Star Wars Outlaws

So I've only just gotten to like the Sabacc tables . You know , like I'm only just playing Sabacc for the first time , so I'm still fairly early in the game , like I . You hear nix in the background yes he's got a lot to say . But yeah , we'll talk about that in a little bit .

But yeah , so we , we took an extra week off just because we're both busy guys , we both work full time and we both got our stuff , stuff going on . But , anthony , what have you been up to ?

There was a lot of vendors . I knew a vendor there and they said that that was like one of their like best events in our like immediate area that they've done . So it was . It was cool to see that . I bought a couple things . I have a a glass mug that have some of the uh crew of one piece the straw hats , oh snap and yeah , we , we have some .

But oh yeah , that's cool man .

So the fact that like I've made it this far is like really promising , and I mean like dude that's awesome , dude . Yeah , that's awesome , I mean like dude , like you , you know , like I'm into tech , like I I've built my own pc . I do a lot of my own troubleshooting , so you know it's something that , like , I'm pretty excited for .

It's a work from home position , so I'm like , give me that work from home position please . But yeah , I'm pretty .

So take it as you know a victory either way yeah , just take it as like you know . You learn something from the experience either way that you can take to the future .

And then if you want to see what the alt cover looks like , just look for the alt cover . It's this green and like gold book . It looks dude . I actually I love this version .

It looks like it looks like a dnd book , like it feels like an old dnd book but just like updated , and the artwork is just like absolutely beautiful dude yeah , I , I've seen , I've seen quite a bit of it .

Actually , let me , let me just like we're gonna compare via zoom everybody . Oh god , I'm making noise , guys , I'm sorry . Players handbook okay , so my players handbook is skinny in comparison . It is literally . What is the page count of that ? Just I'm curious , I'm very curious last page is 384 384 .

Okay , so this one is 316 is the last page , so it's not double , but it's it's it's quite a bit like that's still a chunk .

They've updated some of their like free stuff too , like the , I think , the player's manual or something like that . They've been definitely updating a lot . I mean , I'm in the middle of a campaign right now too , so it's interesting so it's not .

that I'm playing and I'm playing under the eberron setting and he does not . He's not open to like changing the dynamics of gameplay with the new core rulebook , but , you know , in the future I would like to definitely play with that . So that's , that's pretty cool .

that's . I feel like I've I've been doing quite a bit , you know , with dnd and gaming , you know convention and potential new jobs . So you know .

So I'm still going through the Avatar , the Last Airbender and Legend of Korra stuff , trying to just compile as many notes in terms of like the histories of all of these characters and place it in a chronological timeline outline so that when I eventually start like writing my script proper , I have like delineated notes of everything I want to say .

So that's what I'm going through right now . I'm still actually doing my like notations for the shows and I'm like almost done with season two of avatar , the last airbender and yeah , so I'm excited . I just yesterday I watched the Tales of Ba Sing Se with that one scene with Iroh Leaves from the Vine .

And Iroh , the elderly fire national , mourns the death of his child on the day of his birthday and he sings a song called leaves from the vine and he starts talking about , like you know , in the show he's , he's helped zuko , his nephew and current antagonist , to kind of find his way yeah heidniks and he sings about or , like you know , like he kind of like

you know in mourning his , his lost son . He wishes that he could have helped him in return .

But that scene is particularly special from a meta perspective because the actor who played iroh his name is mako he realized he was going to die and that was his last ever recording you know , after almost a century of like being in film and tv so you can hear like he's crying in the show , but he's crying in real life , like it's a goodbye and you know

it's it's such a powerful moment . If you ever watch avatar the last airbender or don't care to watch avatar the last airbender , look up the leaves from the vine scene either on youtube or just go to that episode .

Otherwise , I have been you doing a whole bunch of other Avatar stuff that I don't need to talk about at this point . But I'm also and I guess part of the reason why I didn't get to put more hours or as many hours as I wanted into Star Wars Outlaws is that I have a lot of work stuff going on as well , like with my construction job .

I have to take an OSHA 30 , which is a literal 30 hour online course , so I've been trying to chip away at that over the past couple weeks alongside doing my like timeline notes for Avatar and then you know , just living my life . So you know finding time to play video games is hard these days . It's hard as an adult man .

But especially I've noticed that video games are hard for me to get into when I have a project that I'm working on , because I will , nine times out of ten , choose the project that I'm working on to spend time on over the video game , if that makes sense .

I'm pretty sure that you can understand that when it comes to a piece of media that you really enjoy , like maybe a book or like a tv series , oh yeah , totally yeah totally , and I've experienced that with video games too , you know , and we'll talk about that in a little bit .

