‘Star Wars Outlaws’ Devs Call Game “The Ultimate Scoundrel Fantasy” Plus Details On Toshara and Space Combat
The Star Wars Outlaws developers Massive Entertainment have done another interview speaking about the highly anticipated Star Wars video game, calling the game the “ultimate scoundrel fantasy” and speaking in a bit more detail about Toshara and space combat.
In an interview with Game Informer, associate narrative director John Björling expanded on their desire to make a video game about the scoundrel archetype.
We felt that one of the venues in Star Wars that, especially recently, hasn’t been explored as much is that of the scoundrel character. A relatable character, a rookie kind of taking their first steps into the galaxy, exploring the world, and really getting involved with the people and factions that make up the fabric of the galaxy. That was something that we knew very early on that we wanted to pursue: to have that personal story and really make the galaxy come to life.
Associate art director Marthe Jonkers explained how that thinking informed protagonist Kay Vess’ art design, including a hairpin that you can use to lockpick doors.
We put a lot of care into her design and what she’s wearing and how she looks to tell her story. She has a lot of elements in her design that tell a bit of her story. For example, she has a broken nose. She’s been through a lot; you can see that she has scars and stuff. She also has a hairpin; I love that element because she uses that to lockpick doors, and you can use that from the beginning to do some thieving.
Creative director Julian Gerighty also talked about creating a game starring a scoundrel, mentioning how the character would navigate the world with a stealthy approach. He then addressed the elephant in the room — creating a scoundrel game that doesn’t star Han Solo.
A scrappy underdog is going to use every trick in the book to get out of a tricky situation. Sometimes, a scoundrel should avoid getting into combat, so stealth became incredibly important for us as well, and having the choice of going in with your guns or sneaking around, that needs to be at the heart of every single encounter that we create.
Not once did [Han Solo] come up. We wanted to tell different stories with different main actors, as well.
While the subject of Han Solo never came up, the team did want to achieve the feel of a classic Star Wars story in the vein of the original trilogy, according to Björling.
It should feel like a classic matinee adventure. Gripping conflicts and challenges wrapped in explosive action, adventure, and suspense. But it’s also a space opera. You have to have that emotional tension, that character-driven drama.
Art and world director Benedikt Podlesnigg added some extra insight into the visual detail that goes along with this, rendering the visual style to make it recognizable from the movies.
We want the game to be like a realistic rendering style with the filmic treatment, the color grading materials, and the camera effects to ensure this authentic experience that we know from the original movies.
The interview then moved on to Toshara, and Gerighty explained his rule that every Star Wars planet should be inspired by a location from our own planet Earth. Toshara was a twist on the African savannah. He also talked about Toshara’s capital city Mirogana, and how the city was designed to be dense and compact.
There is a beauty and a simplicity in terms of the design of every single one of those locations that we’ve learned a lot from. It has to be familiar. It has to be something that you could almost recognize on Earth, but there’s always a twist. And in the case of Toshara, it’s these huge streaks of amberine, an amber-like material that’s translucent that forms part of the landscape, but it’s also within the cities.
If you open up the map, the location that we’ve built for Mirogana is quite compact. What we wanted to do is to have something that is very dense in activities rather than super expansive where you get lost, and there’s not much to do. It’s very, very focused on providing a dense, busy city experience.
Game Informer revealed that the first thing players should do upon visiting a new city or settlement is head to the local cantina, which will help give them the lay of the land and uncover new opportunities with the local syndicates. We can expect Toshara and its capital city to be primarily controlled by the Pykes, though other syndicates will be present in a smaller capacity too.
Gerighty also spoke about the space combat, which we saw a little bit in the first gameplay trailer, which allows for smaller dogfights and big set pieces. He also mentions that it won’t be a seamless open world — reaching the outer orbit of a planet will require a short hyperspace cutscene to reach the orbit of another planet.
You have space combat, space exploration, sense of travel, sense of movement. The combat can be very intimate dogfights, but it also can be large, epic set pieces.
For planets, we wanted to have an orbit around them with lots of different points of interest, things to do, battles to get in, places to explore. The orbits for each one of the moons or planets that we created had to be populated with lots of different things, and we didn’t want to create endless space, so you hyperdrive from the orbit of a planet to the orbit of another planet.
Gerighty was asked if there are any other recognizable faces that might pop up in the story outside of Jabba The Hutt and Qi’ra, and remained coy on the subject.
There are a few [recognizable] Star Wars characters that we’ll meet across the adventure.
Björling added that if any familiar characters were to appear, then it had to feel earned, rather than just including an easter egg or cameo for the sake of it.
There are tons of characters that you could pull in, and you could probably force some excuses for why that should happen, but if it isn’t earned by the character and the story, it will feel forced, and it’s not going to be enjoyable. Where we’ve made those calls of, like, ‘Who are the characters that she will cross paths with? Does it feel earned? Would she go there? How would she handle that?’ et cetera. That has been our mantra for doing this, and I think it feels so much more rewarding that way.
The interview also mentions how the reputation system and the duo of Kay and her pet Nix works, but it’s mostly details that have already been covered in previous interviews. Notably, you cannot gain or lose reputation with the Empire like with the criminal syndicates. Instead, they operate on a “wanted” system like in Grand Theft Auto, which increases in levels the more crimes you commit. The article also mentions that Kay’s speeder bike can be summoned at the press of a button, like in other Ubisoft open world games (Assassin’s Creed lets you summon a horse with a single button press, for example).
As we get closer to the summer, we should get another look at Star Wars Outlaws story and gameplay, as that is when video game trailer season hits. Expect more news over the coming months.
Josh is a huge Star Wars fan, who has spent far too much time wondering if any Star Wars character could defeat Thanos with all the Infinity Stones.
