Star Wars Outlaws director Julian Gerighty has confirmed a patch is coming “maybe in 10 days” to address the game’s “unfair” and “incredibly punishing” insta-fail stealth sequences.
In an interview with GamesRadar+, Gerighty admitted that whilst the team had intentionally designed the sequence to build “tension”, it “just [didn’t] want it to feel unfair. And today, I think it feels unfair”.
“This is more of something that crept in in the last week or so and that we’re correcting already for a patch that’s coming out maybe in 10 days,” he added.
“So especially, I mean, you’re probably thinking of one of the early missions in Mirogana, which is incredibly punishing,” Gerighty said.
“And for me, that is a mistake, and this is something that we’re going to work on improving.
“I don’t think it means removing the fail state completely, but I do think there are millions of low-hanging fruits where we can make it so much more enjoyable and understandable.”
Gerighty also confirmed that the team was on the lookout for other “blockers” that prevent players from “enjoying the game”, revealing that Ubisoft will “tweak the narrative context” – such as, for example, adding additional PA announcements that better contextualise what’s happening – “so that we can get people to enjoy those moments as much as possible”.
“Star Wars Outlaws […] feels like it’s blagging it – much as Kay can, when regularly caught out by some far more worldly syndicate boss,” We wrote in Eurogamer’s Star Wars Outlaws review, in which we gave the game two out of five stars.
“The result is a series of quite painful comparisons: it lacks the branching, open stealth of an Arkham game, the systemic options of a Dishonored or the incisive, relentlessly satisfying speed of picking enemies off in Assassin’s Creed. It lacks the linear polish and charisma of Uncharted. Lacks the animation flow to its yellow-ledge platforming next to a Horizon, or the sheer joy of taking platforming and making it into an actual game in itself, as in Star Wars Jedi.”