Developer/publisher Ubisoft (Massive Entertainment)

Format PC, PS5 (tested), Xbox Series

Release Out now

Star Wars has always been at its best when fusing the insignificant with the vital: two droids, sold for scrap metal, carrying a message of galactic importance; a naïve farm boy scratching out an existence on a remote planet, with royal blood in his veins; a single torpedo fired from an X-wing that, when threaded just so, can take down a Death Star. Heroism gains in impact the more modest its wielder. So it is promising that Star Wars: Outlaws opens in the slums of an outland casino planet, in a tavern, in the boots of a petty thief.

Kay Vess is as low-status as protagonists come: a broke loner with neither a ship nor a speeder, who is too scruffy for the bouncers to permit her into the local nightclub. Her only real asset, aside from a blaster, is alien pet Nix, a mammal small enough to perch on her shoulder, pass through air vents, press buttons, pick the pockets of passersby, and distract stormtroopers with a wave of his tiny arms. A squeeze of a bumper button and he can be ordered away to do Kay’s bidding. Still, while Nix is a handy accomplice throughout a career as a thief and trespasser, it’s not long before Kay needs to form some more profitable relationships – first on the moon Toshara, where she crash-lands for the first section of the game, and then, after she acquires a working ship of her own, across four more planets. Star Wars: Outlaws is perhaps Massive’s most ambitious project to date, upscaling the inter-faction rivalries and trinket-collecting honed via its work in The Division series to galactic proportions. Kay, a female Han Solo, proves to be a strong cipher: quippy, ruggedly attractive, quick-thinking and happy to make or break deals to suit her most immediate needs. She also has something of the Nathan Drake about her (unsurprising given how much Drake owes to Harrison Ford’s various turns). She’s sufficiently athletic to swing across ravines using a hookshot, clamber up mesh surfaces and leap between handholds, all with an apparently inexhaustible tolerance for lactic acid.