Star Wars Outlaws: Everything You Need to Know Before Launch

Here's what you need to know before picking up Star Wars Outlaws

Star Wars Outlaws is here, continuing Ubisoft's recent trend of superimposing its reliable formula onto big-name movie IP. Does Star Wars Outlaws play things safe, or does it use the new setting as an excuse to toy around with new ideas? A little bit of both, according to our reviewer Morgan Park, but there are tons of quirks and mechanics to wrap your head around, so even if you've already started playing, you might not be aware of some of the little things that can enrich your epic adventure across the game's five distinct planets. Beyond these in-game tips, we also have some Nvidia settings that you should tweak, as well as a few PC builds courtesy of PCSpecialist that will help Star Wars Outlaws hit performance hyperspace. Sneaky tricks to make stealth easier True to form for Ubisoft, Star Wars Outlaws gives you the choice of approaching encounters stealthily or with the all-out aggression of a Jedi clearing out a Death Star (well, minus the lightsaber, given that you play a plucky outlaw this time round). Some stealth sections are enforced however, triggering a fail-state when you get caught, so it's good to be aware of a few things that will aid your sneaking. If you're not a fan of alarms (who is?), you can destroy both cameras and alarm panels using your pistol's ion module. If you've been getting confused as to why sometimes enemies need to run to panels to trigger alarms while other times they don't, that's because only certain types of enemies can trigger alarms from anywhere -- stormtroopers and regular syndicate members need to run to panels, but officers use their own communication devices to trigger alarms remotely. Luckily, you've got your cute Merqaal pet Nix on hand, who you can command to steal these devices off of them. Given the short turnaround between you being spotted and an alarm being triggered, you'll want to react fast to stun or take down enemies before they blow your cover. While protagonist Kay has a fair few tools in her arsenal for this purpose, Nvidia also has a trick that you can access in the menus to give you an edge. Nvidia Reflex reduces latency by up to 31%, and ensures that Kay reacts pretty much instantaneously as soon as you press a button. The feature is available on all RTX-enabled GPUs, and there is no performance trade-off, so you have literally nothing to lose -- and precious milliseconds to gain -- by switching it on. Get granular with the difficulty settings The debate over difficulty settings in games isn't going away any time soon, but Star Wars Outlaws makes a pretty strong case for how it should be done. There are your classic difficulty presets, which you select when you start the game, but once you've started you can go into Gameplay options and get a whole lot more precise about how you want to play. Within the Combat section, you can tweak Enemy difficulty and Player health separately, so if, for example, you want a more realistic, intense experience, you can lower your own health as well as that of enemies, making weapons feel more lethal overall and creating that feeling that every shot counts. Some people like the hands-on touches like manually having to cool your blaster when it overheats, or the rhythm-based lockpicking minigame, but you can either fully automate or simplify these aspects through the Gameplay menu. Likewise, there are plenty of tweaks you can make to the card game Sabacc. Photo Mode is both pretty and useful Star Wars Outlaws is a real looker, and a graphical showcase of the latest Nvidia technologies. With ray-tracing and DLSS Ray Reconstruction enabled, you'll get to appreciate those little things like the giant moon looming over the savannah planet of Toshara, with its rusty glow reflecting perfectly off the marshes outside the city, or the red glow from Storm Trooper blaster fire illuminating the cold chrome floors of imperial bases. Photo mode is a great way to capture the stunning sights of the Star Wars galaxy. But it can also serve a tactical purpose. Particularly in stealth missions, Photo Mode can act as a drone of sorts, letting you pause the game and freely explore the area with the camera to help plan your route. Sound immersion-breaking? Just imagine it's a mini probe droid when you use it. Problem solved. To really get the game photo-ready, you'll want to enable Ray Reconstruction. This powerful feature improves the detail of ray-traced reflections and increases the responsiveness of ray-traced lighting (making ray-tracing look much better in motion). It works best on Ultra RT presets, where it can actually boost frame rates by up to 15%, while at lower RT settings you can expect a