Ahead of Star Wars Outlaws, we've compiled this guide on everything you need to know about the first open-world Star Wars game, from its release window and platforms to gameplay systems and story.
Seems like it could be interesting but they way it seemed like he thought the UI spam was the problem with their Open World approach in Assassin’s Creed makes me nervous. I hated that shit from day one. It’s just busy work to add play hours for no real reason. Kinda like filler episodes in Anime or that “welp we’re out of budget so we’ll do a recap episode” that StarGate pulled every season. It’s just a waste of time. What really bothers me though is how that was somehow allowed to become more or less the expectation and definition of an “open world” game. Games like Cyberpunk 2077 were made worse by it, killing pacing and clashing hard with the story. Now I’m not saying there shouldn’t be anything of course but make it fit into the game and story, have bounty contracts that are formulaic to streamline making them but at least have some variation like for one you need to chase them, one they’ve set a trap for you, one their friends come to free them during transport etc. Small things like that keeps it fresh and keeps you on your toes and makes it interesting to see what will happen during this bounty hunt.
I hated that shit from day one. It’s just busy work to add play hours for no real reason. Kinda like filler episodes in Anime or that “welp we’re out of budget so we’ll do a recap episode” that StarGate pulled every season. It’s just a waste of time. What really bothers me though is how that was somehow allowed to become more or less the expectation and definition of an “open world” game.
A lot of people actually enjoy that, you immerse yourself in the universe and some people want as much as possible. Even it it’s “busy work”
Life and immersive sims is an entire genre based on that busy work idea.
There is plenty of games that fit what you want, you don’t need to talk down an entire genre that you just don’t enjoy. Not every single person is going to enjoy every game, movie or story. Thats just silly.
MMO player, here. Give me 100 gofer, kill things, or escort quests (okay, maybe only a couple escort), and I’ll be happy, as long as I get a few pennies and a marginal upgrade every so often.
In all seriousness, I call these types of games “run around and do things” games, where the gameplay is fun and the world is interesting, so the quests are mostly just there to nudge you in various directions.
And you get to hang out with buddies, and make new friends while complaining the person walks faster than a walk, but slower than a run.
I find it weird, who wants a 20 hour empty game? The maps would need to be smaller or these same people would complain there’s nothing to do while walking between X and Z. $80 and 20 hours of content, or $80 and 80 hours of content. Sign me up for B everytime if it’s fun.
There is some people who refuse to fast travel in games, since it breaks the immersion, in red dead redemption I hardly ever fast traveled, was just too much fun to cause random shit between points.
No one wants a 20 hour empty game. A 20 hour game needs to be dense, like a good book of equal length. It needs a compelling narrative and interesting immersive gameplay. A 20 hour game can get away with immersion adding limitations to parts of it that an 80 hour game can’t, stuff like not having quick save is annoying in an 80 hour game but perfectly valid in a 20 hour one, same with point of no returns, very grating in 80 hour games but perfectly fine in a 20 hour one.
Also I don’t consider Open World to be a type or genre of MMOs, I’m exclusively talking about Ubisoft style open world games like Assassin’s Creed and games obviously inspired by that open world approach. For MMOs busy work is good because the point really is to socialize and all content is good basically. If the game has co-op then I’m much more lenient on the busy work aspect.
Further I’m also only harping about story less or with very limited story tied to it type events. Like the cop events in Cyberpunk 2077 which is basically an ongoing crime and for whatever reason you have them marked, can go there and kill everybody, get some small reward and a thank you message. But it more or less clashes with the story overall and there’s no point to it. Having enemies to kill and things happening in the world is of course a good thing but drawing player attention to it with an icon and interaction like the thank you message creates expectations about a payoff or it actually being meaningful outside of “clearing the map”. But it’s not. It’s also a fact that crafting all of it takes time, time better spent on making the content that is meaningful even better. Basically give me one 1 hour mission rather than six 10 minute ones.
