Remember Wordle? The game that took over our phones in 2021 and 2022, with everyone trying to guess the word of the day.
I was surprised to see Wordle pop up in Star Wars Outlaws as a hacking minigame. It felt like a smart twist on a game people still play while sipping coffee, during lunch breaks, or before bed. But like many open-world games, Outlaws overdoes it and loses the charm.
The rules are similar, though they’ve been adjusted for different difficulties and given a space-fantasy touch. As Kay Vess, you get a limited number of tries to “slice” or hack a passkey using symbols. You need to find the right symbols in the right order. If you use a wrong symbol, it’s discarded; if it’s correct but in the wrong spot, it turns yellow; if it’s right and in the right place, it turns green. Anyone who’s played Wordle will recognize this.
At first glance, it sounds fun, right? It is! Until it gets repetitive. Wordle is popular because it’s quick and simple. Even my parents who don’t play video games still send me their scores every morning. It’s easy to get into and makes for fun chats. Did you solve today’s puzzle in fewer tries than me? How long is your streak?
But Star Wars Outlaws’ version misses these points entirely. After just a few rounds of “Star Wordles,” it becomes clear that something is off. The mechanics are identical to Wordle, so that’s not the issue. The problem is that they didn’t consider what makes Wordle special.
In Outlaws, there’s no competitive element. It’s just you playing alone without sharing scores or streaks. The difficulty varies with the story, sometimes making puzzles too easy with just three characters to guess from a small set of symbols. But worst of all is how often the game forces you to play Wordle.
It’s mind-boggling how someone thought it would be fun to do this over and over in one game. I can’t say exactly how many times I had to play this minigame in my 17-hour playthrough, but it felt like too many times for sure.
Fans don’t like doing the same thing repeatedly without reason.
Looking back at my time with Outlaws, I estimate I played Wordle 3-4 times per hour on average! That’s an absurd amount for any game loop and shows a bigger issue with these large open-world games.
These huge games need to justify their $70 price tag by offering dozens of hours of gameplay. So they fill the world with things to do, even if those things get boring quickly—like climbing towers or collecting useless items. Outlaws shows that even beloved puzzles can become tedious when overused.
Wordle’s popularity makes it an initially good idea for a minigame because everyone knows about it even if they don’t play anymore. But making it so common within a video game setting misses what makes it fun and ends up feeling like a waste of time.