Not as much hate as like , not nearly as much hate as the acolyte yeah but it's definitely on the receiving end of . Like that side of the fandom . There's been a lot of like specifically misogynistic hate .

I've seen online , you know , like I've seen a lot of well k-ves isn't like a pretty protagonist yeah , yeah , that that's versus , that's something that I've noticed too yeah I'm not even gonna like entertain whether or not this character is like pretty or not . It's just kind of dumb criticism for the sake of dumb criticism .

You know , Star Wars is full of beautiful women and I honestly like nine times out of ten when I see KVS in a cut scene . She is modeled after a pretty woman . You know , like there's the standards that , like people expect from video games , is so , so warped , you know ? Yeah , comic book brain .

The game that we all wanted but never got yeah , basically you know I it . But yeah , I totally agree with you . I I think that that there are some petty gripes . I mean , there are some valid gripes . It's not a perfect game and I would say that , like between this and then maybe a game like the Jedi series , I like a little bit more .

To me it's a lot more fun . But the thing is is that both games are very different . Also , the Jedi Fallen Order or Jedi Survivor games , it's more of like an adventure You're hacking and slashing away . But this game is like heavily like it's a stealth game , dude , like it's it's ubisoft . So I see some elements of like assassin's creed in there .

I see a little bit of a tiny , very , very tiny bit of an influence of like red dead redemption in there . I feel like this game is definitely a step in the right direction . It's like they're trying to do something and I I dude , like what I would love to get and I feel like this is a step into that direction is a no man's sky star wars game .

No man's sky now as it exists now . It's really fun , it's an awesome game I mean when it came out it sucked , but now it's a really good game . But like the way that you leave the planet and you go into the atmosphere , they cleverly hide loading within that . You know , I kind of wish you got that in this game .

You a little bit get that , but you get a cut scene . I mean it's a lot better than Starfields . When you go to a planet you get a loading screen . At least with this you get a cut scene of you landing . But I mean it's cool , though , like I feel like it's a step in the right direction .

You know , there were certain things at first that I didn't understand , but then the more you played you understood a little bit more . Like the data spike minigame that you got , I was like dude , like what do I do ? But what you have to do is like line up with the beeping , and I was like oh , okay , okay , I get it now .

Using you know sounds to indicate when , to you know , press a button or whatever right , right , and I think that quite a few people have said that before .

Yeah , I appreciate that too . So I don't think you can like lose with the splicing . It just takes a long time sometimes . You know like sometimes I'm like six rows down , I'm just like man . I still haven't gotten this yet yeah but I like that too , I like wordle , so I do find that it's kind of fun , but it's repetitive after a certain point .

You know , like I'm 13 hours into the game , 14 hours , I've probably done it 15 , 20 times a different , like rooms that I've opened , or like lock boxes that I've needed to , or whatever you know data , things that I needed to , you know turn off or whatever . I think it is a little bit repetitive yeah , the slicing is a little .

Yeah , that's a little bit more fun , but it's my wife likes the wordle splicing oh , she does yeah , she gets really excited whenever it pops up whenever it pops up , just like , all right , just hand it over to her . All right , do it yeah , basically .

You only end up with two cards in your hand at any given point , so you just have to make sure that it's the lowest denomination in a pair that you could manage yeah and I think that that's pretty fun because you're also given like little chips that you know have different .

This is this is the part that reminds me of uno is like you can take points from other characters , you can stack points for yourself with these things , and I'm sure there's other chips that I have yet to unlock , because it looks like there's like 15 or 20 different kind of like cheat code chips that you can eventually collect throughout the game .

But yeah , this game I think this is definitely one of the few star wars games where you get to visit , like multiple planets , but then you get this whole space navigation that you can do too yes , I was able to do a little bit of that because I did go off planet for one mission where I had I needed to bust out bosnock from this imperial base yeah , yeah

, I think that was like one of the earlier yeah , that was like one of the

So I have an actual problem like I have , like an actual like OC no , no , I understand it when it comes to like open world games .

One of the biggest one game that I had such a big issue with that was the witcher 3 yeah , I can imagine like witcher 3 and like red dead redemption 2 , yeah , but but some of their side quests are so good , dude exactly so good yeah , so that's why , like I , I usually do them , because , like you , just don't know what's gonna happen and so where are you

in the game currently ? like you said that you left toshara I went to some it's it starts with an , a . It's like give me a second . It's like some akiva , yeah , akiva , yeah . It's like some like a forested planet .

You know you have , like , the elites that come there for you know , gambling and entertainment , but then you have everyone else who's just basically slaves to these people and then , of course , you're going to have , you know , people getting into crime rings because of that disparity .

