Star Wars Outlaws Is A Crappy Masterpiece (kotaku.com) 99
Kotaku reviews Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft's latest AAA title: I was staring at a wall. It was an early mission in Ubisoft's latest behemothic RPG, Star Wars Outlaws, in which I was charged with infiltrating an Empire base to recover some information from a computer, and this wall really caught my attention.
It was a perfect wall. It absolutely captured that late-70s sci-fi aesthetic of dark gray cladding broken up by utilitarian-gray panels covered in dull blinking lights, and I stopped to think about how much work must have gone into that wall. Looking elsewhere on the screen, I was then overwhelmed. This wall was the most bland thing in a vast hanger, where TIE Fighters hung from the ceiling, Stormtroopers wandered in groups below, and even the little white sign with the yellow arrow looked like it was a decade old, meticulously crafted to fit into this universe. I felt sheer astonishment at the achievement of this. Ubisoft, via multiple studios across the whole world, and the work of thousands of deeply talented people, had built this impossibly perfect area for one momentary scene that I was intended to run straight past.
Except I ran past it three times, because the AI kept fucking up and I was restarted at a checkpoint right before that gray wall over and over. I'm struggling to capture the dissonance of this moment. This sense of absolute awe, almost unbelieving admiration that it's even possible to build games at this scale and at this detail, slapped hard around the face by the bewilderingly bad decisions that take place within it all. Brokerage firm UBS said in a note to clients: Based on the 621 ratings thus far the game has received a score of 4.8 (out of 10). This tracks behind previous blockbuster releases by Ubisoft in Assassin's Creed and Far Cry, behind competing open world games released in 2024 and behind other major recent Star Wars Games released by EA in 2019 and 2023. The user ratings, which are generally unfavourable lag its generally favourable critic reviews (game received a score of 76 by critics).
Early user ratings suggest downside risk to our 10m units forecast for the game: While we previously felt the largely positive critic reviews made our 10m units sold look achievable (a component upon which we forecast +4% FY25 net bookings growth), the user ratings now suggest downside risk to our estimates. Previous Ubisoft games in Assassin's Creed and Far Cry which sold 10m+ units in their first fiscal year all received higher user ratings and were instalments of well entrenched franchises.
It was a perfect wall. It absolutely captured that late-70s sci-fi aesthetic of dark gray cladding broken up by utilitarian-gray panels covered in dull blinking lights, and I stopped to think about how much work must have gone into that wall. Looking elsewhere on the screen, I was then overwhelmed. This wall was the most bland thing in a vast hanger, where TIE Fighters hung from the ceiling, Stormtroopers wandered in groups below, and even the little white sign with the yellow arrow looked like it was a decade old, meticulously crafted to fit into this universe. I felt sheer astonishment at the achievement of this. Ubisoft, via multiple studios across the whole world, and the work of thousands of deeply talented people, had built this impossibly perfect area for one momentary scene that I was intended to run straight past.
Except I ran past it three times, because the AI kept fucking up and I was restarted at a checkpoint right before that gray wall over and over. I'm struggling to capture the dissonance of this moment. This sense of absolute awe, almost unbelieving admiration that it's even possible to build games at this scale and at this detail, slapped hard around the face by the bewilderingly bad decisions that take place within it all. Brokerage firm UBS said in a note to clients: Based on the 621 ratings thus far the game has received a score of 4.8 (out of 10). This tracks behind previous blockbuster releases by Ubisoft in Assassin's Creed and Far Cry, behind competing open world games released in 2024 and behind other major recent Star Wars Games released by EA in 2019 and 2023. The user ratings, which are generally unfavourable lag its generally favourable critic reviews (game received a score of 76 by critics).
Early user ratings suggest downside risk to our 10m units forecast for the game: While we previously felt the largely positive critic reviews made our 10m units sold look achievable (a component upon which we forecast +4% FY25 net bookings growth), the user ratings now suggest downside risk to our estimates. Previous Ubisoft games in Assassin's Creed and Far Cry which sold 10m+ units in their first fiscal year all received higher user ratings and were instalments of well entrenched franchises.
Mainstream gaming journalism (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mainstream gaming journalism (Score:4, Insightful)
It's Kotaku. What do you expect?
