Star Wars Outlaws Does This One Thing Better Than Starfield

Starfield, and it's easy to draw comparisons between the two titles' open-world goals and spot the differences in how they went about achieving them, with one key feature that Star Wars Outlaws did much better.

Bethesda's space RPG, Starfield, and Massive Entertainment's action-adventure title, Star Wars Outlaws, both feature open-world exploration with space combat and the opportunity to deal with some shadier organizations - entirely depending on players' choices in the case of Starfield. However, the two take a different approach to how their maps are put together, with Star Wars Outlaws featuring fewer explorable planets - it has 5, compared to Starfield's 1000 - that are entirely handcrafted and packed with details for Star Wars fans. While Starfield also features handcrafted planets for specific story and quest locations, many criticized the majority of the game's planets for feeling empty and lifeless due to them being procedurally generated.

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Star Wars Outlaws & Starfield Have The Same Landing Process

But Star Wars Outlaws Does It Better

Ultimately, the process of going from space to landing on a planet or launching from a planet into space is the same in both games. Players in space can select a landing zone or point of interest to land on from a planet's orbit, and to get off a planet, they simply need to get to their starship's cockpit and launch it.

Star Wars Outlaws does this better, however, by making it feel like a more seamless experience as The Trailblazer goes through the atmosphere and into the new zone. It's hardly a secret that this is an animation to cover a loading screen - and anyone who tries to skip it will get a generic black screen with the game's logo in the bottom left corner instead - but it better helps to keep players immersed, unlike Starfield, which jumps to a more obvious style of loading screen that uses a static image from the game, potentially one taken in photo mode, with a hint or piece of lore printed along the bottom, which, in comparison, completely pulls players out of the moment.

Star Wars Outlaws - Kay and Nix with Cantonica and Kijimi

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Getting Between Planets Is Also In Keeping With The Star Wars Aesthetic

With An Iconic Visual From The Planet Being Used

Star Wars Outlaws - Trailblazer hyperdrive — Image by Glenn Bunn

Even the animation of getting between planets is masked similarly, but it is extremely satisfying for Star Wars fans. Upon selecting a planet - which in itself is a quicker process due to it being linked to a button and not having to go through menus each time, mainly due to there being fewer planets to choose between - players have the option to "Punch It," which creates the iconic Hyperspace visuals around Kay's ship until she arrives at a new location. It may be a loading screen, but at least it doesn't feel as obvious as Starfield's by being tied into the main game world's aesthetic and letting players jump straight into action without missing a beat once it ends to make it feel even more like a fluid transition.

Star Wars Outlaws players can also jump from anywhere on a planet to a landing zone on another planet through the Map menu without needing to return to The Trailblazer first.

Getting between planets is a huge part of both Starfield and Star Wars Outlaws, and even in an age in which loading times are being massively reduced, with massive maps such as the ones present, loading screens are still necessary. The difference is that Star Wars Outlaws' loading screens are still entertaining and seek to keep players immersed in the exploration, whereas Starfield's serve as a constant reminder to players that they are playing a video game and constantly slows down its pacing.

Screen Rant

Star Wars Outlaws Does This One Thing Better Than Starfield