In trying to describe it, the closest comparison I can draw is with Uncharted: Golden Abyss, which launched in 2011 on the PS VIta. ....
The demo I played was split into three separate missions from the main story. The first was a bit of environmental platforming and exploration; the second a stealth-action theft quest; the third a brief escape from an Empire star destroyer into a dogfight in space. The breadth of those three kinds of gameplay - and the almost seamless transition between them - is in part what makes Star Wars Outlaws so exciting. It's also likely at the heart of its potential problems.
Occasionally you'll hop from a yellow ledge to one of the Star Wars universe's conveniently-placed wall grates, popularised in the Star Wars Jedi games, and slow scramble up them. You'll stop for less than three seconds wondering where to climb next and then see the gigantic chevron arrows painted on the wall next to the only ledge that isn't yellow. Then you'll jump towards a platform that half-collapses when you land on it, turning it into a slide, which you jump off of and onto your speeder bike outside a hurtle away (by far the coolest bit - seamless open world klaxon! - but also where the level ends).
Sneaking means pressing the crouch button, and pressing up on the D-pad to send Nix off to perform a silly (and admittedly extremely cute) dance at a given location to distract a guard.
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There doesn't seem to be much in the way of any real detection mechanic here - you knock guards out in near proximity to another on patrol, but they don't seem to discover bodies and react to them. When I did trigger the alarm, more out of boredom (and slight second-hand cramp from watching Kay crouching for an extended period), than anything else, the consequences were minimal. The few remaining guards in the room run at you shooting, go down in a couple of simple shots from your ammo-less blaster, and the MacGuffin's free for the taking.
Outside, there's a quick and simple shooting gallery moment involving crouching behind cover and using the temporary weapon system for help. Kay isn't a combat specialist by design, with just a blaster and its two settings - damage and ion damage, for disabling droids and enemies with shields - but she can pick up the dropped weapons of defeated foes. When their clip's empty, you drop them and go back to the pistol, but by that point the enemies are gone.
Last and probably least was the dogfighting mission. ..... until your ship's ready for takeoff. Then another nice almost-seamless transition - these really are the highlights, a kind of disguised cutscene that's not as fully seamless as No Man's Sky but also far more immersive and fluid than Starfield - and you're out into open space for another brief and simple escape.
A couple of TIE fighters follow you, which are dispatched by using something very close to an auto-aim system, whereby you hold the left trigger to automatically zoom in on a target and get 90 percent of the way to leading it perfectly, so it's just a nudge of the analog stick and a hold of the right trigger to finish it off. After two or three rounds of that, I pointed the ship at a waypoint and pressed the boost button for a short while until a prompt appeared to head down to the planet, triggering a brief cutscene as the ship landed. Out into the world we go - transition! - and there's a relatively interesting smuggler town to explore, complete with trademark neon signs and wary gazes, but carved uniquely into an arid mountainside. Another chat with another crime boss, and that's that.
The sense, above all, is that Star Wars Outlaws is a game that is intentionally aiming for a mechanical light touch - which is absolutely fine. There is room for games that are more approachable and set themselves up for broad appeal, and its fitting for Star Wars’ family audience. But in Outlaws' case it feels like a clear step beyond approachable and into something potentially bland. Come back to Jedi, the inevitable comparison given the similarities, it's a painful contrast.