Burglar’s Guide To The City . For outlaw half-inch hero Kay Vess, the streets and crime dens of Mirogana unfold more linearly; fewer weaves, more straight shots through living blueprints with heist plans calculated from the start. The pet doors and air vents don’t require seasoned burglar-finding to shine like beacons above dune-covered market awnings — Kay’s criminal gremlin Nix can sniff them out. “Cities get the crimes their design demands,” says Manaugh. Virtual cities like Mirogana get the type of crime their two, sometimes three, alternative routes to the big one dictate.

But Kay will have to get to the city first, having fled her home planet after a job went (incidentally) awry. Approaching a stormtrooper checkpoint, Vess clutches the hem of her coat and bows slightly, looking about a thousand times more suspicious than before. The Empire’s finest scan her ID. She walks on, and once she’s two feet past the checkpoint, she yells, “Good thing I got that fake ID!”

She’s lucky the city was built for her, honestly.

In short: what you get here is a conceptually musty but still fairly enjoyable mishmash of The Witcher 3 (Vess goes on assassin missions with choices at the end, and also plays cards), Watch Dogs (she’s cunning, Nix is ​​basically a remote hacking gadget) and Uncharted (she climbs yellow things. You can make them non-yellow if you want.) There’s a bit of Far Cry 3 in there (enemy camps, binocular tagging) and a bit of Red Dead Redemption 2 (wanted levels, gambling minigames, the spaghetti western sauce stains on Lucas’ lenses.) Ghost Of Tsushima was also cited as a central reference by creative director Julian Gerighty. Cinematic? Sure, but none of that game’s notable things (diegetic map guidance, new checklist items, fluid stealth) are present here.

Outlaws is at its best when it melts its hodgepodge of duct-taped systems into shiny coins you can plug into a jukebox of Star Wars wish-fulfillment hits and makes you clumsily copy the choreography. It’s hard to find a rhythm in fights that are merely tense, since most scrap battles feature at least one kind of guest Kay can take down with one or two shots, leaving her to safely fire blindly from cover with perfect accuracy. But there’s a familiar joy in the pantomime participation of holding off waves of stormtroopers while your crew gets the cargo bay to your ship working; in hearing that elastic blaster cue echo across the docking bay.

It’s hard to get lost in the roguelike fantasy of stealth that lets you knock out an Imperial officer while conversing with a subordinate without arousing suspicion; that lets you leap noisily off a catwalk a few feet away from an unwitting stormtrooper, then take him down with one of a number of ponderous, bubble-wrapped animations. But there’s still fun to be had in the performance to outsmart science fiction’s most notoriously clumsy idiots, even if it means crouching on the back of a floating luggage rack.

And it’s still a performance, because there’s no real sense that the planets you visit are much more than thematic tour destinations, though striking and quite lively. The constant contextual interactions with the landscape make it feel like there’s a mediator between you and the world, like you’re constantly checking with the boss to make sure it’s safe to climb some barrels in case you knock over a light. Even climbing a ladder feels like you’re asking permission. Kay doesn’t leap or clamber up ledges, she rushes to them like a magnet, as if the acting force is coming from the rock face rather than from her.

If you want me to have a strong opinion about yellow paint, you’re going to have to take a long, dried-out puddle in the pot of Dulux Brilliant White I’m currently using to paint my ceilings. I can take it or – if you mark the way out for me in bright yellow – leave it, because games like Outlaws actually annoy me more when they suddenly expect me to use my brain after lulling me into a pleasant stupor. It’s not an exciting way to design a game, but at least it’s consistent in its concessions to a head that’s sunk by whatever life has thrown at you that day. There’s value in that, even if there’s not much ambition beyond sticking to a proven formula for a safe product.

So here’s something I have to commend on principle, even if I feel it’s a little misplaced given that lazy insensibility. Most of the climbing pieces in Outlaws break up ledges and nets with either giant fans that periodically blow Kay into a death pit if she jumps at the wrong time, or moving blocks that can drop her. Environmental hazards?! In my blockbuster climbing section! I know, low bar. But play enough raw realistic Playmobil sets and a wall of Lego starts to look downright complicated.

Space travel performs better. A braver game would have been more Freelancer, removing the open plains and expanding parts trading and conceptually interesting but otherwise minimally impactful faction reputation: you have to sneak into some areas instead of walking through them. Certain side jobs become unavailable if you anger the wrong syndicate. Allied merchants sell you cheaper, better gear.

Still, there are some nice touches in what could otherwise have been a quick-travel menu between planets. Objective markers show you where to aim at enemy ships to account for laser drop-off. Your wing and boosters spread out like a mechanized bird as you raise your thrusters. Space above Toshara is a beautiful mess of debris and rusted rubble, flung across ochre nebulae like clouds of disturbed sand at low tide, and distant planets reward similarly gorgeous atmospheres. Outlaws isn’t a breathtaking game to look at, but I’d wager much of the concept art is.

If I had money to burn, I might even splash out on a special edition art book. And even if Kay’s fur saxolotl companion Nix were to bite through the spine, I still don’t think I could take him outside and kick him over a fence. This, folks, is how you make your obligatory Star Wars merchandise creature appeal to the public. For one thing, he’s just incredibly useful. One minute he’s rolling around in front of a camera, faking a spleen explosion so Kay can slip past. The next, he’s activating a switch on the other side of a laser barrier. Like I said, it’s Watch Dogs. He can even activate explosive barrels in small increments, so you can time the final beep before an explosion as stormtroopers walk by.

This is where the game gets most Star Wars-y; a universe that’s as much about animatronic gribblies making squeaky noises as anything else. It’s not just Nix’s practical advantages, either – the relationship between him and Kay makes for some of the game’s most authentic and moving storylines. She’s not exactly convincing as a blasé Han Solo type, but I absolutely believe her as a hard-working pet owner who just wants to provide the best life possible for her beloved crime gremlin.

Even the small moments are authentic. Tatooine’s cities feel like dioramas, but a tucked-away junk shop is full of sparking wires, dust motes, and droid chatter. You can almost smell the soldering. Alien bands in cantina alcoves score brilliantly animated and reasonably fun Sabacc matches. For a game that won’t let Kay enjoy a meal without first completing a quicktime event, Outlaws at least populates its dioramas with healthy doses of interactive items, simple minigames, and quirky souls you can cheer up with a quick chat.

It can be very endearing in these small moments, but it all still feels a little false, a little watery. And it sometimes manages to prolong a tedium that should be lighthearted. “The core goes here, I guess?” Kay muses as she laboriously slides a battery into a door, finally letting me through many seconds after I politely ask the game to continue. But escaping an Imperial station on high alert, only to find my mate waiting outside with speeder bikes, and then zooming through a chase across sand dunes, evokes a certain dark Star Wars thrill like few things before it. I don’t like Outlaws, but I’m not mad about it. The cut-throat hug this fishwife gave me was too nice for that:

This review is based on a review build of the game provided by the publisher. They gave me the expensive edition key, but all I had was a pair of glasses that made Nix look like the crazy frog, so I had to take them off.