We love Star Wars and we love Star Wars video games. Star Wars Outlaws is the latest action-adventure game set in the iconic Star Wars universe, offering players an immersive experience filled with intense battles, intricate storylines, and expansive open-world exploration. To make the most out of this game, having the best controller and gameplay settings is crucial. In this guide, we’ll share our best controller and gameplay settings as well as a few helpful tips to get you started in your Star Wars Outlaws adventure.

Before you start a new game, as always, you have to make sure your equipment is up to scratch. Upgrade your controller with a pair of KontrolFreek thumbsticks to enhance your in-game movement, control, and accuracy, greatly enhancing your gameplay experience. KontrolFreek thumbsticks come in various heights and shapes. The increased height provides greater leverage, allowing for more precise movements and better aim control. This is particularly useful in a game like "Star Wars Outlaws," where precise aiming can be the difference between life and death.

KontrolFreek thumbsticks are designed with ergonomics in mind, reducing strain during long gaming sessions. Their textured surface ensures a better grip, preventing your thumbs from slipping during intense gameplay moments. KontrolFreek offers a variety of thumbsticks tailored to different playstyles and preferences. Whether you need a higher stick for precision or a lower one for quick movements, there’s a KontrolFreek option for you. These thumbsticks are easy to install and remove, allowing you to switch between different types depending on your gameplay needs.

Because Star Wars Outlaws is an open world RPG and a Shooter, we recommend either Action Adventure thumbsticks or FPS thumbsticks. If you have different pairs of KontrolFreeks you can even run one Action Adventure and one FPS thumbstick. We play Star Wars Outlaws with a Mid-Rise Lotus Action Adventure stick on the left thumbstick for enhanced movement control and High-Rise Crystal Galaxy FPS stick on the right analog for improved accuracy when aiming. Feel free to try out different stick heights, shapes, and designs to find the combination that feels best for your controller, your hands, and the games you play!

Controller Settings

First, we swapped our Control Layout to Alternate. This swaps our melee and interact inputs. On Alternate, interact is mapped to square and melee is the right thumbstick, which is more consistent with other games we play so that’s easier for our muscle memory.

Look Sensitivity is always personal preference, but our general rule of thumb is that we want to be able to quickly and consistently perform a 180degree turn. For us, a sensitivity of 7 strikes a balance between precision aiming and quick camera movement. We are

Deadzone is an important setting to be aware of if you ever need it. If your controller is picking up unintended inputs on your left stick or right stick you may want to adjust these settings to make the threshold greater before your controller picks up those inputs. By default, Star Wars Outlaws plays it safe and sets our Deadzones way too high for most controllers. We recommend setting each Inner Deadzone to the lowest number without unintended inputs. This will make your controller as responsive and reliable as possible! 

We have Vibration and Adaptive Triggers turned Off because our controller doesn’t have those features, but you may want to turn those settings on or adjust them for a more immersive experience.

Gameplay Settings

When you start a new game in Star Wars Outlaws, the game will run you through this list of accessibility preset settings to help tailor your adventure to your preferences.

Gameplay presets allow you to customize specific aspects of the difficulty or select a preset difficulty. You can change these settings at any point in the game if you are struggling or want more of a challenge. Custom Gameplay settings we changed include:

Always Sprint makes it so that Kay defaults to sprinting when the left stick is pressed forward. This combined with changing your controller layout to alternate will reduce the amount of pressing the thumbstick buttons you will have to do. Pressing the thumbstick buttons too much can reduce the lifespan of your controller by causing drift or jitter, so we always try to minimize using these inputs whenever possible.

Minimal HUD enhances immersion by reducing on-screen clutter, making the game feel more cinematic.

Essential Information Only displays critical information like health, ammo, and mission objectives while hiding less important elements.

Camera Settings

You can turn on Explorer Mode to eliminate the in-game prompts you will see for elements you can interact with.

Set to a wider FOV to enhance situational awareness during exploration and combat. We set our View Angle to 100 and our Aiming Angle to 70.

We always turn graphical settings like film grain, motion blur, and camera shake off.

Gameplay Tips

Given that this game just came out, we will have more tips and tricks to share as we get to spend more time in Star Wars Outlaws, but these should help you get started.

Save Your Credits: As an outlaw, Kay doesn’t start her adventure with a lot of credits to her name. You’ll find all kinds of ways to spend your credits, such as buying weapons, armor, and materials from merchants or gambling in the various games around the Galaxy. We recommend resisting the urge to spend your credits early on, unless you really have to to progress the story forward. Feel free to try your hand at Sabaac, but don’t spend all your credits, and don’t gamble on the fathier races unless you find a tip on who the next winner is. One of the best ways to spend your credits is buying intel from merchants, which lead to side quests that can reward credits, materials, and equipment. You’ll also be able to find a lot of the equipment that merchants sell for free out in the world.

Pick a Faction: Gangs run the galactic underworld. The story will teach you how to increase your reputation with certain gangs, but more often than not, increasing your reputation with one gang reduces reputation with another. We recommend going into the menu early on and looking at the rewards for each gang and select 1 or 2 gangs that the rewards most closely align with your playstyle. For example, stealth is a huge part of Star Wars Outlaws, and the Crimson Dawn equipment has a lot of perks that improve stealth gameplay, so we chose to side with the Crimson Dawn at our first few opportunities to improve our rank with them so we can use that equipment in our game. You also want to consider who own most of the territory you are currently questing in, such as on Toshara, where the Pykes own a lot of territory. You’ll find it a lot easier to navigate Toshara and Mirogana if you have a good reputation with the Pykes, because then they will allow you to walk around their territory without attacking. Faction reputation will be a big component in the entire game so make a plan for which faction you want to max out first so you can take advantage of those perks!

Use and Upgrade All Your Tools, Weapons, and Abilities: Stealth and Combat in Star Wars Outlaws can be a little tricky, especially early on. As we mentioned before, you can always choose to turn the difficulty down if you are struggling but using and upgrading the tools at your disposal will also make the game easier. The best tool at your disposal is your best friend Nix! Use Nix to distract and attack your enemies, unlock doors, collect loot, and so much more! As you explore the vast worlds of Star Wars outlaws, you’ll encounter puzzles that you don’t know how to solve yet, which is totally okay. Some doors and terminals you won’t be able to use until you upgrade your blaster or slicer tools. We recommend focusing on the main story missions early on, as these will be how you unlock additional tools and blaster mods for solving some of those more advanced puzzles you’ll find. While you progress through the main story you will encounter Experts that can teach you and upgrade your in-game abilities by completing side objectives, such as “Fast Talking”, which we unlocked by using Nix to distract enemies while Kay stealthily takes them out. Check the Abilities page each time you unlock a new expert to make sure you are working on unlocking and upgrading your abilities as you play the game.

We are absolutely loving this game, so be sure to check back in for more tips and tricks as we spend more time with Kay and Nix! Check out our other KontrolFreek Blogs for controller tips to upgrade your play in your favorite games! Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok to stay up to date on the latest Star Wars Outlaws content and join our Twitch streams for some always entertaining gameplay and chances to win awesome prizes from KontrolFreek and SteelSeries!