Outlaws and Alliances: A Star Wars Gaming Adventure

TheDirectEdition along with MasterJuishin and Darktrooper delve into the world of 'Star Wars: Outlaws,' discussing its missions, mechanics, and the overall experience. The conversation ranges from comparing flying mechanics to other Star Wars games like 'Squadrons' and 'Battlefront,' the moral decisions impacting gameplay, and favorite weapons and missions. They also touch on the nuances and challenges within the game, such as accumulating credits, faction interactions, and the imperfections of certain game elements like weapon retention and mission variety. Join them as they explore what makes 'Star Wars: Outlaws' exciting and what areas leave room for improvement.

Chapters

• 0:36 Nerd Out: Embracing Geek Culture
• 1:14 Retro Gaming and Anime
• 2:03 Star Wars Outlaws: Earning Credits
• 3:58 Game Mechanics and Strategies
• 8:38 Faction Choices and Consequences
• 17:31 Favorite Missions and Easter Eggs
• 22:49 Weapons and Upgrades

Transcript

And that's what that was our next topic as far as the missions go, it was like the game is named outlaws, you know, so to speak. So in order for you to make your way across the galaxy, you got to earn those credits, right? Yeah. And credits are king, right? Credits are king. And a lot of the savory stuff that you or unsavory stuff that you would be doing is for a lot of the credits.

No, the The games. Yeah. And what I didn't realize, which kind of, I like this aspect of it, but the options that you get by working for the gangs, it seemed like at the end of every mission, there's always going to be somebody that comes to you with a counter offer to try to get you to betray the mission that you're on.

Oh yeah. And depending on. What you choose changes your game for you. And it changes the price because you can continue going, you can accept admission for said money, but then somebody can come in and offer that doubles that. And it's Ooh, do I take that and I, and ruin my reputation over here or improve it over here or, you know, which I mean, Realistically speaking, that's going to happen.

I mean, it makes sense to add that to the game. And it was, it helped me because, and that will formulate how you're going to interact later on during other missions, because you either continued and you've had the one organization who will basically you've earned their trust or you've betrayed them and they're on the outlook or on the lookout.

I had goals. I was setting myself, I was like first get to 10, 000 credits. Once I got there, it was like, get to 20, 000 credits. And I struggled to cap those, but by buying gear and my speed upgrades and whatnot, and ship upgrades at the time. But then after I got to a certain point, it just boom, it took off.

So like now I'm sitting at over a hundred thousand credits. Oh yeah. I mean, that's, and that's like a lot of these games you have that initial what do you call it? Learning curve at the beginning and you're struggling to by the upgrade that you think you're going to need for performing this mission and stuff like that.

But you get to that certain point where after you've played a while, you've kind of figured out the small. Yeah. Tweaks to the, to the game itself, or the small tweaks to the missions where you can make them the most amount of credits and stuff like that. And once you have an excessive resources, then the game becomes.

a whole different type of beast because you're not so much worried about the survival part of it you're worried about the let me go do some crazy stuff yeah part of it yeah because i would recommend trying to get your upgrades up on your ship as much as possible because to me the fastest way to make money was using the was doing the space missions You needed the most upgrades because if you had to fight another freighter or another ship Yeah, it took a lot.

You had to be very nimble to avoid those missiles. I had to say

Before I started the attack on them just before I got over there. So that way I knew what I was doing. I had and I had to learn to to shift and spin the ship to to avoid getting hit by the missiles that man, I was just flying all kinds of crazy. Now with the ship missions, when you get off planet, you, I don't know if you've gotten this far, Dave, when you get off when you fix your ship after crash landing on Tashara, you are able to get off planet and visit other locales.

But. You run into like pirates and fighters and sting things along those lines Now did either one of you play Starfighter? Oh Yeah, okay back in the day Starfighter or what? Star Wars it was the most recent one that just came out the Oh Rose all over no Rogue Squadron was older I thought Rogue Squadron was what, 64?

Oh wait, you're talking about the X Wing vs. So you had the X Wing vs. Tie Fighter, which was a PC game back in the day. Then they came out with Rogue Squadron. Which was a Nintendo 64 slash PC game. They came out with, But it's squadrons. Squadrons. Squadrons. I didn't like the mechanic squadrons.

