Star Wars Video Games Are Weird Right Now

It feels like Star Wars is better known for its controversies than the stories it's telling. That's less true when it comes to Star Wars games, at least, but while we seem to have more Star Wars-centric games than we've seen in years, doesn't it sometimes feel a little same-y?

Part of the reason Star Wars Outlaws feels like such a breath of fresh air is because it feels a bit like a trick? Ubisoft funded a AAA Star Wars video game that cost tens of millions of dollars and you don't throw a lightsaber around? You're a thief who sneaks around a bunch?

Sure, Outlaws is not without its issues, but it harkens back to a different era of Star Wars video games, when a universe that is both specific and intriuiginly undefined could support all kinds of different video games.

Could we capture that again?

That's what Rob and Patrick are here to figure out.

Patrick: So Rob, I’ve been thinking about how you’ve fallen a bit for Star Wars Outlaws. We have some scattered data suggesting the game has not been a massive hit, but we aren’t privy to Ubisoft and Disney’s expectations, so who knows? What we do know is that Star Wars Outlaws is a good game, but your mileage may vary based on how you take to the stealth, and how much simply being in a gorgeously realized Star Wars world is enough to make you happy.

What it got me wondering about, more broadly, is the state of Star Wars video games. If this Games Radar article is correct, here’s what has been announced for the future of Star Wars:

• Untitled Respawn Strategy Game
• Star Wars: Eclipse (Quantic Dream)
• Knights of the Old Republic Remake
• Untitled Amy Hennig Star Wars Game
• Star Wars Jedi 3 

It’s a predictable spread, with a big emphasis on splashy, action-centric games where, inevitably, the player is likely to be at the center of events that Could Destroy Everyone. It’s missing some of that weird spice that helped define Star Wars gaming’s best runs in the past.

I wouldn’t describe myself as a Star Wars kid growing up, but when you look over the list of Star Wars video games released in the past, you suddenly realize “well, I sure as hell was a Star Wars video game kid.” Super Star Wars. Star Wars Episode I: Racer. Rebel Assault. X-Wing and Tie Fighter. Rogue Squadron. Shadow of the Empire. Knights of the Old Republic. Hell, I think I even loaded up that weird Yoda Stories because it came bundled with something else.

What makes Outlaws interesting, and perhaps risky (?), is how it ditches force powers and lightsabers. I mean, that stuff exists in the world of Outlaws, but you are not a secret demi-god. 

Maybe it only feels risky because of how modern Star Wars revolves around Luke Skywalker, which then inherently limits the kinds of stories you can tell and the gameplay supporting that?

And while it’s true many, many Star Wars video games in its long history have involved players getting to cosplay as Luke Skywalker or someone with the same power set, many of my favorite Star Wars games are where you’re more of a grunt! You get to inhabit a space in this weird, vaguely familiar world. What’s cool about, say, X-Wing is being adjacent to all the space magic. 

It’s easier to role-play because if our own world suddenly had such fantastical things, it’s far more likely that you or I would be witnessing it from the sidelines, not getting to wield it around.

You’ve played much more Outlaws than me. You’ve also thought about Star Wars storytelling way more than me. Where do you think Outlaws fits within Star Wars’ gaming history?

Rob: I think you’ve already touched on it: Outlaws fits within this tradition of Star Wars games existing on the margins or in the backdrop of that universe… but it’s a major AAA release of the kind that didn’t even exist when LucasArts / Lucasfilm Games were at their peak. That might highlight why success with the license has proven to be so elusive. The universe has always lent itself to games that let you inhabit the setting… but not necessarily take part in the main action of the plot. You get access to the setting’s toybox, and that’s always been the part of the universe that lends itself most readily to video games.

So you had a really perfect overlap in the 90s between the stuff the video games excelled at, the stuff people wanted from a Star Wars game, and the costs of developing games in those genres relative to their prospective audience. Four of those games you mentioned are basically, “You wanna sit in the cockpit of a Star Wars ship or race car and blast away?” I might even argue Shadows of the Empire counts for those purposes because the flight stages loom so large in the memory for that game.

I think it helped that in those days Lucasfilm’s games operation was really creatively-led. I mean this is a company that decided (correctly!) that Indiana Jones was a point-and-click adventure hero, not an action hero. Part of that’s because other genres couldn’t support the kinds of interactions that define Indy, and the adventure genre was a bigger deal back then, but I also think it highlights the way Lucasfilm made decisions that were right for its stories rather than just optimizing for broad appeal. Flight games, racing games, shooters, adventures, D&D-based RPGs… they were all viable genres for a major publisher and Star Wars lends itself to all of them. Except you wouldn’t be Luke or Han, you’d be “pilot who might have flown with Luke” or “race car driver who might have been a rival of Sebulba’s.”

Outlaws has a lot of the spirit of those games, I think. It’s nerdy about the background details of the setting in a way that exactly understands how and why various segments of the fandom could thrive on technical manuals for made up hardware, video games that took place almost entirely away from the main plot of the films, and really uneven books and comics. You’re not Han Solo or Lando Calrissian… but you’re the kind of dirtbag they certainly seem like they might have been at some point (which is probably why so much of Outlaws takes its cues from Solo). You want to be Luke Skywalker and face down the Emperor? Then go play something else, because what we’re going to let you do is ante up at the sabacc tables.

But… it’s an open world action stealth adventure of the kind that seemed entirely impractical in the 90s, something that hardware could never possibly support. I happen to think it does a great job of building the game’s texture from the setting, but the very nature of that kind of game tends to muddle the pitch. Games like this are kind of like quilts made from different scraps of genres, which gives them a measure of variety but also tends to mean there is no one thing that really distinguishes them except how much you like the characters and the setting. Is Outlaws a stealth game? Yeah, in the way that Assassin’s Creed is a stealth series, but not in the way Dishonored or Hitman is a stealth series. Is it a space shooter? Well, it has some pretty well-done space shooting in it but, no, not in the way that TIE Fighter is or Everspace 2 are. How about a regular shooter? Well it’s perfectly fine when it “goes loud” but, no, it’s pretty pointedly not trying to evoke Gears or Wolfenstein.