No one wants a 20 hour empty game. A 20 hour game needs to be dense, like a good book of equal length. It needs a compelling narrative and interesting immersive gameplay. A 20 hour game can get away with immersion adding limitations to parts of it that an 80 hour game can’t, stuff like not having quick save is annoying in an 80 hour game but perfectly valid in a 20 hour one, same with point of no returns, very grating in 80 hour games but perfectly fine in a 20 hour one.
Huh, you literally just explained a standard narrative “on rails” game. You really just don’t like open world games, that’s all there is here.
Agreed. I tried to tell myself I wasnt this guy for a long time because it’s so talked down upon on the internet, and I’m not entirely that guy, but at any given time I generally enjoy having a “potentially mindless open world game” running alongside whatever other shorter games I’m progressing through.
Previously, it was Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. I spent hundreds of hours completing every single map point of interest, and the game disincentivizes you from doing it by not tracking them at all or providing any achievement, but I just wanted to because it gave me more time playing an open world stealth game that I wasn’t going to get anywhere else, so eventually I just admitted to myself that I liked doing that shit, and I did it, and I enjoyed the hell out of it.
That being said, I think most that play this way would agree with me here that you aren’t going to do with a game that isn’t inherently fun. AC Odyssey allowed me to build a character that played like a melee stealth game, but with almost endless, usually unsurprising content. I could enjoy the tight gameplay that I wanted in a casual, enjoyable way that wouldn’t upset me, I could save that for Elden Ring or Monster Hunter.
Now it’s Ghostwire Tokyo. I can enjoy the interesting setting, Yokai, story, and the unique arena combat, but have plenty of things to collect and explore around for mindlessly if I want to as well. As long as the gameplay loop itself is good, I don’t mind taking that enjoyable platform and spreading it across seemingly repetitive content.
There’s an official dlc for Black Flag that adds everything to your map and mini map. I can’t stand it. You need the mini map to play missions correctly. Someone needs to mod every goddamn collectable icon out of the game, please.
Real common issue, Ghostwire Tokyo does this as well. I can filter the world map all I want, but the minimap ignores all filters and just shows me everything.
“welp we’re out of budget so we’ll do a recap episode” that StarGate pulled every season
I’ve never seen StarGate, but functionally, this type of episode makes a lot of sense for a serialized story in the era before streaming, which is why serialized stories used to be very rare.
Seems like it could be interesting but they way it seemed like he thought the UI spam was the problem with their Open World approach in Assassin’s Creed makes me nervous. I hated that shit from day one. It’s just busy work to add play hours for no real reason. Kinda like filler episodes in Anime or that “welp we’re out of budget so we’ll do a recap episode” that StarGate pulled every season. It’s just a waste of time. What really bothers me though is how that was somehow allowed to become more or less the expectation and definition of an “open world” game. Games like Cyberpunk 2077 were made worse by it, killing pacing and clashing hard with the story. Now I’m not saying there shouldn’t be anything of course but make it fit into the game and story, have bounty contracts that are formulaic to streamline making them but at least have some variation like for one you need to chase them, one they’ve set a trap for you, one their friends come to free them during transport etc. Small things like that keeps it fresh and keeps you on your toes and makes it interesting to see what will happen during this bounty hunt.
A lot of people actually enjoy that, you immerse yourself in the universe and some people want as much as possible. Even it it’s “busy work”
Life and immersive sims is an entire genre based on that busy work idea.
There is plenty of games that fit what you want, you don’t need to talk down an entire genre that you just don’t enjoy. Not every single person is going to enjoy every game, movie or story. Thats just silly.
MMO player, here. Give me 100 gofer, kill things, or escort quests (okay, maybe only a couple escort), and I’ll be happy, as long as I get a few pennies and a marginal upgrade every so often.
In all seriousness, I call these types of games “run around and do things” games, where the gameplay is fun and the world is interesting, so the quests are mostly just there to nudge you in various directions.
And you get to hang out with buddies, and make new friends while complaining the person walks faster than a walk, but slower than a run.