Flying was entirely too hard to Because Battle, It was not good. Battle, was it Battlefield? Oh no, Battle, What was the game? The Star Wars Battle, Battlegrounds? Battlefronts. Battlefronts. Battlefront had a good When they had mechanics, they had a great mechanics to their their flying starfighters.

They had great mechanics. And then when they created squadrons, it was just like, what the hell were they thinking? They tried to put a flight simulator into a Star Wars game, is really what it felt like to me, and I did not enjoy it. It was not good at all. I mean, why would you not? Because the mechanics were horrible.

Yeah, a lot of the flight simulators are You know, top tier. I would say they're very popular with a certain sort of person who is more into the mechanics of how to fly in a Star Wars game. We're not there to know the mechanic. We're here. We're here to shoot. We're here to vape ships. We're here to vape ships.

That's all we're here to get that tie fighter. Get that X. You don't get into a Star Wars game without one to a Blow up some TIE Fighters, B, grab a lightsaber, or C, grab your blaster and shoot C. Exactly. That's all you really need. Those are the mechanics right there. Hey, everyone else, listen and learn.

Pretty much. So the outlaws flying mechanics compared to Squadrons. Better than that. Is better than squadrons? Okay. It takes it, but it's definitely better if you get to fast, slow, you know, you move, you learn maneuvers as you go you can spin, you can pull a loop de loop.

And then there's options to upgrade your ship. Yeah. Which I don't know if that was in squadrons or you can not sure. I don't remember that. I don't remember that squadrons, but I got into squadrons very briefly, saw that it was, I beat the game and I was like, garbage game. And then I just let it go because I was.

I beat it just to say I was gonna do it. I was so excited for that game. The trailer made it exciting, because it was like, oh man, this is gonna be good. It wasn't even the trailer, because I absolutely loved the Rogue Squadron on the Nintendo 64, or on PC. Oh, I love that'll always be my favorite.

Always one of my favorites, and I was so excited for Squadrons, and then I got it, I started playing it, and I was so let down by how difficult it was to actually fly. I thought they were gonna follow the same mechanics from Battlestar from, Battlefront. Yeah, battlefronts. And no, they didn't. They just went some and I was like, you just screw this all up.

So then how does outlaws make it flying mechanics compared to a battlefront? It's similar. It's similar. Yeah. You prefer the battlefront mechanics. But back to the missions when we were doing for the factions different factions, do you feel like you were leaning more towards Oh, yeah, I was trying not to piss off the huts.

So they were my number one BAM make them happy You're really all for me. I'm not trying to be fed to a rank or sir. That's no it was self preservation This is self preservation It wasn't because you to be No biblical lie. Nope. Nope. I was trying not to be fed to a rank or I could dodge everybody else ain.

I had no problem dodging everybody else. So the factions were I've encountered four. There were four. Okay. It was the Pikes , Crimson and Don. The huts. . And the Sheba. The sheika, the Yes bug. She could clean the bugs. Yeah. Yeah. When I got there, that one mission kind of messed me up.

When they were the internal fighting. Yeah with the Queen and her daughter. Yeah now see this is where I would want to do and replay the game again because that key mission and the one with the Pikes are They could be it could be key to how things played out with me later on because at a certain point you could have Yes, and done that or said no, you know, supported the Ishiga or sold them out to the Crimson Dawn or, you know, supported this one pike, kill the one boss, right?

And then support the other guy to take his place. Both of them, both options seem like they were either being sold out to one or the other because the daughter was in league with the Crimson Dawn because The mother was in league with the empire and it was, you know, they were asked after this specific artifact to help the clan.

And then once you got it and got to them, it was like, choose which one you're going to give it to the daughter or the mother. And who did you choose? I chose the mother. So you betrayed the daughter. Yeah. So you sided with the mother in the end. Crimson Dawn was not happy. Because I was good with Crimson Dawn at that point.

I was excellent. And then all of a sudden, I saw Kira walk by. I said, Oh, this is not good. This is not good. But she walked by. She looked at me. She said something. We had some words. And then she walked off. And I said, But my reading went down. I was like, Oh, it was like it went from excellent to poor to bad.

It's damn, we got to work again to back up again. I see. I chose the daughter. I chose the daughter, the crimson nine. Cause I didn't want to work with the impact. And really here's the thing about it. What's the name of the game? Outlaws. Outlaws. So the fact that you're making that choice between whether supporting the Outlaws, yeah.

