Star Wars Outlaws has, like a lot of Ubisoft games nowadays, sprung a big leak—around 13 minutes of gameplay all told, with a few more clips out there showing off space combat. Ubisoft has naturally nuked the very bold YouTube upload into low orbit, but it remains pretty easy to find yourself if you're interested.
While leaks are never exactly ideal—and sometimes come with personal information attached, risking the safety of devs—this one isn't exactly the end of the world for Ubisoft. If anything, it may well help.
Community Reactions
Over on the game's subreddit, one user shared their excitement after watching the leaked footage: "Having just watched the leaked footage I’ve gone from a sceptic to actually being pretty excited about this again … I’ve read a lot about them wanting this to feel cinematic and like an extension of the films, this is the first time outside of early trailers I’ve got that vibe."
Similarly, r/gamingleaksandrumours has a smattering of former sceptics responding to the footage with the overall equivalent of 'hey, not too shabby'. Don't place all your bets on red just yet, though, we're talking "Looks fun, but it's the type of game I would get in 5 years for like $20" levels of excitement.
A Cautious Optimism
For my part, I'm cautiously optimistic. I think at the very least Star Wars Outlaws is going to be just fine, a bog standard Ubisoft game with a glossy open world and way too many little whatsits to collect and outposts to "press X to knockout" at. I fully expect to hack into a datapad at some point and be brought to a map screen to watch a dopamine-hit of icons pop up. Bare minimum, it's nice to be getting more Star Wars games where you're not swinging a lightsaber around. Now if only Ubisoft could stop fumbling the bag on pre-order nonsense.