Summary
I hate skill trees. There, I said it. I hate them. I hate when they give me access to new attack combos I know I’m never going to use, because the game’s combat mechanics allow me to skate by too easily on blind, unthinking button mashing. I hate when they’re filled with numbers, boosting the power of certain types of attacks by tiny percentages. I hate when everything in a skill tree seems meaningless because of its lack of actual utility, and because the game isn’t leaning hard enough into actual build mechanics to be interesting for fear of losing more casual players.
I hate when a game rewards me with skill points for stupid things like finding lore drops, or fighting a certain number of enemies, so that my character can have new skills or better hit rates or more strength seemingly magically beamed into their head for no reason other than letting me better live out a power fantasy. It all feels meaningless. In actual, real-life terms, what is a level up? What does the arbitrary experience point represent? What impact does it have on a character? It’s unclear. Gamers just love numbies: every little upgrade is a little dopamine hit.
Yes, I feel the same about equipment upgrades.
Most modernRPGshave them, though, so I must suffer through them. My partner loves numbies in games likeGhost of TsushimaandGod of War Ragnarok, even though both allow you to max out every skill in every skill tree, making them completely useless for build-crafting. Again, it’s about the power fantasy – most players are not going to these games to get deep into builds, anyway.
Star Wars Outlaws, Surprisingly, Will Not Have Skill Trees
What I’m really searching for is not death to skill trees, which can have utility if implemented well. I’m looking for that often cited, borderline cliched thing called ludonarrative harmony. If ludonarrative dissonance is a mismatch between gameplay and story, what I want is there for a story reason for my character to get more skilled.
It seems thatStar Wars Outlawsis going to be the game that gives that to me. That’s surprising as someone generally very wary ofUbisoftgames, a feeling I’ve written abouttimeandtime again. When we picture an Ubisoft game, we imagine maps flooded with markers, towers to climb to unfog the map, loads of numbies tied to gear upgrades, and endless fetch quests. Yet Outlaws seems to be refuting that stereotype at every turn. We know that Outlaws’ planets will bemuch smaller and denser than we expected,there are no towers to climb, and that maps won’t (initially) be flooded with stuff to do, since Kay has to explore each planet to discover what it offers.
We now also know that Outlaws is taking a different approach to character progression.There will be no XP point-driven levelling upat all, nor any incremental stat boosts to fuss over. If you want to upgrade your equipment or learn new abilities,you’ll have to find experts, who will grant you upgrades in exchange for work. Each is a “full-on character”, as game director Mathias Karlson told IGN inan interview, and they won’t be icons you may just zip to in order to make yourself as OP as possible from the beginning. Each will entail a “journey of discovery”, where you have to learn who they are, what they can offer, and how to get to them.
One such example: you can overhear intel about a Jawa in a cantina, and completing a mission for them (in this case, getting a tooth from a dead Sarlacc) will allow you to trade for a ship upgrade. This particular implementation of character progression is clearly meant to tie in storytelling and worldbuilding with new skills and equipment, and while I can see a hundred ways in which this could get grindy or boring if done wrong, it is, at the very least, far more meaningful than a typical skill tree full of percentages.
Am I Optimistic About Star Wars Outlaws? Almost.
I don’t want to get my hopes up. I’ve been burned by Ubisoft games too many times to count, and I’m not going to set myself up for failure again. At the same time, the narrative that Massive Entertainment has crafted around Star Wars Outlaws is helping to mollify many of my fears. That aforementioned interview with IGN highlights that the studio is explicitly prioritising quality over quantity and variety over size, focusing on that very Star Wars-specific feeling of adventure.Hand-crafted planets were chosen over procedurally generated ones, and mechanics are very intentionally tied into the game’s story.
Also,I have a soft spot in my heart for Star Wars games.
I want Star Wars Outlaws to be good, obviously. The ways in which it’s departing from our expectations is already a strong start, but there’s no way to know how different it’ll really be until the game launches. Will this be the fantastic scoundrelly Star Wars heist game of our dreams? Maybe, maybe not, but I do know it won’t make me stare angrily at huge skill trees, and that’s already more than I expected.
Star Wars Outlaws
WHERE TO PLAY
Star Wars Outlaws follows Kay Vess as she bids to out manoeuver the galaxy’s deadliest criminals. An open-world action-adventure game from Ubisoft, it also features grand space battles and a deep story.