Criminal organizations or you're supporting someone who is really in league with the empire. Is it, was it really a choice though? I kind of did it to stay with the character, because if you follow her story. She's not really trying to get caught up with, because at the first part, you, when you get to the mission that, where you leave Canto Bight in the beginning, you get thrown into a empire rebellion, you know, into a rebellion mission, you get betrayed by the rebels.

So she's not really feeling happy about the rebel being with the rebels or choosing to side with the empire. So I kind of like thought, you know what, her character would side with it, you know, just because she just didn't give a damn, you know? But that's what I'm saying though. The whole purpose was for her to make enough money.

to get out of the life. Get out of the life. But you're not going to do that if you support someone who is imperial. Yeah. So when you're talking about decision making and choices and things like that. Making the right decision. is really based off what the end game is, and she's trying to get out of the game.

I shoot the Imperials every time I see them now. So I always ended up in the manhunt. Betraying everybody, kicking the horse. I like to add a little challenge to it because once you get to it, you learn the mechanics and everything. You like to have everybody hunter in the damn galaxy. It adds a little flavor to it.

And that was one thing I was going to bring up is that, is there really a I guess like a slap on the wrist for doing very poorly. There's really not a penalty for. No, but it is, but once you get to once you get to terrible. Or if you go easy, once you get past poor and you get the terrible, they will start sending like whoever you get down there with, or they will send parties out to hunt you down.

So they will chase you. And honestly, that was more challenging to me because I would go to the pike territory. I'm trying to get to the other side of the of it's a shower or something. I'm going to pike territory. I got speeder guys on my back, chasing me down. I got pikes on the side over here, shooting me cause I coming up on the area.

Yeah. It's just a free for all, you know, like I either blast through or I stop a fight, right? But that's my point. Even if you get down to terrible, you still have that option to do a couple of missions to bring it back up. Yeah. But you have to, but you have to then kind of take a step back, rework what you've kind of already done just in a different fashion or a different locale or whatever, but have to make up ground that you've already lost.

Which changes the aspect of the game too. But even still, there's really not a big penalty for not an overwhelming, not overwhelming arch. And if you get down to terrible if it was I figured if it was in such a way to where you got down to terrible, then that's it. You're cut off from that game.

And they're always going to sit there. You're always going to hunt you on site, which change, which only leaves you. Like three other factions that work with, which in turn kind of adds a degree of difficulty and where you don't have this many factions, as many missions, as many ways to get credits for the game.

Let me plug Starfield again. Let's say that you've done, Oh my goodness. You've done something bad. You shot some UC officers in the face. You're not just going to walk away from it. It's not, there is a consequence. You are going to get a bounty on your head and you cannot reason for me to restart that game too.

Because when I originally played that one mission between the pirates or the Navy, I chose the pirates. Cause I was trying to get my, I was trying to get my upgrade. I was trying to get my secret holds on my ship. It's yo, I'm going to go with the pirates. Oh, you always upgrade before you destroy the pilots.

Ever since. Everywhere I go on the outpost, the pirates always see me. They welcome me. They what's going on. I'm walking up to an outpost. I don't have to shoot everybody, but, and then I get inside. I'm like, you know what? I want this fucking gear. And then all of a sudden you're not only getting bounties from the QC, but now you got pirates hunting you down.

I don't have to shoot everybody, but I'm gonna take this gear. He likes to shoot everybody. So I do. I mean, in the difficulty and you're talking about consequences and there was no real negative impact. Like you said, kind of makes it where it's kind of, kind of wishy washy to me.

There has to be consequences. I think that would have added a degree of interest. Exactly. That's what I'm saying. It's Oh, I messed up with this faction. They cut me off. They're always going to hunt me. And now I only have three other factions to make good with. I'm like, Oh or you turn over some of your resources and try to get back into good grace.

There's gotta be like set consequences. Yeah. Yeah. There's one other, there's one other thing I do not like is also say you're in town. Somewhere. The Empire. You did something or you were in some place where, cause the Empire will all of a sudden arrest you. There's no option for you to get out to get out, to shoot back.

Especially in town. Like you can do that out of town, in the Imperial base. You can fight back, you can shoot, but. Just like the Pykes mission. When you're trying to sneak past them, blah blah blah. And you get caught. If you don't, if you don't do a stealth attack, but they see you, you're caught and you have to start all over.

