Star Wars Outlaws is beautifully realised on PS5 and Series X/S, bar a few rogue issues

Reuniting developer Massive Entertainment and its Snowdrop Engine technology, Star Wars Outlaws is a sprawling, bounty-hunting, TIE-fighter-battling adventure across a galaxy far, far away. It’s built just for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S and PC – a true next-gen effort – and all of the highlights of this particular engine return.

Today I’m focusing on the console editions as ever, where PS5 and Series X each offer up a choice of three modes: a 30fps quality mode, a 40fps balanced mode (for 120Hz displays) and a 60fps performance mode. Much like Massive’s work on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, there’s a real luxury of choice for the two premium machines here – even extending to a toggle for two seperate aspect ratio modes. However, the curveball is the Series S version, which is fixed at 30fps with no other modes on offer. Between all of these consoles and modes then, which is ultimately the best way to play? Are there any visual differences of note between the three? And is it possible to get a solid 60fps out of the game on PS5 or Series X?

Of course, this pairing of developer and technology is already a proven success. Only nine months ago, the team at Massive served up Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, using the Snowdrop Engine to realise another sci-fi world. Its open environments were richly detailed, filled with flora and fauna that reacted to the player, plus weather physics like wind and rain. It pushed for ray-traced global illumination and reflections, even on console, and again with PS5 and Series X able to the game with a 60fps target.

Turning to Star Wars Outlaws today, the environments are no less impressive than Avatar’s; each planet sports a beautifully-realised open environment filled with animated foliage, imaginative creatures and speeder pilots. Volumetrics and rising dust fill the air – and gelling this together is a dynamic time of day setup, weather simulation and volumetric clouds that cast shadows to the terrain below. With all of these elements combine to create a convincing lived-in energy to each planet.

Much like Avatar, Star Wars Outlaws also deploys ray tracing on all console versions as well, from the powerful PS5 and Series X to the 4TF Series S. Indeed, ray tracing is locked in place as a core part of Outlaws’ visual design on every console and in every mode, with no opt out. Looking at the bustling Mirogana City, this arrives in the form of ray-traced global illumination (RTGI), allowing for a simulated light bounce from its neon signs across the player and nearby walls. The result is a vivid splash of dark primary colours, lighting – and shading – the alcoves of the cantina with hues of green and red. Ray traced shadows make the grade, too, though it appears the console implementation to limited to distant rocky outrcrops in open areas – with PC offering a more comprehensive solution for all objects. Finally, Outlaws also offers ray-traced reflections on console, mirroring all its mountainous backdrops, with a layer of screen-space reflections (SSR) to add on more detail to capture NPCs and creature movement. This hybrid method worked well in Avatar too, striking a good balance between realism and performance.

Between the sprawling city hubs, open outdoor environments and space battles, Outlaws presents as an authentic Star Wars package, down to the font selection and soundtrack. The build-up to these high points does take time, however, with a linear (and it must be said, tedious) opening two hours replete with crawling through vents, hacking minigames, mandatory stealth sections and climbing painted ledges. The combat also doesn’t play its best hand to start, with simplistic third-person shooting with protagonist Kay’s base move-set – though in fairness, later weapon upgrades abilities do improve this down the line. Even then though, the AI’s path-finding is often clumsy, while cutscene animations – notably the stutter between each camera cut – also lets the cinematic presentation down. All of these problems betray an otherwise visually strong package, but thankfully, Outlaws’ appeal does grow once it offers you more freedom to explore.

Before you hit that New Game button, there are a few things to know about Outlaws’ graphics options. The settings for PS5 and Series X are identical, with those 30fps, 40fps and 60fps options, plus a cinematic 21:9 display mode that adds black bars to the top and bottom. Whether or not that’s engaged, Massive uses post-processing tricks like film grain, chromatic aberration, and per-object and screen motion blur to simulate the look of the original trilogy. Even the unique curvature of the virtual lens, visible at the edges of the screen, aims to replicate the camera equipment used in the films. The 21:9 mode only reduces visibility on the horizontal axis, and suffers from a slightly reduced frame-rate, too – so I’d ultimately recommend the alternative ‘fill screen’ 16:9 mode for console players.

Finding the best graphics mode for Star Wars Outlaws on PS5 and Series X is also straightforward. The 60fps performance mode uses internal resolutions from 720p to 1080p, the 40fps quality mode is pegged between 936p to 1252p, and the 30fps quality mode reaches the highest base resolutions at between 1134p and 1620p. Meanwhile, Series S makes do with a 720p to 1080p spread, in line with our findings in Avatar on the console.

Much like Avatar, all of these figures change rapidly, almost by the frame, and are reconstructed using FSR to a 4K target – or a 1440p final image in the performance mode. In every case, the game almost requires enabling the motion blur option to disguise FSR’s reconstruction while panning the camera. Even with it enabled though, both PS5 and Series X suffer from obvious stair-stepping on the game’s bright interior outlines, while fine grass outdoors is prone heavy pixellattion and break-up, even in quality mode. FSR struggles to process these elements, and the game suffers at points on console as a result.

