Highlights
- Star Wars video games are praised for their ability to capture the Sci-Fi universe through story, characters, and presentation, but modern entries like Star Wars Outlaws and Jedi: Survivor excel in combat mechanics.
- Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, inspired by Dark Souls, offers deep and rewarding combat but may be off-putting to players who dislike the Soulslike difficulty. In contrast, Star Wars Outlaws focuses on accessible third-person shooter combat.
- Despite being more accessible, Star Wars Outlaws still offers depth in combat mechanics, including various blaster rounds, utilizing a furry companion, and unlockable skills, allowing for experimentation and different playstyles.
Star Wars video games have not often been renowned for their combat mechanics. While certain entries like Star Wars: Republic Commando, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and of course, the Star Wars: Battlefront series have all put a strong emphasis on combat and have some great mechanics, the biggest highlight for the vast majority of Star Wars video games is their ability to capture the iconic Sci-Fi universe in such an engaging and interactive way, usually through story, characters, world-building, and most importantly, presentation. But when it comes to modern entries like Star Wars Outlaws and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, combat seems to easily be among their greatest assets.
Heavily inspired by Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro, Respawn's Star Wars Jedi series puts its combat front and center of the experience, making each slash and parry with a lightsaber feel suitably powerful and satisfying. But while Star Wars Jedi's combat is some of the best in the franchise, Star Wars Outlaws could end up beating it in one specific way.
Star Wars Outlaws' Combat Is Much More Accessible Than Jedi: Survivor's
Star Wars Jedi's combat system is heavily inspired by FromSoftware's Souls formula, and while that means that it delivers deep and rewarding gameplay for those that enjoy that type of combat, it also has a strong adverse effect on those that don't. Put simply, Soulslike combat isn't everyone's cup of tea. It can be extremely tough and borderline unforgiving at times, and for those that have never played a Soulslike before, Star Wars Jedi's combat can be a real turn-off at first. And while difficulty settings can make Star Wars Jedi's combat more accessible, that style of methodical, careful combat just isn't for some fans.
Instead, some Star Wars fans would rather just blast their way through hordes of enemies, and that seems like exactly what Star Wars Outlaws is going to do. Based on the gameplay demo revealed during Ubisoft's June showcase, Star Wars Outlaws is going to be a third-person shooter, with combat looking fairly similar to other action-adventure games such as Uncharted, Tomb Raider, or Control. In the brief combat sequence fans saw, the player-character ducked behind cover, blind-fired from it, and aimed in to get more accurate shots on their enemies, all standard third-person action-adventure fare.
If this small glimpse of combat gameplay is anything indicative of the final product, it seems like a safe bet to assume that Star Wars Outlaws is going to be quite a bit more accessible than Respawn's Star Wars Jedi series. Rather than worrying about parry timings or which lightsaber stance to use at the right time, all players need to do to take down most enemies in Star Wars Outlaws is point-and-shoot, making it immediately more accessible for general audiences.
But that's not to say that Star Wars Outlaws' combat lacks depth either. While the basics of combat will probably get players through most of Star Wars Outlaws' combat encounters, more experienced players will be able to make much shorter work of enemies by utilizing the game's more advanced combat mechanics. Based just on what fans have seen so far, Star Wars Outlaws will have a handful of more intricate mechanics for players to use in the heat of battle, ranging from different types of blaster rounds like an electric shot that neutralizes shields to the ability to get the player's furry companion Nix to grab a more powerful weapon from the field and bring it back to them, to presumably a slew of different unlockable skills. So while Star Wars Outlaws might be more accessible, it should still have plenty of room for experimentation.
Star Wars Outlaws releases in 2024 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.