Polygon put together a list of five games to play if you want more of what Star Wars Outlaws offers, and it's the kind of list I end up judging harder than I should. Outlaws was always an odd duck: an open-world scoundrel fantasy built on stealth, reputation systems, and that lingering dream of living inside the original trilogy's grimiest cantinas. Finding games that scratch the same itch is trickier than it sounds, because most open-world games hand you a hero's mantle and Kay Vess never wanted one.

The overlap Polygon is working with here makes sense. You've got the big Ubisoft-style sandbox DNA, the third-person stealth-action backbone, and the space-faring criminal underworld flavor. Games in that lane tend to split into two camps: ones that nail the scoundrel fantasy but fumble the systems, and ones with great systems that feel nothing like a galaxy far, far away. Outlaws sat right in the middle of that tension, which is why the discourse around it never quite settled.

I'd add my own wrinkle to any list like this. Back in the day, the closest thing we had to a scoundrel simulator was the original Freelancer, or Freelancer's spiritual ancestors like Elite before it, games where the whole appeal was being a nobody with a ship and a debt. Freedom and consequence, no chosen-one nonsense. I want to say it was 2003 when Freelancer shipped, and I sank an entire summer into it trying to run contraband past patrols in the border worlds. Half the stealth and reputation loops Outlaws leans on were born in those old space-sim trade lanes, just without a cinematic camera.

What keeps coming back in Outlaws discourse is that people describe its systems as if Massive invented them, but lockpicking mini-games, faction reputation, and wanted levels all have decades of history behind them. The list Polygon built works because these games each carry a piece of that lineage forward, whether it's the sneaking, the sandbox chaos, or the sheer pleasure of wandering a world that doesn't care about you until you make it.

If you bounced off Outlaws at launch and patched back in later, the game improved enough that these follow-up recommendations land differently now. And if you're one of the people who just wants to be a space criminal without a lightsaber in sight, the picks are worth a scroll. Have you played Freelancer, by the way? Still waiting on someone to do that formula justice at this budget level.