Re: Mainstream gaming journalism (Score:1)
Then it's a good thing we're not governed by people who only see other people in terms of classes, such as communists.
Re: (Score:1)
If you can't see our class structure, you're deliberately not looking. By the way, insults are a poor way to interact with others, it's called red-baiting and it's abusive.
Communists? Oh, you mean like the Hutterites, hippies and the Kibbutz movement? No? Oh, you meant like the USSR, North Korea, The khmer Rouge, the CCP, etc, didn't you? What you've done is to mistake communism for despotism. Communism is a political theory and doctrine of the workers movement two centuries ago. Actually, on the community
Re: Mainstream gaming journalism (Score:2)
If you can't see our class structure, you're deliberately not looking.
Interesting. So what are these classes and how are they defined? Who defines it, and subsequently maintains this definition? How is a person assigned a class?
By the way, insults are a poor way to interact with others, it's called red-baiting and it's abusive.
Insulting to whom?
Communists? Oh, you mean like the Hutterites, hippies and the Kibbutz movement?
Hippies are just hippies. Kibbutz and Hutterites have/had local gift economies and otherwise interact with the broader economy as a unit, as is common in other gift economies like the Amish. Kibbutz in particular were aiming for the establishment of a state, which doesn't sound very communist.
No? Oh, you meant like the USSR, North Korea, The khmer Rouge, the CCP, etc, didn't you?
All communists behold one form or another.
Re: (Score:2)
you need to read ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
By the way, your over-reaction speaks volumes about you, were you raised to be insulting or did you come up with that on your own?
This isn't capitalism, nor can it be when 85% of our 'capital' is being hoarded by the upper class. That's what 'entitled', perpetual trusts and generational wealth mean, but you knew that because it's obvious you're trolling
Communism is alive and working well on the community level despite your denial.
Reality doesn't seem to fi
Re: (Score:2)
you need to read ~
Wikipedia in general is pretty bad. Why don't you read it? Second paragraph, second and third sentences, specifically.
If classes are really a thing, then why can't you define them?
By the way, your over-reaction speaks volumes about you, were you raised to be insulting or did you come up with that on your own?
What overreaction?
This isn't capitalism,
By whose definition? Marx? He coined the term, after all.
nor can it be when 85% of our 'capital' is being hoarded
It's interesting the way you guys like to cherry pick time periods and figures to benchmark against. What we're experiencing now is not even remotely new, nor is it even especially pronounced.
https://suchscience.net/throug... [suchscience.net]
Usually when you guys make these
Re: (Score:2)
wow, talk about doubling down, not bad for a troll
dissing wikipedia, typical, dude, it's far better than lack of references from you
your entire diatribe is an overreaction
I made my point
all I see from you is misdirection and denial
but hey, nice try for a pseudo-conservative arguing for increasing classism and unethical behavior on the part of the rich and powerful
face facts, greedy people like you are the problem and you resent ethical people pointing that out .
Re: Mainstream gaming journalism (Score:2)
wow, talk about doubling down, not bad for a troll
dissing wikipedia, typical, dude, it's far better than lack of references from you
I gave you plenty. Besides, Wikipedia even considers itself to be unreliable, it even has an entire article explaining why. I've watched people here quote entire sections of it that were completely fictitious. Some idiot once tried to use it as proof that there's such thing as a win64 API based solely on Wikipedia even though Microsoft's documentation simply refers to all of it as win32 regardless of architecture and pointer widths.
That's funny though that you take offense over me "dissing" wikipedia.
your entire diatribe is an overreaction
I made my point
Which
Re: (Score:2)
carry on trolling, I've got all day to reply
Re: Mainstream gaming journalism (Score:2)
Obviously. Unlike you, I work for a living.
Re: (Score:2)
Obviously. Unlike you, I work for a living.
obviously you're an abusive person insulting others and in public, were you raised that way or did you come up with on your own?
your attitude speaks volumes about you
Re: (Score:2)
and you're a zionist and an advocate for tyranny and genocide
typical pseudo-conservative
Re: (Score:1)
Why did you stop talking about the class subject? I have no problems continuing. In fact, I'll use your preferred material even. Open up your wikipedia link and let's do a little studying together:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Directly from it:
Karl Marx defined class by one's relationship to the means of production (their relations of production). His understanding of classes in modern capitalist society is that the proletariat work but do not own the means of production, and the bourgeoisie, those who invest and live off the surplus generated by the proletariat's operation of the means of production, do not work at all.
