Star Wars Outlaws has me very worried about Assassin's Creed Shadows

My expectations were high after seeing the trailers for Star Wars Outlaws. It was a game I’d longed for; a departure from Jedi and Sith and a focus on rogues and thieves, taking a Star Wars story to the streets. Well, as close to the streets as you can get in a sci-fi title. When the game finally arrived, I felt instantly deflated. It’s not a bad game, but it’s not what I’d built up in my mind either.

It has all the hallmarks of a great game, but it’s bogged down with Ubisoft trappings that made many sections feel like you’re playing on rails. The essence of choice feels entirely absent. The different criminal factions are lacklustre, the space travel is muted and closed-off, while the act of infiltrating enemy bases lacks any excitement once you realise the AI is dumb as a bag of rocks.

Of course, there are redeeming features; the Star Wars tone of everything is expansive and thrilling, Kay Vess is an entertaining protagonist, and her companion, Nix, is the Swiss army knife of sidekicks. However, while Star Wars Outlaws was developed by Massive Entertainment, it was overseen by Ubisoft and their touch feels like creeping tendrils in every aspect of the game.

This makes me worried about Assassin’s Creed Shadows. By this point, the Assassin’s Creed series is 17 years old and has 13 mainline titles under its belt. While the franchise did buck its own trends with the RPG trilogy of Assassin’s Creed Origins, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, the overall formula has begun to stagnate and feels only driven forward by new characters, city settings, and what has become a very loose story.

The mechanics of the games, which we saw with a Star Wars makeover have, by this point, become stale and are in need of a refresh. This was attempted with Assassin’s Creed Mirage by making the city much smaller and focusing on fewer gadgets and frivolous side missions, but the template stuck.

This reliance on using the same old mechanics and skinning them with different locales just doesn’t work anymore. While Assassin’s Creed Shadows still excites me for surface reasons of the dual protagonists and the Japanese setting, am I setting myself up for disappointment considering I played half of Star Wars Outlaws and felt burned out? Or are Ubisoft going to surprise me and deliver something that thinks outside the box?

I keep trying to remind myself of the details Ubisoft have given us up to now. Ideas like being able to stealth through sections with more success in the summer because of the leaves on the trees and bushes bring another dimension to the infiltration of enemy areas. While the two protagonists' fighting styles should keep combat fresh, but then, I thought that blasters and droids would benefit Star Wars Outlaws.

I suppose my hope, as it was with Assassin’s Creed Mirage, is that the world we explore is engaging enough to push me through any sticky points. 9th century Baghdad was lush to wander around because of the stellar details woven into the design process by Ubisoft. If this level of care is shown in 16th century Japan, and there are organic side missions, perhaps this will carry me through.

Since playing Star Wars Outlaws, I’m trying to temper my expectations a lot more. At one point, I wanted nothing more than for Ubisoft to take their Assassin franchise into the future with technological tools and features, giving way to more intriguing features but having seen their template underneath a sci-fi epic, I don’t feel confident that there’s any magic left with the developer and publisher.