Star Wars Outlaws: Setting, Timeline and Story Explained
Who Kay Vess and Nix are, where Star Wars Outlaws sits between Empire and Jedi, the syndicates and planets, the full story and its two story DLCs.
Star Wars Outlaws is the first open-world Star Wars game, and it deliberately steps away from the Jedi and the Rebellion. Its hero is a small-time thief with a death mark on her head, its battlegrounds are cantinas and syndicate hideouts, and its main currency is reputation with the galaxy’s crime families. Developed by Massive Entertainment and published by Ubisoft, it is also one of the clearest examples of how Lucasfilm Games has opened Star Wars to studios beyond EA.
This guide explains the setting, the timeline placement, the characters and factions, and then summarises the full story, including the ending and the post-launch story content. Major spoilers are clearly marked.
What Star Wars Outlaws Is
Star Wars Outlaws was released on August 30, 2024 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Windows, with a Nintendo Switch 2 version following on September 4, 2025. The PC version arrived on Steam on November 21, 2024. Massive Entertainment, the Swedish Ubisoft studio known for The Division and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, developed it under directors Julian Gerighty and Mathias Karlson.
It is a third-person action-adventure game with stealth, blaster combat, speeder travel and seamless transitions between planets and space. Players explore several planets, take jobs for crime syndicates, play sabacc in cantinas and fly a ship called the Trailblazer in space dogfights. Unlike the Jedi games, there is no lightsaber and no Force; the game’s fantasy is that of a scoundrel in the mould of Han Solo or Lando Calrissian.
The game was part of the wave of projects announced after Lucasfilm Games returned as a brand in 2021 and began working with multiple publishers. Our history of LucasArts and Lucasfilm Games explains how that shift came about.
Where It Fits in the Star Wars Timeline
Outlaws is set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, shortly after the Battle of Hoth. This is a period when the Empire looks at its strongest, the Rebellion has been driven from its base and the criminal underworld is thriving in the gaps of Imperial control. Han Solo is frozen in carbonite in Jabba’s palace during this time, which gives the game’s Tatooine section an extra layer of context.
The placement is deliberate. With the Empire focused on hunting the Rebellion, syndicates have room to expand, and a nobody like Kay Vess can carve out space for herself if she plays the factions carefully. For a broader view of where Outlaws sits among the other games, see our Star Wars games in chronological story order. As a game released after 2014, Outlaws is part of official canon rather than Legends.
Kay Vess, Nix and the Main Characters
Kay Vess is the protagonist, voiced and performance-captured by Humberly González. She grew up in Canto Bight on the planet Cantonica, the casino city first seen in The Last Jedi, and wants nothing more than to leave it. She is a thief and scrapper rather than a fighter, and her story is about moving from small-time crime to something bigger.
Nix is her companion, a small, loyal creature voiced by Dee Bradley Baker. Nix is central to gameplay: he can distract guards, fetch items, trigger switches and attack enemies, which makes him a key part of stealth and exploration.
Other important characters include:
- ND-5: a battle-worn commando droid who becomes Kay’s partner and protector.
- Jaylen Vrax: an outlaw who recruits Kay for a major heist.
- Sliro Barsha: the leader of Zerek Besh, a new syndicate trying to muscle in on the established crime families. He is the game’s main antagonist.
- Vail Tormin: a bounty hunter pursuing Kay.
- Riko Vess: Kay’s estranged mother.
- Asara Deyn: a Rebel operative.
Familiar faces appear too. Jabba the Hutt plays a role in the Tatooine section, Darth Vader appears in the story’s later stages, and the two story expansions feature Lando Calrissian and Hondo Ohnaka.
The Syndicates and Reputation
The game’s underworld is built around four established syndicates, plus Sliro’s newcomer organisation:
| Syndicate | Background |
|---|---|
| Pyke Syndicate | Spice traffickers from the planet Oba Diah, familiar from The Clone Wars and Solo. |
| Crimson Dawn | The secretive organisation introduced in Solo: A Star Wars Story. |
| Hutt Cartel | The crime empire of the Hutt clans, led on Tatooine by Jabba. |
| Ashiga Clan | An original syndicate created for the game, based on the snowy world of Kijimi. |
| Zerek Besh | Sliro Barsha’s upstart syndicate, the story’s main threat. |
Kay’s reputation with each established syndicate rises or falls depending on the jobs she takes and the choices she makes during missions. Good standing opens up areas, vendors and opportunities; poor standing makes their territories hostile. The system means that two players can finish the game on very different terms with the various crime families, even though the main story follows a fixed path. Separately, a wanted system tracks how hard the Empire is pursuing Kay, escalating up to six levels.
The Planets
Outlaws has four main explorable planets, each with its own hub city and open areas:
- Toshara: an original savanna moon created for the game and the largest open area, centred on the city of Mirogana.
- Kijimi: the icy world first seen in The Rise of Skywalker, here shown decades earlier as the home of the Ashiga Clan.
- Tatooine: the desert world of Jabba the Hutt, with Mos Eisley among its locations.
