Book Review - The Art of Star Wars Outlaws
- The Artbook Collector
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
August 28th 2025
Star Wars has a long history with artbooks, going back as far as 1979 with a release for A New Hope, so when a new one is released, it’s always going to pop up on the radars of fans and collectors. There’s a lot to live up to, the catalogue has a high bar of quality for both the books and the artwork itself, which brings us to The Art of Star Wars Outlaws. The book is now here and allows us to find out if it continues the brilliance of the past books, or needs to be thrown into the Sarlacc Pit.
The book was released on August 19th by Dark Horse Books in partnership with Lucas Publishing and the developer of Star Wars Outlaws, Massive Entertainment. It’s worth noting that the copy I have is a US import, as its sales are restricted to America and parts of Canada. However, for those elsewhere, copies are slowly making their way over, but currently an import is the best way to get hold of the book.
I’ve long been anticipating this book, so let’s see if this revisit to the criminal underworld of Kay Vess and Nix was worth the wait!
Build Quality
Dark Horse are consistent in their formatting and that’s not a bad thing, you always get a well-made book and never have to worry about issues with the overall quality. The book comes with 224 pages in a 23.5 x 31cm hardcover like the vast majority of their artbooks. The paper choice and binding is very good as always, leaving me confident that it will not fall apart over time. It’s always short and sweet with a Dark Horse book for this part of a review, so all is well so far.
Content
Inside you’ll find a nice mix of content that covers the early ideas for the game, through to its marketing. Beginning with a chapter for it conception, it moves on to the characters, locations, technology, and ends with storyboards and key art. It packs a lot in and does a fantastic job at showing not just what they ended up using, but a lot of unused concepts too.
The Conception chapter highlights immediately that this book explores the entire development, as it focuses on the earliest ideas, including paper sketches and 'blue sky' concept art that explores what the game could eventually be. These allow the reader to see the seeds of what eventually became Star Wars Outlaws and is one of the highlights of the book.
Of course, a part players will look forward to is the artwork for the fan-favourite companion Nix, who gets a nice batch of spreads that highlights the development of his design. It’s well presented and shows how the team looked at different ideas before narrowing it down to what we see in the game. This is also the approach to Kay, her speeder and the Trailblazer too, all much more interesting than just slight variations of a final design.
Environment art makes up the bulk of the book, from the towns and outposts, to open areas and planet orbits, all getting the showcase they deserve. What I particularly like here is that, like what I found in The Art of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, most of the location art includes characters or active scenes, making them much more interesting than an empty area. This gives the images life and you can see how the game ended up with well crafted populated areas, because it already had not just the designs, but the feel of these places too, including the new world of Toshara and the instantly recognizable Tatooine.
The art itself is spectacular as expected, although I review books and not the talent of the people at the studio, it’s hard not to mention the quality on display. Star Wars has had some of the greatest artists in the industry work on the franchise, including Ralph McQuarrie, Doug Chiang and Ryan Church, so there is a lot to live up to. Fortunately, the incredible gallery of artwork for its galaxy continues with exceptional art across the board from the team at the Ubisoft studio.
As well as the mix of content, another highlight definitely worth mentioning is the print quality that allows the art to shine. There are places here where the images are smaller, but where that may not look great in some books, here it is not a problem at all, with all of the details clearly visible on every page. The artists at Massive Entertainment will no doubt be pleased with the presentation of their work. The previews seen in this review give you an idea of what to expect, though can't ever do the quality justice, but this book stands out amongst many.
The text is well written and gives insights into the art direction and approach to the designs, as well as explaining the goals of the team at various stages. Some parts also give descriptions of the characters and worlds too. There’s not a huge amount to read, but they are effective in what they included as it adds interesting details without giving you hours of reading. Star Wars fans will also appreciate them sharing their inspirations and source material for the art, which includes the movies, shows, and books.
Credits
The artist credits are not on each page which unfortunate, but they are not excluded either, as a full list of names can be found in the back of the book. I always like to see them assigned to each image, but they did the next best thing and put their names and job titles on their own page for those that are interested in finding more from the artists.
Use of Space
The Art of Star Wars Outlaws has done a superb job at fitting a lot of art in, without it becoming a chaotic mess. The layouts are clear and easy to follow, with good placement of the text too. Many of the backgrounds are made of up large pieces of art, so smaller images are bordered off to keep them clearly separated with their text description. The placement of the art used outside the borders works really well and the print quality helps in getting more on each page when they chose to use smaller images.
Art that crosses the centre fold has minimum image loss, something that is problematic more often than not, so they have done a great job here. Text that is placed on top of images is used in areas that don’t obscure detail, showing it was clearly thought about carefully. Overall, they did really well to pack so much content in, without the art suffering for it.
Value
The book retails at $54.99, what you would expect from a Dark Horse artbook, so nothing unusual there. As always though, prices rise and fall and it's already no different for this release. Using Amazon as always to stay consistent, the price has dropped at the time of writing this on the US site to $48.15 shortly after being published, showing that it has already dipped, although this will of course fluctuate. This is all a fair price for what you get, the book is well made and comes with a lot of content, so I don’t think anyone will left feeling like they have been overcharged for this one.
For those outside of the US that aren't able to order the book locally, importing the book could increase the price. The copy here came from Amazon US and was still under £45, which is incredibly reasonable for a new book, so it may be a good option for those hoping to get more from Star Wars Outlaws.
Verdict
The artists had a lot to live up to when making the game, as did Dark Horse when making a Star Wars artbook, but fortunately for both, they have done a superb job and give fans something worthy of their shelf. The Art of Star Wars Outlaws continues the impressive legacy of Star Wars artbooks, showcasing incredible artwork in a well-designed book. If you’re a fan of the game or Star Wars in general, you’ll find a lot to enjoy here.
Those that are interested in buying a copy can order The Art of Star Wars Outlaws here;