He is the leader of Zarek Besh and you break this person out of the base I mean , I don't know why he was in there to begin with , but you get caught and get this death mark put onto you , so you're pretty much dead meat to to zerk besh .

And so that's how you end up on toshara by stealing one of his ships , which is funny because you steal like one of his like prized ships , which makes it even worse . It's easy like you , like you busted into his place , you stole like one of his favorite ships .

So that's where , like , the real game really opens up and it has this whole interesting thing that I like that this game does is that you have influence or reputation with these different syndicates , you know right , yeah like you have the huts , you have crimson dawn dude , the pikes hate me like just .

I don't think I'm ever gonna be a friend of the pikes because like I feel like I sneeze and they hate me .

You can also choose stealth type approaches to other RPGs when you're going into , like a mob area or like some sort of base . So I'm thinking of , like Hogwarts Legacy . Like , whenever you go into like a wizard encampment you can like , or like a goblin encampment you can stealth into it .

You can hidement , you can like , or like a goblin encampment , you can stealth into it , you can hide , you can go invisible and you can take out the enemies one by one and they don't respond . Same thing with avatar frontiers of pandora . Like you can go into an rda base and you know , take them out one by one .

Eventually you're going to probably be caught . But one thing that's cool is that you can start chipping away at all their forces and eventually there will be no more forces . That doesn't happen in this game .

So I realized that like 30 minutes into like my my battle against these stormtroopers , I was trying to like get someone out of a stormtrooper base on toshara and I died like a hundred times and then I found a nice cool like ledge outside of the base where I could just shoot at them constantly and they eventually like slow down .

But then they just they just respawn right there and there's like 100 dead bodies on this stupid ledge of like stormtroopers and they just keep coming back and I like look it up , but do these mobs just keep respawning ? it's not like I can just like deplete the base and then do the mission . No you have to like stealth it .

It feels like that you know you don't see them pop up , they don't like just materialize on your screen , but they just come out of nowhere , like they'll just like run up the stairs and I'm just like I know there was no guys down there like after dying a few times , like I just like , when the turrets started like shooting , I just like ran over to the area

that I needed to go to .

They just , they just kept coming , but yeah that that was like so that's , that's like the one group , that like it doesn't matter if they hate you , because they're gonna always hate you yeah , why does the empire suck man ?

they always gotta hate , so so something that I noticed in this game and it's not as well at least right now it's , or early in the game . It's not as extensive as red dead redemption , but the whole like quick draw thing that they have that you can only like aim at three people yeah , what about it ?

well , I mean , I thought that was interesting , that that was kind of like another mechanic . That was that's where I was like kind of saying that there was instances that kind of reminded me of red dead redemption . Some of the landscapes kind of remind me of that too .

I feel like if the game was a little bit more optimized and put a little bit more into the graphics , it could be just as beautiful as that game . Mind you , like red dead redemption 2 is a previous generation game and it's still , like probably one of the most beautiful looking games on console , you know yeah , yeah , no , I totally agree .

There's things that you can kind of stumble upon . You know , there's like these little side quests to get upgrades for different things that bring you to like areas that are like oh my gosh , this is crazy . But with that being said , it's not perfect . You know , like it could have been a little bit more optimized .

I feel like sometimes it gets a little glitchy , but it's so tough with these open world games for it to be just kind of spot on . Even red dead redemption 2 like has its own glitches , you know .

And yeah you know it and , and like I said , like there are certain things that I I kind of wish it it did a little bit better with like leaving the planet or like re-entry . I feel like I wish it went a little bit more like the no man's sky route .

I mean , there's ways to like hide loading within that , like you know when , when you burn up , and like re-entry , like you know how , like there's like that it flares up . That that's you .

That's what no man's sky does , like when you're like passing through clouds , or like it'll burn up so much that you can't really see there's loading happening in there , and so I kind of wish stuff like that I'm not a big fan of .

I understand that , like you're not going to be going guns blazing , but like I mean , it's like really , really big time stealth , you know , and at least with Assassin's Creed you could like go .

Yeah , like you said , like you can kind of pick off people a little bit easier , like here and there , maybe pick off a couple people here and there , but it's not dwindling down the numbers , it's more of like I just need you to get out of my way because I'm trying to sneak by these 20 people over here , you know yeah , and what I do like about the

stealth is that they're consistent with it throughout the entire game .

Like one of the first missions in that game is you have to steal or find a bunch of things in the library and the forbidden library at night and there's like prefects walking around that you can't be caught by and basically , like the whole point of that was to say that you know you can't be caught in hogwarts at nighttime but , like in the rest of the game

they don't enforce that at all . Like you can walk around whatever time of day you want . You know like . So there was no point to that whole quest besides telling you how to like get away from enemies . That's it was basically a tutorial that wasn't consistent with the rest of the actual story or the game itself .