I make roughly $172/hour as an engineer. I don't own any means of production, nor am I any sort of manager or executive or anything of the sort. Rather, I operate it by designing, building, and maintaining it for somebody else. A portion of the compensation I recei
Re: (Score:1)
How so?
Re: (Score:2)
LOL, I 'indirectly confessed,' meanwhile you attempt to brag about your income? An insult combined with an appeal to your own authority, wow, I really got to you for you to need to come after me so. For all we know you were born into affluence and got your job thanks to kissing up and or nepotism. Who knows, all I know is how unethical classism is, how exploitative Big Business is and how corrupt the economy is.
Not to even mention Karl Marx is long dead and your use of the term communism is just meant as a
Re: (Score:1)
LOL, I 'indirectly confessed,' meanwhile you attempt to brag about your income? An insult combined with an appeal to your own authority, wow, I really got to you for you to need to come after me so.
I only needed to provoke an emotional response for what comes next. Kind of disappointing how easy it was, actually. Make no mistake about it, I AM a troll. A fact I've never denied. And as I always say, the best way to troll somebody is to simply tell the truth. For all you know, the number I gave is bullshit. It's not, but I digress.
For all we know you were born into affluence and got your job thanks to kissing up and or nepotism.
This is the almost best part: You don't just want that to be true, you need that to be true. Without it, your entire premise about some sort of enigmatic class system that you
Re: (Score:2)
truth? evidently you don't know what that is
that's because you lie to yourself so you can feel better about yourself despite the fact you know you're supporting an unethical system that unfair exploits the poor and powerless so the rich and powerful can enjoy a free ride
classism is wrecking everything for everybody and that includes you
thanks to all the irresponsible people, just like you we are all losers now
Re: (Score:2)
you're attempt to portray others as communists when you don't understand the term clearly paints you as a pseudo-conservative
Re: Mainstream gaming journalism (Score:1)
truth? evidently you don't know what that is
that's because you lie to yourself so you can feel better about yourself despite the fact you know you're supporting an unethical system that unfair exploits the poor and powerless so the rich and powerful can enjoy a free ride
classism is wrecking everything for everybody and that includes you
Yes, it is very unethical that people like you who don't work or pay taxes get to effectively pull money out of my paycheck long before I ever see any of it so you don't have to lift a finger to support yourselves.
I had to pay $95,000 in taxes last year. Meanwhile your lazy ass who, per your own words "can [post to slashdot] all day" instead of doing actual work for a living. What is ethical about that?
thanks to all the irresponsible people, just like you we are all losers now
You did that all on your own. I mean who links to a Wikipedia article and then gets offended by the conten
Re: Mainstream gaming journalism (Score:1)
you're attempt to portray others as communists when you don't understand the term clearly paints you as a pseudo-conservative
Who, exactly, did I portray as a communist? And where? Be specific.
Re: (Score:2)
are you still here troll? you're the person who needs to put doewn others and pretend you're not the one taking advantage of those who aren't as privieliged as you are and you sure resent when others expose you for the abusive person that you are
carry on being an asshole for all the world to see
you paid taxes because we all do, too bad you're so selfish that you resent paying your fair share
i just feel sorry for you
Re: (Score:2)
an abusive, classist zionist, no wonder you resent being called out
Re: Mainstream gaming journalism (Score:1)
are you still here troll? you're the person who needs to put doewn others
And who am I putting down?
and pretend you're not the one taking advantage of those who aren't as privieliged as you are and you sure resent when others expose you for the abusive person that you are
Abusive to whom?
And what privilege? You call being autistic a privilege? You call having gone though renal failure a privilege? You call being poor most of my life a privilege?