- Akiva: a jungle planet from the Star Wars novels, here featuring an Imperial presence and important story missions.
Cantonica, Kay’s homeworld, appears in specific story missions rather than as a fully open planet. Each planet has an orbital space zone where Kay can fly the Trailblazer, fight pirates and Imperials, and travel between worlds.
The Story Explained (Spoilers)
Spoiler warning: the following section describes the full main story, including the ending.
The first heist and the death mark
Shortly after the Battle of Hoth, Sliro Barsha kills the leaders of rival syndicates and positions Zerek Besh for power. Kay, desperate to escape Canto Bight, joins a crew planning to rob Sliro’s vault. The heist goes wrong: the crew is really a Rebel cell freeing its leader, Asara Deyn, and they shoot Kay and leave her behind. Sliro places a death mark on her, making her a target for bounty hunters across the galaxy.
Toshara and a new plan
Kay steals the Trailblazer and crash-lands on Toshara. A mechanic agrees to fix her ship if she pays for parts, which pushes her into working for the syndicates. The mechanic later betrays her and is killed by Vail Tormin, the bounty hunter chasing the death mark. Jaylen Vrax and his droid ND-5 rescue Kay, and Jaylen proposes a second, much larger heist on Sliro’s vault.
Building the crew
The middle of the game is about assembling a heist crew across the planets. Kay frees a safecracker, Ank Parako, from the Ashiga Clan on Kijimi; recruits a heavy, Hoss, who is killed after a confrontation with Jabba on Tatooine; helps a droidsmith, Gedeek Obaz, hijack an Imperial droid project on Akiva; brings in Asara as the replacement heavy; and finally reconnects with her mother, Riko, as the crew’s slicer. Along the way, Kay and Vail develop a grudging respect after escaping Tatooine together.
The trap and the ending
When Kay steals Sliro’s master code, she discovers that he is a director in the Imperial Security Bureau and that Zerek Besh is an Imperial front used to control the underworld. The vault is a trap. Vail, ordered to kill Kay, turns on Sliro instead, and the crew escapes with a codex of Imperial intelligence rather than credits.
Jaylen then betrays the crew, stunning Kay and handing her and Asara to the Empire aboard the Star Destroyer Revelator. Rescued by the rest of the crew, Kay infiltrates a meeting between Sliro, Jaylen and Darth Vader, in which Vader agrees to let Jaylen take over Zerek Besh. Jaylen reveals he is Sliro’s older brother and kills him. Kay frees ND-5, who kills Jaylen to protect her. The crew escapes as the Revelator is destroyed with the help of Asara’s Rebels and whichever syndicate Kay has the best relationship with.
In the epilogue, Asara takes the codex data to the Rebellion, Ank and Gedeek plan their next casino jobs, Vail receives a copy of the codex as payment, and Kay and ND-5 head off together. A post-credits scene shows Kay breaking her mother out of an Imperial prison.
Post-Launch Story Content
Two story expansions followed the base game:
- Wild Card (November 2024): Kay is blackmailed by an Imperial governor into entering a high-stakes sabacc tournament aboard an underworld cruise ship. Teaming up with Lando Calrissian, she plans a raid on the governor’s secret base to stop his scheme to build a weaponised gas.
- A Pirate’s Fortune (May 15, 2025): Kay works with the pirate Hondo Ohnaka, the long-running character from The Clone Wars and Rebels.
Ubisoft also released several free title updates after launch. Early patches in 2024 adjusted stealth detection and made some of the game’s instant-fail stealth sections less punishing, addressing one of the most common criticisms at release.
Reception and Legacy
Outlaws received generally positive but mixed reviews. Metacritic scores sat in the mid-70s for the original platforms, while the Switch 2 version scored 81 after the game had been updated. Critics praised the atmosphere, the faithful Star Wars world-building and Kay’s underworld fantasy, while the stealth sections and some technical issues drew criticism.
Commercially, Ubisoft said in late 2024 that sales were below expectations, and in July 2025 the company’s CEO acknowledged the game had missed its targets. Even so, the post-launch updates and the well-received Switch 2 version gave the game a second wind with players who had waited.
Common questions
- Do I need to know Star Wars to follow the story? Not really. The story is self-contained, though knowing Empire and Jedi adds context to the Tatooine section and Vader’s appearance.
- Is Kay Vess connected to the films? No, she is an original character, though her homeworld and many locations come from the films and series.
- Is it a good starting point? For players who like open worlds and smuggler stories more than Jedi, yes. Our list of Star Wars games for new players includes it for that reason.
Why Outlaws Stands Out
Star Wars Outlaws is notable less for any single mechanic than for its point of view. It tells a story in the original trilogy era where the Rebellion is a supporting player and the real drama is in the underworld: who owes whom, which syndicate will remember a betrayal, and how far a thief can climb before the Empire notices. For fans who always found Han and Lando more interesting than the Jedi, it is the closest Star Wars games have come to building a whole world around that idea.