I find it weird, who wants a 20 hour empty game? The maps would need to be smaller or these same people would complain there’s nothing to do while walking between X and Z. $80 and 20 hours of content, or $80 and 80 hours of content. Sign me up for B everytime if it’s fun.
There is some people who refuse to fast travel in games, since it breaks the immersion, in red dead redemption I hardly ever fast traveled, was just too much fun to cause random shit between points.
No one wants a 20 hour empty game. A 20 hour game needs to be dense, like a good book of equal length. It needs a compelling narrative and interesting immersive gameplay. A 20 hour game can get away with immersion adding limitations to parts of it that an 80 hour game can’t, stuff like not having quick save is annoying in an 80 hour game but perfectly valid in a 20 hour one, same with point of no returns, very grating in 80 hour games but perfectly fine in a 20 hour one.
Also I don’t consider Open World to be a type or genre of MMOs, I’m exclusively talking about Ubisoft style open world games like Assassin’s Creed and games obviously inspired by that open world approach. For MMOs busy work is good because the point really is to socialize and all content is good basically. If the game has co-op then I’m much more lenient on the busy work aspect.
Further I’m also only harping about story less or with very limited story tied to it type events. Like the cop events in Cyberpunk 2077 which is basically an ongoing crime and for whatever reason you have them marked, can go there and kill everybody, get some small reward and a thank you message. But it more or less clashes with the story overall and there’s no point to it. Having enemies to kill and things happening in the world is of course a good thing but drawing player attention to it with an icon and interaction like the thank you message creates expectations about a payoff or it actually being meaningful outside of “clearing the map”. But it’s not. It’s also a fact that crafting all of it takes time, time better spent on making the content that is meaningful even better. Basically give me one 1 hour mission rather than six 10 minute ones.
Huh, you literally just explained a standard narrative “on rails” game. You really just don’t like open world games, that’s all there is here.
Agreed. I tried to tell myself I wasnt this guy for a long time because it’s so talked down upon on the internet, and I’m not entirely that guy, but at any given time I generally enjoy having a “potentially mindless open world game” running alongside whatever other shorter games I’m progressing through.
Previously, it was Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. I spent hundreds of hours completing every single map point of interest, and the game disincentivizes you from doing it by not tracking them at all or providing any achievement, but I just wanted to because it gave me more time playing an open world stealth game that I wasn’t going to get anywhere else, so eventually I just admitted to myself that I liked doing that shit, and I did it, and I enjoyed the hell out of it.
That being said, I think most that play this way would agree with me here that you aren’t going to do with a game that isn’t inherently fun. AC Odyssey allowed me to build a character that played like a melee stealth game, but with almost endless, usually unsurprising content. I could enjoy the tight gameplay that I wanted in a casual, enjoyable way that wouldn’t upset me, I could save that for Elden Ring or Monster Hunter.
Now it’s Ghostwire Tokyo. I can enjoy the interesting setting, Yokai, story, and the unique arena combat, but have plenty of things to collect and explore around for mindlessly if I want to as well. As long as the gameplay loop itself is good, I don’t mind taking that enjoyable platform and spreading it across seemingly repetitive content.
I replayed the Arkham games over the past week or two. I 100% Asylum, there’s a couple things I need to do in City, then I’ll have to 100% Knight.
There’s an official dlc for Black Flag that adds everything to your map and mini map. I can’t stand it. You need the mini map to play missions correctly. Someone needs to mod every goddamn collectable icon out of the game, please.
Does the map not have filters? Thats been standard feature in most of these types of games for ages.
The world map does. Idk if it keeps filters on though. The mini map doesn’t have any filters.
Real common issue, Ghostwire Tokyo does this as well. I can filter the world map all I want, but the minimap ignores all filters and just shows me everything.
Damn that’s rough, it’s annoying when the icons are so large and so many you can’t even see the map anymore.
I’ve never seen StarGate, but functionally, this type of episode makes a lot of sense for a serialized story in the era before streaming, which is why serialized stories used to be very rare.
I was just saying last night playing FF7Rebirth that I have Ubisoft to thank every time I have to climb a tower to reveal a map objective.
Good stuff /s