I wasn’t expecting to care much for the newest video game entry into the Star Wars universe, but Massive Entertainment’s Star Wars Outlaws has had a chokehold on my attention ever since I bought it over the weekend. The game has had largely middling reviews (and some brutally negative ones), and much has been said about Kay Vess being a one-note protagonist, but despite myself and all of these complaints, I kind of love her.
It’s hard to explain, really. Perhaps it’s my enduring love for the Star Wars scoundrel – I always played Knights of the Old Republic as one, meaning I did a lot of sneaking around, and getting to do that in a game in 2024 automatically endears me to Kay and her way of life. But I also think it’s because Kay is, canonically, really bad at being a scoundrel.
Like, Really Bad
In fact, Star Wars Outlaws is pretty much propelled forward by Kay being really bad at what she does. She’s broke, in debt, and lives in the attic of a bar. Despite very obviously needing some charity, she rejects bartender and mentor Bram’s generosity, which is objectively a stupid thing to do if you don’t have a credit to your name. She scrounges up the money to repair her broken data spike by picking up trash and selling it, or getting her companion Nix to do the dirty work for her.
She’s so bad at hustling that when she goes to the Club, the bouncer immediately tells her to buzz off. Later, when she tries to talk her way past a guard, she’s so woefully inept at lying that he basically laughs her out of the room. When she does eventually manage to find her way to her mark, she triggers an alarm and gets caught.
I’ve played a couple of hours already, and it feels like this is just Kay’s life. She moves through the world, fighting an uphill battle against her own skill issues, failing constantly and somehow, miraculously, surviving to see another day. She continually tells Nix that the next job will be better, and it never is. She is delusionally optimistic, and powers through every screw up with sheer willpower.
Girlfailures Are Sympathetic Characters
And I can’t help but love her for that. It feels like she’s terrible at everything, which is why the game’s mechanical character progression feels so satisfying. In lieu of skill points, Outlaws has you unlocking new progression paths by finding experts. To unlock skills, you have to complete a related challenge that can be finished just through playing the game.
For example, an early skill you can unlock is Fast-Talk, which lets Kay do the scoundrel thing of starting to yap when she’s found by an enemy, confusing them enough that their reaction is delayed and she can fire off some blaster shots. It’s mechanically useful, allowing her to extend her stealthy incursions into places she isn’t supposed to be even if she gets caught, but it also feels like she’s getting better at just being a scoundrel. This is what scoundrels are supposed to do, and you get to watch her figure that out in real time.
Because she’s the opposite of a girlboss, watching her learn those skills makes you root for her more. She’s failing upwards, yes, but she’s on the up-and-up nonetheless, and who amongst us doesn’t want the underdog to come out on top? Scoundrels are scrappy, forced into lives of crime because of the circumstances they’re born into, and Kay Vess is as scrappy as they come. I love watching her fail, because she always comes back stronger. Being this naively optimistic can be a good thing.
