Star Wars Outlaws was recently released, and it is the place for many fans of the beloved sci-fi world. The last game in the Star Wars Universe follows the adventures of Kay Vess and her axolotl-like companion Nix. Star Wars Outlaws Does a lot of things well, but falls short in several respects. One fan video highlights one of these issues, revealing a major problem with the NPCs and enemies of the game world.
YouTuber NikTek uploaded a video where they tested various ways to interact with the NPCs and the video title says it all: “Star Wars: Outlaws Being a ‘AAAA’ game for 3 minutes.” Over the three minutes, NikTek shows the complete indifference of NPCs and enemies when they try very hard to challenge them.
In the video, NikTek tries to blow up some NPCs but gets no reaction from the characters or the environment. The video also shows Kay plowing her spider straight into a couple of enemies and characters without reaction, an enemy NPC getting stuck trying to go into a slightly-too-short door, armed enemies failing to shoot at Kay when she uses melee attacks on them , and other ways in which the game’s environment fails to properly respond to player actions.
Star Wars Outlaws criticized for unrealistic NPC reactions
and lack of reaction in general
The lack of repercussions from enemies and other characters in the world seems to go against the whole point of the game. Outlaws uses a reputation system to affect how factions and characters interact with Kay, but NikTek’s video shows that free-roaming NPCs don’t quite follow the same design principle. It’s surprisingly hard to commit a crime in this game all about outlaws, even when the crime involves literally blowing people up. One comment on the video by user Sideswipeable summarizes the issue: “NPCs in games are increasingly becoming window dressing instead of interactive, reactive observers.“
The video highlights some other non-NPC issues. Ladders seem to be Kay’s biggest nemesis, fouling her attempts to grab and wield a weapon and completely confounding a Stormtrooper into inactivity when Kay stands at the top. Kay is also shown to slip when she tries to run up the side of a cliff or when she gets too close to a body of water, and actually entering the water immediately fades to black when she falls through it without specialized animation.
No big game on the scale of Outlaws It’s expected to have a few glitches, but these issues go beyond just hiccups, affecting the game on a more fundamental level. The release of Star Wars Outlaws is already involved in controversy. Ubisoft has come under fire for several bugs, including a pre-release bug that forced many early access players to lose progress and a subsequent failure to offer any form of proper compensation to paying customers.
Source: NikTek/YouTube, Sideviewable/YouTube