Meanwhile, you don't even have to work for a living. And you're not privileged?
carry on being an asshole for all the world to see
And who am I being an asshole to? Hamas? Poor Hamas... You poor misunderstood fascist antisemites... All you wanted to do is push the Jews into the sea... Is that so wrong?
you paid taxes because we all do, too bad you're so selfish that you resent paying your fair share
There's nothing at all fair about what I pay. A big chunk o
Re: Mainstream gaming journalism (Score:1)
What am I being called out for, exactly?
Who am I abusing?
How can I be "classist" when there are no classes? And if there are, why can't you define any of them?
Zionist? Yeah, guilty. As you anti-semites have repeatedly shown, it's hard for Jews to be safe anywhere. You guys just randomly assault them just for wearing the wrong clothing. You guys tried to murder all of them in the 40s. I think we can cut them a break and let them have their own state. It's hard for them even have that, as you guys showed on O
Re: (Score:2)
still here troll? you're putting yourself down and you're overreaction says a lot about you by the way
funny how you so resent being called out
Re: (Score:2)
oh and you're still a supporting a zionist genocide i see
figures
Re: (Score:1)
No, you're putting yourself down. You're making it blatantly obvious that you can only think in terms of "us vs them", "good vs evil", etc. Your consciousness is only binary. This is why you only see people by whatever class you assign them and nothing else. This is why you only see Israel bad, Palestine good.
Re: (Score:2)
actions speak louder than words, this isn't Israel and you know it, this is a corrupt illegal genocidal regime, nice attempt to derail the discussion once again
me, what I see is upper class people using their wealth and power to steal from and kill the poor powerless people who legally own their land. This is an injustice and a war crime.
ever notice how false flag operations seem to happen just when despotic leaders need to interrupt the democratic process? No ? I didn't think you'd notice
if anyone is seein
Re: (Score:2)
“Thou shalt not kill.” and “Thou shalt not steal.” Remember those 'commandments', how's that for obeying God's laws? Just asking.
Re: Mainstream gaming journalism (Score:1)
I'm atheist, keep your invisible man to yourself.
Re: Mainstream gaming journalism (Score:1)
ever notice how false flag operations seem to happen
No, just stupid people like you with their stupid conspiracy theories.
Re: (Score:2)
it doesn't matter what you believe
actions have consequences
Re: Mainstream gaming journalism (Score:1)
Ya think? Like committing mass murder on October 7th? 72% of Palestinians think mass murder was the correct action. Tell them, and your god, about playing stupid games and winning stupid prizes. Maybe add a psalm about it in your bible or quran or whatever rail your thoughts can't stray from.
Though part of me wonders whether any of that even matters to you. Rather, it's just more of your binary thinking. You only understand people who fit neatly into one of your predefined classes, and because I shared a si
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, still being abusive and insulting I see, that certainly speaks for itself. I wonder if you ever notice how trolls accuse others of the very things they themselves are most guilty of? And of course if someone invaded your home and stole your land, you'd fight back, wouldn't you?
Not even a nice try troll, we all know it was a false flag operation by a desperate corrupt fascist regime. No wonder you don't like being called out, if I were you, I wouldn't like it either. But I make sure I'm not supporting c
Re: (Score:2)
by the way, the more you try to insult people, the more desperate you appear, just saying
Re: Mainstream gaming journalism (Score:1)
Wow, still being abusive and insulting I see, that certainly speaks for itself. I wonder if you ever notice how trolls accuse others of the very things they themselves are most guilty of?
You started all of that. Go look at the thread. Now you're just whining because you got wrecked.
And of course if someone invaded your home and stole your land, you'd fight back, wouldn't you?
That's what's funny about you guys, nobody stole anything. The land was ceded by Jordan when nobody even asked them to. Literally overnight they go from Jordanian to Palestinian and Jordan says they need to be "liberated". Then you guys come up with these bogus maps showing Israel "occupying" regions that are barren desert totally devoid of people. In other words, pure bullshit propaganda. And your spoon is alrea
Re: Mainstream gaming journalism (Score:1)
Good lesson, so why haven't you learned it yet?
Re: Mainstream gaming journalism (Score:2)
"Classism"? Why not "spoonicism" or "fnotilitarism"? They're just as relevant.
Re: (Score:2)
Hardly, classism is our main problem. The lust for money and power are obviously the roots of all evils. Economic hoarding, economic discrimination and economic exploitation are exactly why our civilization is in such decline.
