‘Star Wars: Outlaws’ Will Not Feel Too Big to Finish, According to Developer
The creative team working on Star Wars: Outlaws (creative director Julian Gerighty and narrative director Navid Khavari) have explained that there won’t be so much to do in the new open-world title set in the galaxy far, far away that it will feel like there’s too much to do.
Upon hearing that report the maps in the game will dwarf the maps seen in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, some fans have wondered if the game might be a bit too ambitious in its scope for more casual players to enjoy. Speaking with IGN, Gerighty reassured players that Star Wars: Outlaws will not be too big of a title for all but the most committed to enjoy:
“Our objective is to really get people into a very dense, rich adventure, open-world adventure that they can explore at their own rhythm. So it is absolutely not a 200 or 300 hour epic unfinishable RPG. This is a very focused action-adventure RPG that will take people on a ride and is very manageable.”
Meanwhile, Khavari emphasized that the emphasis of the game is on allowing players to experience the journey of protagonist Kay Vess, and that the environment serves the character:
“We’ve talked about this a lot on the team is that yes, we’re building open worlds, we’re building bustling cities and cantinas and wide open plains, but we always try to approach it from a place of character, from a place of story and realizing that this might be Kay Vess’ first entry into a planet like Toshara that we’ve crafted for this. So that’s always in top of mind, is fusing that narrative element with the game.”
Khavari shifted detail toward the gameplay itself, indicating that while there will be an abundance of things to do outside of the main narrative, players should not feel overwhelmed:
“I think our job is to make sure that the player organizes their experience according to their desires. That’s one of the big pluses with an open world game is the agency of the player. So if we do our job right, it’ll be so dense and so rich with different distractions that we won’t have to rely on so many UI indications for them.”
Another IGN interview with Gerighty and Khavari also had Lucasfilm’s Matt Martin talk about the ambitions for the title. Martin noted that Toshara, a moon with a design heavily inspired by the look of East Africa, exemplifies the “80/20” rule of Star Wars environmental design:
“When we’re working on anything in the Star Wars world, at Lucasfilm, we have what we call the 80/20 rule where it’s 80% familiar, 20% alien, 20% fantastical. I think Toshara is a great example of that where it does have that grounded Star Wars feel, where we could go to East Africa and shoot it if this was a live action thing. Then you have the amberine or the big mound city and that brings in that 20% fantasy.”
Martin reflected positively on the experience of making Star Wars: Outlaws a reality, and stated that he has greatly enjoyed working with the creative team on the project:
“I love it because it’s clear that the team cares that much. It is, it’s a really great, we work and we’re in meetings every week. Sometimes it’s talking about the nitty gritty, the details exactly like you’re getting at. I think it’s that level of authenticity and care that’s going to make this feel really special, especially as an open world game where you as a player can go explore whatever you want and see whatever you want, and we will have had to think of what’s there.”
Khavri also said that he thought that the story’s era – between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi – lent itself well to the story that they wanted to tell with their scoundrel main character:
“We actually found [the fact that we set our story between two movies] to be a bit of an advantage. It might sound funny, but the fact that there’s been so much written about the Empire and the rebellion during that period, really we were just talking about this and it really came organically that this is when the syndicates and the underworld are thriving. There is so much story to tell there and to have a character like Kay, who’s not a Jedi or a Sith or anything like that, she is a thief who’s just trying to get by to step into the underworld and navigate her reputation with these syndicates. There’s so much to tell…
When you look at our open worlds at Ubisoft, you have to really get into all the layers that will create that world, so demographics, politics, the characters you’re going to run into. In Toshara’s case, it’s having Imperials and Syndicates trading and being and having some corruption, all those layers. We worked so hard with the world team to research and the narrative teams to factor in so that when you approach this game, you really are stepping into Star Wars. The wonderful thing is that every conversation we have, whether it’s about a biome or whether it’s about a character or an activity or an artifact, it always comes from a place of character. This might be Kay seeing this for the first time. How would she react to it?”
Gerighty noted that how most players will have different story experiences based on their interactions with the Empire and the various Syndicates, which will drive gameplay and story progression:
“It’s something that we’re super, super proud of because every single one of the locations that we decided upon were decided upon presence of the Empire, one, and presence of the Syndicates, two, so that both the wanted system and the reputation system for the player really clicked. The reputation system is you as Kay building positive or negative reputations with the different criminal Syndicates. The better reputation you have, the better jobs you’ll get, the better prices you’ll get in their stores. You’ll get more access to their faction territories.
But if that relationship goes sour, they’re going to send people after you. It’s all about playing the Syndicates off one another, making choices, dilemmas in terms of how you hand in a quest, that type of thing. At the end of the game, every player will have a different profile in terms of their adventure through the reputation and the high stakes of the scoundrel lifestyle with the Syndicates.”
Khavri closed things off with a statement saying that he can’t wait for players to get behind Kay Vess and experience her story:
“I think we are just unbelievably excited to tell a crafted narrative around a character like Kay Vess that is so authentically a scoundrel as could possibly be. She really is the anchor of the game and the performance as well that Humberly González is bringing to Kay is bringing so much heart, so much humor that I really think players are just going to love experiencing her journey.”
Star Wars: Outlaws showcases the criminal underworld during the waning days of the Galactic Empire. Players will step into the shoes of Kay Vess, who works alongside ND-5, a modified BX-Series Commando Battle Droid, and her pet alien creature Nix. Under the recommendation of the mysterious Jaylen, Nix and her allies will go on a journey that will have her fight against the Empire and the various crime syndicates working parallel to them. This motley crew will explore a variety of open-world environments across the galaxy far, far away using their wit and will to survive.
Star Wars: Outlaws will be released sometime in 2024.
Grant has been a fan of Star Wars for as long as he can remember, having seen every movie on the big screen. When he’s not hard at work with his college studies, he keeps himself busy by reporting on all kinds of Star Wars news for SWNN and general movie news on the sister site, Movie News Net. He served as a frequent commentator on SWNN’s The Resistance Broadcast.