small frame rate tax. Thankfully, you can offset any performance hits with DLSS Frame Generation, and by adjusting your DLSS quality level between Quality and Performance, which can provide a significant boost to performance. It's a demanding game, so get the right rig for the job One of the great things about the latest iteration of Nvidia's DLSS technology, DLSS 3.5, is that it's compatible with all Nvidia RTX graphics cards, going all the way back to the RTX 20-Series. This means that even if you're on an RTX 2060, you can still enjoy powerful features like Ray Reconstruction, RTXDI, and of course DLSS 3.5 itself, which offers even greater performance gains than earlier versions. And on the 40-series cards, you can enjoy the incredible graphics and make your way through the galaxy how it was meant to be experienced. DLSS 3 employs two incredible technologies: DLSS Super Resolution and DLSS Frame Generation. The first feature, often called an upscaler, kicks in by rendering Star Wars Outlaws at a lower resolution, then uses AI to upscale it to full resolution without losing any detail. The second takes things up a notch, using AI to generate completely new frames, not just pixels, delivering a massive performance boost. But to really get the most out of Star Wars Outlaws, and experience this game to its fullest, you'll want a powerful PC, which is where PCSpecialist comes in. The PC-building site lets you customise a pre-configured PC, with over 18 different desktop systems to select, giving you the power to choose everything from its case to the GPU (or more than one GPU, if you're so inclined). Check out their Quantum Nova, Quantum Pro, and Quantum Ultra PCs, which you can customise to suit your budget. Even the most affordable of those, the Nova, contains an RTX 4070 SUPER GPU, which should be able to run Star Wars Outlaws on Ultra settings at 1440p (with Ray Tracing) at around 70 fps, so you're well covered whichever one you choose. If you'd rather get a ready-to-go pre-built PC, then for just £899, you can get the Hydra G60, which packs a GeForce RTX 4060 GPU, Intel Core i5-14400F CPU, and 16GB RAM. With the right adjustments, you should be speeding around Star Wars Outlaws' galaxy at a breezy 60 fps at 1440p (DLSS set to 'Balanced', ray-tracing on 'High', RTXDI switched off). Moving through the mid-range, we have the Onyx S and the Vector Pro (which packs a RTX 4070 GDDR6X GPU and comes in a very fetching wood-panelled case). Then at the top end is the Eclipse I80S, which houses an RTX 4080 SUPER, which should ensure liquid-smooth 4K gaming for years to come. Whatever you go for, you can expect to traverse Star Wars Outlaws with a fidelity that does justice to the setting. On top of its fantastic range of PCs, PCSpecialist also does all the legwork for you, handling cable management and system testing prior to shipping. This leaves you with nothing to worry about, apart from the gaming. And with that, you're all set to run rampant in the first true open-world adventure in the Star Wars universe! To see what Nvidia is cooking up in its ever-busy lab, follow them on Facebook, X, and YouTube.

Star Wars Outlaws - here's the best settings for your PC

Does the magic of Star Wars ever fade? We're not convinced. The moment 'that' music kicks in and you become part of a galaxy far, far away, everything else in life falls away and all you want to do is explore. Star Wars Outlaws captures that magic perfectly by being the franchise's first open-world single player game, giving fans the opportunity to experience the universe and visit iconic Star Wars locations like never before. Set between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, it places you in control of Kay Vess, a scoundrel who's assembling a team of similarly morally dubious folk to pay off a crime syndicate. Capturing all the dinginess of the Star Wars world while also exuding the glory of that galaxy, you want to enjoy the game at its finest. That's why you need the best settings for Star Wars Outlaws and the best hardware. Simply put, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 30-series or above card is the one you need most to enjoy gorgeous ray-traced reflections, shadows, and more, with the 40-series providing the ultimate visual spectacle. Below, we've taken a look at the best settings to use, along with how to get an optimal experience from the game courtesy of the impressive gaming PCs from PCSpecialist. If you're not in a position to spend a fortune, don't worry as we've highlighted the best settings for low and mid gaming rigs, as well as high-end powerhouses. Star Wars Outlaws is made up of five stunning planets for players to explore, with new locations like opening area, Toshara Moon, alongside familiar favorites