You can't fight your way out. There's no recourse. It's just the way that particular one's made. That's what you got to just shoot everybody. Even with that. Even with that mission, if you're in a place that you're not supposed to be in and you get caught and they escort you out and you turn right around and go, I go back in, I go right back in, go right back in.

I go right back in. There's a, whereas I think it's bestine on Tatooine. There's a, you walk out of this, you walk out of the cantina. There's a little, there's a little Imperial checkpoint right across the way. There's a walker walking down this middle of the street. And then you got two stormtroopers standing outside of outposts.

You got two stormtroopers down the street and another two stormtroopers walking down, up and down the street. And inside that little outpost, there's a computer you can hack. You can either get rid of your wanted level or get, or I think it maybe get your money back or something. So you got to find a way to get past him to get inside there.

Without being seen because even if the walker is coming by and it sees you and you're just like you're trying to peek out all of a sudden yo It could be game over Real fast if you don't if you don't play if you don't play it right in the time that just Yeah, and they will see you If you jump on there and you're trying to solve that lock and you know They're walking so you got to time it just right because if you don't solve it fast enough somebody's gonna see you And if you're in the right area, they got to start shooting at you.

So trooper, is there a favorite mission that you've gone on so far? No, not particularly, but I'm not far enough in it. It looks like a Sarfield over here. I gots to get paid. Favorite mission so far. Yeah. I gotta say my favorite one was. Damn, that's a good one. The one where you run into the, where you run into the robot for the first time.

Cause that was where I had to fight I had to fight the the bounty hunters for the first time. When they were, they came and found me. That was a good one. And then the robot just came out of nowhere. And saved you. Yeah. Yeah. He definitely had your back on that one.

Yeah, he did. So far, that's been my favorite mission. The Lando Calrissian mission is pretty, is was pretty cool too. Now I don't have a favorite one, per se, but I did enjoy an easter egg that I saw when I was sneaking through Jabba's palace. Really? Yes, really. I came across a certain fixture.

Oh shit. Of a certain character. That was hanging up. Was it Jar Binks? No, it was not Jar Binks. We can hope, but no. One particular solo mission. Solo type individual. Yes. I gotta go back, man, because once you get to a certain point, I have a mission where I'm supposed to go do something for somebody, but yeah, I completed the Hutt mission, so now I can't even get back into the mission.

I can't even get back into his, I'm like, man, it was the mission. It was the one right where the huts became a faction for me and he tried to feed me to the rancor and the bounty hunter came out and we had to defeat the rancor together. And even though we defeated the rancor and escaped, they were waiting for us right on the other side of the doors and escorted our ass right back in.

Hey, buddy, what you doing? You thought he was mad before. I snuck all the way through this bitch. Gotta get out. You killed his ranker. You saw what happened in six. His ranker was still alive. Was it? Yeah. He had, he was like I'm just saying, you've seen what he's done to other people I won't say Who killed his Rancor I will say the Rancor, I'm sorry The Rancor was the one of the most difficult missions for me Cause at first I didn't know where I was supposed to be shooting So I was just running up and down in this room The damn Rancor chasing after me Trying to swipe me And I was just trying to shoot at him pew How did that work out for you?

Roll, roll pew What the hell is this guy? Where's the health bar?

But Nick's is up there sitting there looking down on me like, Hey man over here, Nick's wasn't any help at all. He was no help at all. Not in that mission. He was just the guy to tell you what, where you supposed to look at. But yeah cause the more I ran around, I ran away from the rank war. The more soldiers came in more of the huts people came in and out.

I had to fight between them and I was like, Oh man. And I was insane with I enjoyed the easter eggs that they put in there, the details, but of course Star Wars is known for their details. They got a lot of Lore to pull they have and the weaponry is pretty it's pretty fantastic I gotta say my favorite weapon so far has been the dark troopers weapon.

They're they're blaster rifle. Oh my god I love that thing That's one thing. I didn't like it. But before we get to that there was there Great You notice this pattern every time you say you love some he's like I love it too, but before we get to that before we get to that the overall missions that they feel like like simple fetch quest.

It was like, go here, bring that back. Go here. Basically, except the only time, anything, like I said anytime I really find it a challenge is if I do the man hunt, if I get to a man hunt part where the empire is hunting me physically and the dead troopers are out. That's and then it's like you got to get to the death troopers and then you got to do a mission without being killed by the death troopers.