THe more people need to be insulting, the more it demonstrates they are desperately trying to bring the discussion down to their level.
Womp womp (Score:2)
Re:Womp womp (Score:5, Funny)
In this case, it's womp rat womp rat.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Don't delude yourself! (Score:2, Interesting)
TL;DR (Score:5, Insightful)
No wonder people don't read anymore if that's how people write.
Re: (Score:2)
He lost me at "hanger", I came here to read about video games, not clothing.
Re: (Score:2)
Please bitch. (Score:2)
Get on with the times and stop being letterist. It's quadruple A now.
Re:Please bitch. (Score:5, Funny)
Fuck everything, we're doing five A's [theonion.com].
Re: (Score:2)
All humour aside, razors have changed, a lot. Used the Gillette Mach3 for 30 years, they stopped making them. Used the Schick Quattro for 1 year, they stopped making them: It was better than the Mach3. Used the Schick Hydra5 for 1 year: It's twice the price, 3/4 the quality and performs the same as a 3-blade razor. (Haven't used the Schick Hydra3 but it would be nonsensical to make a good 3-blade and an expensive, crap 5-blade razor.)
I'm so happy they started making Schick Quattro cartridges again:
How do games even work? (Score:2)
What do the A's even stand for? Or is it like screwer size where #00 is smaller than #0?
Re: (Score:2)
This is one of those cases where wikipedia isn't complete bullshit where a few kernels of truth are drowned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
>In the video game industry, AAA (Triple-A) is a buzzword used to classify video games produced or distributed by a mid-sized or major publisher, which typically have higher development and marketing budgets than other tiers of games.
In layman's terms, it means you can afford to pay off gaming journos with ads on their sites.
Re: (Score:1)
Found the guy who returned his first university homework in with wikipedia references and got failed marks.
Doesn't seem dissonant to me. (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless the process is just shot through with abject incompetence big projects have a tendency to fall apart at the seams; or in places where some feature depends on everything else or everything else depends on something in ways that make coordination really nasty and requirements an ugly mix of vague, conflicting, and sometimes just plain overdetermined.
Something like dressing the set mostly isn't that. Designing the level could get bad(since it ties into the physics, and the character modelling and animation, and the AI pathfinding, and the intended traversal, cover, and stealth mechanics; and intended level of difficulty, and degree of player choice); but if something is just a wall for the purposes of the level you can safely point an artist at it and let them put together a great piece of imperial base wall without their work messing with anyone else's or anyone else messing with their work except to make sure that it meshes with what other people have been putting together in the same scene.
That doesn't make it trivial; you'll get tepid results if your artist is bad; but from a project management perspective it's pretty merciful. Even better; it's the sort of thing that can be shoved into the timeline in a variety of places: you can have people putting together "greebles for imperial structures" from pretty much the moment you know that the empire will be involved and whether the game is more cartoony or more photorealistic. You can have people putting together walls and control consoles and things even during the "level design still very much in flux" stage; or you can hand them the largely-complete-but-placeholder textures level close to the end and have them decorate it.
If anything; lots of locally coherent and lovingly detailed parts in a whole that fails to hang together is probably the baseline expectation for a project big and expensive enough to be able to afford plenty of talent but be at real risk of collapsing under its own weight.
Re:Doesn't seem dissonant to me. (Score:4, Interesting)
In my first professional job, about a thousand years ago, back when you presented to a room using an OHP and some acetate slides, we had a bit of a saying that if someone used colour slides, it was because they had nothing to say. The folks who were actually busy didn't have time to finesse the colour printer in the other building, they just used the black and white workhorse down the hall.
To me, this game sounds a lot like the salesman with his colour slides.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Doesn't seem dissonant to me. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's so self destructive that it has to be intentional at this point.
I'm boycotting all things Star Wars (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Denuvo = no sale (Score:5, Interesting)
Low bar (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Like all the gawker sites they used to be good at one point. I recall watching the birth of bitcoin on gizmodo and following people on jalopnik as they bought bargain price German luxury cars. Lately I watched someone on jalopnik buy a car who had never worked on cars before. Which is fine I guess but it doesn’t fit an enthusiast site. Now you have to use YouTube if you’re interested in someone repairing a wrecked McLaren.