*Requires 120Hz display to be selectable

Comparisons between each mode reveal a few other tweaks on PS5 and Series X. Shadows, volumetrics, textures and most other settings stay intact, but grass density drops in using the 60fps performance mode. It’s tough to notice outside of comparisons, but fields do have a sparser distribution of grass, with the 40fps mode using a setting between the 30 and 60fps modes. Likewise, zoom in close, and performance mode drops the overall draw distance to foliage as well.

Beyond this there’s a difference in the quality of reflected elements: stormtroopers at security checkpoints reflect at a lower quality level on performance mode, while reflections in the marshlands exhibit more break-up on the water surface. In motion, this is really the biggest pitfall to using the 60fps mode: with an internal resolution of 720p to 1080p, not only are there more aliasing artefacts while using Speeders outside, but reflected elements shimmer and distort much more visibly.

Series S runs at the same settings as Series X and PS5’s 60fps performance modes – that is, with lower foliage density, draw distances and a similar lower quality preset for reflections. The big catch is that the Series S deals with these fidelity cutbacks at just 30fps, though at least it does include all of the same RT features, extending to RTGI and ray-traced reflections. The one catch is the BVH structure for RTGI is reined in on Series S, with ray-traced effects only rendering in closer to the camera than Series X. Expect a delay in the RTGI activating – but given what we saw with Avatar, these are all trade-offs we would expect from Series S and the Snowdrop Engine.

Switching to performance testing, the default 30fps quality mode is easy to summarise: both PS5 and Series X run near flawlessly in most cases. The opening cutscene exhibits distinct hitches between each camera cut, but later in-engine scenes are less heavily affected. I also spotted a handful of dropped frames in battle, notably after triggering explosives, or in moving quickly through cities. Otherwise, the 30fps lock is absolutely on point for both consoles in regular play and I’d be tempted to recommend it just for the higher image quality it provides. The only difference between platforms is that Series X uses adaptive v-sync, allowing for an occasional torn frame at the top of the display, while PS5 is fully v-synced throughout. Really though, in speeding through open terrain, or moving through complex, NPC-packed areas, there’s rarely an issue in holding at 30fps, and that tearing on Xbox is largely invisible.

Next along is the 40fps mode. If you have the requisite 120Hz display connected, this is by far the best balanced option for PS5 and Series X. Image quality does admittedly take a hit, but performance is nearly perfectly stable – and you gain significantly better controller response thanks to the 25ms update rate compared to the 33.3ms of the 30fps mode. There are still some traversal hitches, but that doesn’t stop the 40fps mode from being well worth recommending.

Rounding out PS5 and Series X testing is the 60fps performance mode, and despite the lower resolution and dropped settings, a locked 60fps isn’t quite on the cards. Space battles and sneaking through small interiors is largely at 60fps, but navigating big cities or wider landscapes results in drops into the 50s on both machines.

The main difference is that Series X once again deploys occasional screen tear right at the top of the screen, but on the plus side, the console is able to run its 60fps performance mode within a 120Hz container. By outputting at 120Hz, VRR has a much wider range to work with on Xbox, with 40Hz being the lower bound, versus the more limited 48-60Hz range on PS5. On balance, VRR is still very effective on both consoles for any sub-60fps drops while speeding across the world, but anything lower, and the judder is more keenly felt on PS5.

Finally, we have Series S. For all the cutbacks in resolution and settings, it’s to Massive Entertainment’s credit that it does lock to 30fps a bulk of the time. There are single frame drops during battle, but it’s surprisingly robust. Unfortunately, the odd streaming hitches we saw on every mode on PS5 and Series X are much more glaring on Series S. This isn’t a widespread issue, but where it occurs – like major city hubs – it’s much more of a distraction. The absence of a 40fps mode is also a shame, given that Avatar did offer that option on Series S.

Overall then, much like Massive’s work on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, the teams’s underlying Snowdrop technology proves a great fit for realising the Star Wars universe. Outlaws isn’t a squeaky clean game on a technical level, with a few rough points amid the a general trend of brilliance. The 60fps modes on PS5 and Series X do sacrifice a lot in image quality, and ideally need a VRR display to look their smoothest. As a broader recommendation, the 40fps mode is my pick as it provides a better balance between visual settings, image quality and frame-rate stability, while the 30fps mode is a good backup for those without 120Hz displays. The number of options here feels well judged too, with meaningful choices that don’t feel overwhelming – and the 21:9 cinematic mode is a fascinating extra if you’re inclined towards a more cinematic look. Star Wars Outlaws is a well-optimised console effort, all considered, and there’s scope for faster consoles and PCs to go much further.