So you're like, you got to get a race to one at level. So without, cause honestly they're a blast. If he can get into the tent and get their weapon and just start annihilating. Oh my God. It's so much fun. It's so much fun. So trooper, how do they feel? The missions that you've done, they felt like simple. Yes.

Standards, simple, go get, bring this, do that, unlock that. Yeah, I wanted to make sure that I wasn't, I mean, let's be honest so far. And this is just so far in my own experience, but this feels like we're playing tomb Raider on the old X spot or on the first PlayStation. Go do this. Turn this, do that. Come back.

I mean, really the in, in the whole scheme of things, how much can you really do? Until you start adding those moral decisions when you're interacting with the characters. That's really all you can do. The fact that Star Wars has dressed it up in a Star Wars galaxy doesn't change the fact that this is all it really is.

Simple, like I said, go get, fetch, turn this switch, going about your business. Going about your mission complete. But when you start adding the moral Decisions. Decisions into the game, then that's when it really becomes, for me, That's when it really becomes interesting. Okay. All right. But now the weapons that we were talking about, you said your favorite weapon was the death the death trooper weapon, the death troopers got a blaster carbine.

Okay. Oh, that's great. I enjoyed the, I can't remember the name of it, but it was the grenade launcher. Oh, yeah. Launched like three grenades. No. My gripe. My gripe is You couldn't keep any of them man. Yes, that was so annoying you trying to climb up a little we got to put it down Yeah, it runs out. I mean I get it I love that effect that runs out of energy cuz you know, that's what happens But yeah, you couldn't keep the weapon You couldn't add it to your arsenal because I would have definitely kept that trooper because I did find one blaster Where you picked it up and all of a sudden it had a shield in the front of it.

'cause I, that was one of my favorite pistols too. 'cause I was running around trying to and I had the bounty hunters coming after me. And I had a shield that was that I was able to offend off their attacks and still able to fight with. That was great. That was great. But didn't see that gun.

I, I saw it only that one time. I haven't seen it since. I've been looking everywhere, Now. Any of the upgrades that you were able to do. To the blaster that you had it was fun. I'm not gonna lie. It was fun upgrading the blaster You know some of those remissions to in order for you to upgrade the blaster you'd have to either trade for stuff or look for certain parts, but I Don't think that blaster compared to That grenade launcher that I had, you know, it's going to be the grenade launcher go.

I don't know if I can let that grenade launcher go. That was my biggest gripe. It wasn't just a grenade launcher. It was also like finding different weapons and not being able to keep. So it was a tease. So I have not discovered a whole lot of weapons yet. But when we're talking about weapons, are you getting actual weapons from Star Wars lore?

Yeah, they have. They introducing new one because this grenade launcher. Sounds like the EMP launcher from the old Battlefront game. They had a different name on it, but cause there was one, there was a Verpine's weapon, but they had a different name with it, because it was a Verpine sniper, and you could vaporize them if you hit the right person, so they just didn't put the right name on it.

Now, there were the Stormtrooper blasters, those were, I recognize those. Stormtroopers were prolific. The E 11s. They were prolific. And the The Rotary Cannon Blaster. Yeah. Once you picked it up. The Rotary Cannon. The Rotary Blaster. Oh, okay. I see. I see which one you're saying. The Mini.

The Heavy Gun. The Heavy, yeah, the Heavy Mini cause it came with a, cause it came with the shield once you picked it up. Yeah. And once you picked up the weapon that wasn't your normal blaster, you had, it had a health bar, I'll put it like that. And then once that health bar depleted. That weapon had to go, that weapon had to go.

Or if you came across a ladder, once you start climbing that, yeah. , you could not take it with you. You see the greatest village, it depends on of the weapons was the ladder. No, here's the thing. It depends on where you drop that weapon, because nicks can get, and it depends on how high you climb or whatever.

'cause I think sometimes, like if it's a small height, Nicks can go back and get the weapon and bring it up. It just depends on how you figure out. You can send Knicks up after a lot of stuff. But, even still, once it's done, unless you find another one similar to that one. Because there were times when I invaded or snuck into the Empire's base, they'd have a rack.

And they'd have all of the blasters on that rack. So I'd grab one, run down, shoot a bunch of troopers. Tossed a weapon once it's done, turn around, go back to the rocks. Absolutely.