Re: (Score:2)
All of their sites are now blocked by corp firewall (get back to work, peasants!). Before that the content was sh$t anyway. Even the writers I couldn't stand jumped ship a long time ago. I didn't follow them to wherever they went, but good for them and their careers.
Re: (Score:2)
No bar, not just a low bar (Score:2)
Slashdot's editors don't have to care because its owners who hired them don't care.
get your adjective order right (Score:5, Funny)
It's not a crappy masterpiece.
It's a meticulously detailed and well crafted turd.
Semantically, there is a difference between the two and it matters.
Re: (Score:3)
It's not a crappy masterpiece.
It's a meticulously detailed and well crafted turd.
Semantically, there is a difference between the two and it matters.
Its not available on Steam... I think Ubisoft still haven't learned from the UPlay debacle that exclusivity only drives away customers... How many people won't buy it now they know it's not very good?
Re: (Score:2)
Especially because their subscription setup tool is so broken.
Re: get your adjective order right (Score:1)
Re: get your adjective order right (Score:2)
It's what we expect from Ubisoft. (Score:3)
This is the same company that gave us games like Skull and Bones, inventing the term "quadruple A experience" to justify the extremely high price plus expensive microtransactions for a game that was an absolute turd that everyone hated!
In prior games their DRM scheme would boot you right out of the game if your internet connection had the briefest hiccup, whereas similar schemes in other games (and Steam) could handle that condition just fine. I don't know if Outlaws has this problem but I don't care, I do
No it isn't (Score:1, Insightful)
They hired talentless political extremists and activists to make a boring, generic, nothing-special Star Wars game and tagged it "LGBTQ+" and "Political" on Steam. That is what happened to the game. Next time try hiring applicants based on skill assessments and work history and just see who shows up instead of putting race, gender, and politics first.
Re:No it isn't (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Right, because we've NEVER seen men do absolutely ridiculous things in action movies that wouldnt happen in real life. It's only a women problem, right?
Gimme a break ya incel.
Re: (Score:1)
Star Wars has always been political. The problems with the game are with the gameplay. Instant fail stealth missions has nothing to do with anyone's politics.
Can't even buy it, website password is broken (Score:3)
The "change password" feature for old Ubisoft users is broken, so it can't even be purchased unless you invest in an entirely new email account just for Ubisoft use. Some people play such username games to avoid spam, but it's not worth the investment for a game that is not even available on Steam.
What system requirements killed it for me (Score:2)
It's the classic problem where the game designers assumed video card prices would go back down and they didn't. We had a double whammy from cryptocurrency going right into LLMs All of which are driving up demand. Hopefully LLMs get custom Asics
Game works for me (Score:4, Interesting)
I know what mission the person writing is talking about, but what I don't know is what "AI failure" they had that could have led to mission failure.
That's because there isn't AI really doing anything, except trying to find you. If there were an "AI failure" she would have completed the mission.
As it was the mission worked perfectly for me, though I too had some time to admire the walls because of my own, not AI, failure when I was rushing and got spotted and the heat came down and I died.
Maybe it's just because I'm on a PS5 and the game is more stable there, but I've had only a handful of minor issues, and I think the game is great. I really enjoy just being a smuggler and not a Jedi in a game, and the story mechanism of having you bounce around between different criminal factions is a pretty good one.
If you like classic Star Wars at all, this is just a great classic Star Wars game.
The only mistake I think they made is probably with pricing the game kind of high, but I think for really large games like this people are just going to have to get used to higher prices, inflation affects game studios also because people working there need to live.
Re: (Score:1)
50% of that statement is true (Score:2)
Maybe I'm just stupid but.. (Score:1)
Soup is getting kinda thin? (Score:2)
This still amazes me (Score:2)
Typical AAA game developer cycle:
They invest years and $ millions to make a game that includes a whole world of amazing graphics, spend millions on marketing to hype it, then they go ahead and release it despite some serious and very obvious faults in the relatively simple game logic that even a basic level of testing would have fond immediately, and would probably have taken no more than a few hours to fix.
The first reviews inevitably point out the issues, which directly translates to hundreds of millions