There was a moment in Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws when I was scouring the depths of a creepy cave, just after finishing a dogfight in space and winning a card game in a boozy cantina, that the game clicked for me. The usual Ubisoft drudgery, where icons on maps become weights on the brain, was gone. Instead, there was an organic, self-determined flow as to why I chose to leave the frozen wastes of one planet to dig beneath the surface of another.
Here was a game reacting to my actions: it was an open-world experience I’d never encountered before.
I felt elated at this realization, with things happening as a result of the consequences of my own gameplay decisions. The game was organically adjusting to my...