So it was that was frustrating for me , but with this I appreciate that . You know you really have to get into the mind of a criminal . You know , like you have to get into the mind of an outlaw who's trying to run from the law .

You know she's trying to stay out of the eyes of law abiding citizens or you know not law abiding citizens who don't like her , like the Pykes . Yeah , I feel like it's really hard to like be in good favor with the Pykes . Am I wrong ?

But yeah , like the pikes , I just I feel like they're just spiteful people , you know , like they like it's like they just they look in your direction and just hate you automatically you know , yeah , yeah , just their alien way .

I think the first time I ever remember it is probably World of Warcraft with like if you gain favor by doing quests with one faction , you'll lose a little bit of favor with another and you have , you know , like a running tally of like all your , all the factions and like where you stand with it . So I kind of got that vibe from it .

And when it comes to like know being on an Imperial base and like being wanted , there are like levels almost kind of like Grand Theft Auto there are levels to like how wanted you are , because eventually they'll send in death troopers . Have you dealt with death troopers yet ?

Actually , I think my main criticism with the game outside of certain smaller things , like the enemies coming back to life while you're still in that area , that did really bother me .

But I think my biggest issue is I'm not grabbed by the story yet and I know I'm very early in the story and I know that I'm not like focused too heavily on it , but I'm not rushing to get to the story , if that makes any sense , like I don't feel that there's any particular rush for me to get off planet and go to akiva or , uh , tatooine or any of

the other planets that you can visit in this game Though I do want to , you know , but I'm not in any particular rush and I feel like that is part of the issue that I'm having with . You know , like following the main storyline is that I don't feel like I need to at this point . I'm just kind of like having fun doing nothing .

But that's not really the case , because it's like okay , well , you have this massive world , but what is being filled within this world and I mean for the most part star wars , outlaws does fill the world like pretty decently .

But you know , yeah , you have games like jedi fallen order , jedi survivor , that you can kind of go and do these side missions , but it's for the most part linear and it's easier to follow the story where , and that that's where I agree with you .

I do like some stuff that's a little bit more linear , that has a little bit of maybe freedom to like , you know , go here or go there , maybe something a little semi open world , like dude . I love the last of us games . The second one had like a little bit of a open world segment , but it wasn't truly open world , it was semi open world , and then .

Then it kind of like narrows it back down , but it's like , dude , like I don't regret paying money for that . And it wasn't like a super massive world , it was the story . It was what grabbed me , you know , and it kept me coming for more , because I was really like receiving from this story and , yeah , like this game , I really .

I mean , the story is hey , she just wants to like really earn her freedom , you know like , she wants to like not have this death mark over her , and that's what she's working towards in this game yeah , no , I totally hear you .

You know , I can't wait to come home and play this , like right , it's a solid story , but it's not strong when hogwarts legacy came out , that felt like a really unique game that I was very excited to see what happened next , or like just dive in and like explore .

Same thing with Frontiers of Pandora and I'm saying this because I don't play many games , so it's it's the games that I do play . I loved exploring Frontiers of Pandora . It is one of the most beautiful games like the world that they created , for that was . I've never experienced anything like it .

It felt so realistic and there's so many different variations of scenery and stuff . So I love that about it . So just exploring that and seeing like all the little hidden things in there was cool . I still haven't gotten that vibe from Outlaws and I'm not sure if I will , but I'm going to give it another . I'm going to give it plenty more shots .

You know it's it's . I'm having a fun time with it , so I'm I'm being probably too critical of it , but it's a solid seven .

You know , you know , like I said , yeah , the story might not grab you . It's a solid story but it's not a super strong story . This is not something that is extremely story driven , like the last of us or even , like I said , red dead redemption .

There's so much that you can do and there's so many side quests that you can do that lead you off into some crazy stuff , but when you actually do play the story , it pulls you in , same with the Witcher 3 .

Oh , I got to this area , you know , blah , blah , blah . You know , like a little synopsis of what we're up to in the game at that point guys , thank you so much for listening to us here for our 95th episode .

You know , the Emmys were this past weekend and it received , I think , 18 or 19 wins , more than any single season of television has ever received . So I'm super excited to see what they have in store for us . Anthony , you're on board with Shogun .

If you want to let us know your thoughts on Star Wars Outlaws or any other podcast , or you know recommendations you give us for the show , please be sure to visit us on our socials . You can find all of our socials in the show notes down below . And yeah , we'll talk to you soon .