RPG pitfalls we hope we don’t see in Star Wars: Outlaws

The 2010s were the golden age for RPG gaming. Games like Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto V, the Dark Souls series, and Assassins Creed took over. Even games like Horizon: Zero Dawn took us by surprise and its successor Forbidden West is still beloved to this day. But there were a few things that I didn’t like about the new RPG development that snuck into other games. This brings me to Star Wars: Outlaws and the hope Ubisoft can learn from their mistakes.

Like all gamers, as I’ve grown older my time for gaming has shrunk, which makes my time gaming more valuable than ever. Being in my mid-thirties my time for gaming has shrunk to about 7-10 hours per week. Most of the time it’s waking up early when the house is quiet. Although I don’t have any kids, my wife and I spend time together as our love languages are both quality time.

Safe to say when I’m gaming, I want my time to be respected.

Over the years development teams have grown ever more scared to be seen as “lazy” or “restrictive.” Games like Far Cry and Assassins Creed have issues with what I call the “go here and do this” syndrome. They purposefully add many markers to make it seem like there is more content than there is. The only thing I can think of is the fear of being called out for lack of content.

Games like Assassins Creed and Far Cry have suffered immensely from the overwhelming things you can do. When I pull up the map in Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag, there is an overwhelming amount to do and as someone who likes the exploration factor, it makes me not want to do those things. The sheer amount of content that is blasted in front of your face makes me not want to do it. Outlaws needs to stay away from this and give players the ability to do as they wish and not bombard them with things to do.

Ubisoft has been getting worse and worse as time has gone on with this. As a PC Game Pass member, I played Assassins Creed: Odyssey for a few hours then gave up when the game told me where to go constantly. An exception was Horizon: Zero Dawn. Horizon’s main issue was the fast travel system, which was due to the developers taking pride in how they presented the world mainly. Horizon had a map that had a lot to do with it but what made sense about it is the ability to remove all of it. It gave me, the player, the customization on how to present the world to me. For that game, my first playthrough I went in blind and since I had just finished Dark Souls 3 for the millionth time, I wanted a minimalist map. In the first playthrough, I played on normal because the combat is unique and I wanted to get a good feel for it, but the second playthrough was NG+ and on Very Hard.