like Tatooine, Luke Skywalker's home planet, and Kijimi, best known from The Rise of Skywalker. Each is beautiful to look at but it's hardly surprising that you'll want to see the glory of iconic places like Tatooine or simply see how impressive a Tie Fighter looks up close. We've spent some time being a tourist in the land of Star Wars Outlaws while also figuring out how to get the best visual results. First appearing in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the morals of pretty much all of Cantonica are dubious at best. Home to the Casino city of Canto Blight, it's also our hero, Kay Vess's home planet. Much of your time there is covered by darkness which is the perfect time to see how Nvidia RTX Dynamic Illumination can still highlight key moments like a firework display as Kay sneaks her way into a mansion. This gorgeous moment of Kay looking on at a world that doesn't welcome her is captured on High quality level. Film grain is enabled to add a neat post processing effect while everything else is left as standard. By picking High, settings are adjusted automatically with RTX Direct Lighting and fog blur being the highlight here. Check out Advanced Graphics and you can see how many options relate to Raytracing with the option to adjust contact shadows, diffuse reflections, and more. The effect might seem subtle but on an Nvidia GeForce RTX 40-series card, you can enjoy DLSS 3 which adds Nvidia Reflex so you get reduced system latency and better responsiveness. There's something quite special about being able to get this up close and personal with an enemy Tie Fighter, even if you're trying your best to dodge Stormtroopers at the time. This screenshot captures the majesty of the spacecraft with levels of detail unlike anything we've seen before. Look how smooth the Stormtrooper's arm is. His armor looks extra sleek thanks to how DLSS 3 with Frame Generation uses AI to generate entire game frames by introducing new frames between existing ones. It means you get a much smoother appearance while still enjoying high performance levels. It's hard to truly capture how smart that is because this is a static image and, like a lot of great things, it works so well that you don't realize until you try to use an inferior graphics card. Besides the gorgeous rendering at High, there's also a subtle reflection on those outfits so that it doesn't feel like a flat image. Little layers like that truly make a difference to how good it looks to your eyes. DLAA is at play here aka deep learning anti-aliasing. In the past, standard anti-aliasing was the one to tweak but now, DLAA providers shimmering, flickering, and all those subtle details that truly shine here. You'll need a high-end graphics card and gaming PC to see the full benefits but it's worth it. Home of Luke Skywalker, Tatooine is a desert landscape but we never thought we'd love spotting every grain of sand while we walk. This image was taken at Ultra quality levels. Thanks to the wonders of DLSS 3.5, you get maxed out ray-traced graphics while still enjoying super smooth performance. There's that weird temptation to roam across the desert, we know. Head over to the Video settings and you can use an upscale algorithm to make things extra delightful with DLSS 3.5 ready to enable. Similarly, all ray tracing has been enabled here with the magic of AI ensuring that DLSS Frame Generation multiplies performance while still looking great. So, what's the best way to play Star Wars Outlaws? We've delved into the settings menu and worked out exactly what will work best for which setup. Obviously, the better the setup, the better visuals but Star Wars Outlaws is fairly scaleable and designed to work with Nvidia GeForce graphics cards so a lot can be achieved here. Here's a quick overview of TechRadar Gaming's recommended settings. For the most part, only use a 4K resolution for the most high-end and newest of gaming PCs as the resolution is what's going to make the biggest difference here. Don't be afraid to lower it while still keeping settings high. In all cases, we've picked out some great models from PCSpecialist which means you can play Star Wars Outlaws at your desired level. We'll go into more detail later so consider this your quick primer to get straight to the good stuff. All specific quality levels such as shadows, particles, and micro details: Low Raytraced contact shadows: Low Raytraced diffuse reflections resolution: Medium Raytraced specular reflections: Low Raytraced specular reflections resolution: Very low Likely frame rate - 60fps (try high-end settings if you prefer quality over fps) All specific quality levels such as shadows, particles, and micro details: Medium Raytraced contact shadows: Medium Raytraced diffuse reflections resolution: Medium Raytraced specular reflections: Medium Raytraced specular reflections resolution: Low Likely frame rate - 60fps depending on your other hardware All specific quality levels such as shadows, particles, and micro details: High Raytraced contact shadows: High Raytraced diffuse reflections resolution: High Raytraced specular reflections: High Raytraced specular reflections resolution: High Upscaling: Native AA So, what do you do if you don't feel like you're getting the most from your Nvidia GeForce experience? Starting out, make sure your graphics drivers are up to date. New drivers are released regularly, including those with new games in mind like Star Wars Outlaws so it can make all the difference. It's also a good idea to experiment. See what works best for you. An Nvidia GeForce 40-Series card will provide the best results but depending on your other hardware, it's possible to tweak certain things to work best for you. Adjust the Dynamic Resolution scaling setting so you get a stable fps as you play. Change the frame rate cap, potentially lowering it if you're suffering from some stuttering. Turn down reflections, and shadows as these can be pretty demanding. Keep an eye on your motion blur settings too. Another big help is to download the Nvidia GeForce Experience app. It offers all the latest drivers but it also allows you to optimize and tune your GPU. You can change a lot of settings here but best of all, you can press just a couple of buttons. Every time a major game like Star Wars Outlaws comes out, the Nvidia GeForce Experience app updates so you can simply pick the game you're playing and it figures out the best settings for you. It'll even explain what each setting changes, showing you how the image adjusts. Perfect if you're short on time and simply want the best from your gaming PC. Of course, if your gaming rig is starting to show its age, you may still find yourself struggling to enjoy Star Wars Outlaws in the way you deserve. That's where PCSpecialist is available to help. Like the name suggests, the company is a specialist firm devoted to building gaming PCs that you will love. You have two main options -- go for a pre-configured unit or pick a pre-built system which is available to order for next-day shipping. Available for a great price, there's the Onyx S with an AMD Ryzen 7 7700X processor, 32GB of Corsair Vengeance 5600MHz RAM, 1TB of SSD storage, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super graphics card with 12GB of VRAM (VRAM will mean you can use more of the features above). It's the perfect mid-range option while there's also the Eclipse I80S. For a more budget-friendly option, check out the Hydra G60 with its 14th-generation Intel Core i5-14400FF processor, 16GB of Corsair Vengeance 3600MHz RAM, 1TB SSD, and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 graphics card with 8GB of VRAM. Spend more and you can get the Vector Pro with 3TB of storage across 1TB SSD and 2TB HDD, AMD Ryzen 9 7900X, 32GB Corsair Vengeance 5200MHz RAM, and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 with 12GB VRAM. There's something for everyone with the prebuilt units but don't forget the pre-configured setups like the Quantum Nova, Quantum Pro, and Quantum Ultra. In all cases, you can adjust every single component right down to the case that contains it all. The Quantum Nova starts out with AMD Ryzen 7 7700X processor, 32GB of Corsair Vengeance 4800MHz RAM, 2TB of SSD storage, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super graphics card with 12GB of VRAM. Prices begin from £1,568.33. The Quantum Pro has a 14th-generation Intel Core i9-14900KS processor, 32GB Corsair Vengeance 3200MHz RAM, 1TB SSD, 2TB HDD, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super graphics card with 16GB VRAM. It costs from £2,133.33. Finally, there's the Quantum Ultra with its 14th-generation Intel Core i9-14900KS processor, 64GB of Corsair Vengeance 4800MHz RAM, 2TB SSD, and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super graphics card with 16GB VRAM. It starts from £2,445.83 depending on the extra elements you add or change. PCSpecialist offers over 18 customisable desktop systems, allowing you to fine-tune everything from cases to RGB lighting with their easy-to-use configurator. Best of all, they take care of the tricky cable management, and ensure your system is thoroughly tested prior to being shipped, so you can just focus on gaming. In all cases, make sure you play around with the Nvidia GeForce Experience app once your exciting new rig arrives, and don't be afraid to see what settings look best for your eyes. This is your chance to explore the Star Wars world for yourself and you really don't want an inferior experience while battling the Empire.