" Experience the first-ever open world Star Wars™ game and explore distinct locations across the galaxy, both iconic and new. Risk it all as scoundrel Kay Vess, seeking freedom and the means to start a new life."

A little background here, I run Debian, and it turns out that something about Debian 12 (Bookworm) was the cause of the conflict with the Snowdrop engine. I upgraded to Debian 13 (Trixie) and I wondered if doing so might not have fixed it, so I reinstalled Outlaws and it just… works! Sweet!

I’ll also update my Steam review to be fair to the game, since I initially marked it not recommended. As it stands today, I definitely recommend it.

The visuals are superb, even though I turned them down a bit to get a smoother frame rate. Cities and settlements are complex, with small details like gently swinging wind chimes (or whatever passes for a wind chime in a Star Wars game), chatting citizens and wandering livestock. View distance is pretty amazing, and looks good both far and close.

Audio is very good and is consistent with a Star Wars experience (droid beeps, blaster fire, etc.)

The controls are a tiny bit off, and I think this is because it seems highly optimized for controller, and I am playing with mouse and keyboard. It’s not so bad as to be an issue, however, and aside from occasionally crashing my speeder because the layout is a bit odd, it’s not a big deal. Plus, I consider this a “me” problem because I bet it plays great with a controller.

Now to the meat of it. Outlaws is the first ever open world Star Wars game, so you would want to see a lot of detail and effort poured into it. That’s exactly what you get - this is a pretty authentic Star Wars experience, from cantinas to the marketplace, to the windblown settlements. The characters are properly representative, and both the urban and rural ambiance is spot on. As an open world game, you have the typical random encounters, collectibles, chores and tasks you would expect. These are, for the most part, reasonable and consistent (with the occasional cliche), and I have no complaints.

Now that I’ve resolved the Snowdrop conflict (whatever that was about), the game has been an absolute rock. I’ve been playing for several days so far and not one stability issue to report.

My one quibble so far is with the protagonist. She better get it together, because right now she is likable but a bit of a clumsy idiot. They seem to be presenting this as because she is young, so maybe she can grow out of it, but right now… oof.

I found the late game to be a bit frustrating at points, largely because of sequences where you had to guess what the developers wanted you to do, and when you got it wrong you had to start over. But once you struggled through the ending was reasonable, and I found it satisfying.

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Bottom line, this is an easy recommend for open world and/or Star Wars fans.

My rating: 9/10

Runs great on Debian.

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