Summary
Star Wars Outlawswill take players to never-before-seen places as Kay Vess, a thief living in the Outer Rim. Instead of the typical hero story starring Jedis and Rebels, the title has opted for a much more personal, morally ambiguous story of a quest to pull off an epic heist. It marks the first truly open-world entry in franchise history, promising a slew of different places for players to explore, andScreen Rantspoke with creative director Julian Gerighty to find out more.
Themany planets inOutlawsare a mix of existing locales like Tatooine and new creations, like the savanna-inspired Toshara. Though the criminal life is a tough one, Kay won’t be alone - the adorable merqaal Nix, axolotl-like creature, will be by her side along the way. The title takes place in a rarely-explored part of the IP’s timeline,taking place between the events ofThe Empire Strikes BackandReturn of the Jedi.
“You’ll Want To Push Your Reputation As High As Possible”: Star Wars Outlaws' Syndicate Rewards Explained By Dev
Players will be able to form alliances with some of the Outer Rim’s major syndicates in Star Wars Outlaws, with each group offering unique rewards.
Screen Rant Interviews Julian Gerighty, The Creative Director Behind Star Wars Outlaws
The Universe Timeline, Biggest Inspirations & Making Players Feel Like A True Scoundrel
Screen Rant: First, I would love to talk about how you guys landed on this point in the timeline for the game, because it’s one that hasn’t been explored for quite a while.
Julian Gerighty: It was actually a suggestion from Lucasfilm Games. It was something that we came to them with this idea of an open world scoundrel game, and they took a beat and said, “There is this one year period between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi that is perfect.” The galaxy is in chaos. The Empire has just won this battle at Hoth. The rebels are retreating. It’s the perfect moment to have a scoundrel story, because the criminal syndicates are flourishing and that’s where it comes from. So it was actually their suggestion - don’t get me wrong, it’s my favorite period in Star Wars, so it was just really, really a lot of joy hearing that that was what they saw this game featuring.
What kind of challenges come alongside - you have these existing pieces of lore that you’re taking chunks of like the Crimson Dawn and that sort of thing, but also blending in new stuff like there’s the Ashiga Clan. How is it balancing those two elements?
Julian Gerighty: I think it’s super important, because in a way you don’t want something to just repeat on itself and to be the same things again and again. You want to bring something new, so that’s the challenge for the team is working on what can we do that brings something new to Star Wars.
But at the same time, fans and people who just know Star Wars casually, they need some fixed points to find the balance between what they know and what is completely new too. It’s success when people don’t know whether this was already featured in a book or in a movie versus completely new for Star Wars Outlaws.
When you’re creating these entirely new elements, what are you looking at to determine this is how we know it’ll fit in with the rest of the world?
Julian Gerighty: Again, very close collaboration with Lucasfilm Games. It’s their team that guarantees the authenticity of what we do. That could be from some super minute detail - the way a ship lands, the way the smoke cannons go off when the ship lands, to something that has to be iconic in its shape language like the Starship itself or something that is brand new, like a new creature like Nix, to the franchise. All of those things are done with a lot of different iterations with Lucasfilm Games so we guarantee that it feels authentic with the same sort of design principles that were in the original Star Wars movies.
Something that’s so cool is it’s not only these new syndicates and stuff like that being introduced, it’s entirely new planets like Toshara. How do you even start an undertaking like that where you’re building a culture and a world from the ground up, essentially?
Julian Gerighty: It’s something where you think you know Star Wars, but until you start building something for Star Wars, you don’t realize how much goes into it and how much simplicity and design rules we have to follow to make it feel authentic. If you take Tatooine, Tatooine is a great example of something that looks and feels very familiar to us. It looks like a desert planet, it looks like Tunisia, but adding the detail of two suns, incredible creatures roaming the desert that are completely alien, you put a twist on it so it’s familiar and yet alien.
For Toshara, that was taking inspiration from the African savanna and adding these huge mountains built out of rock and amber and making the city sandwiched in between different layers. Again, it feels familiar, but there are some elements that are completely alien and that’s genuinely the heart of design for Star Wars.
This game through and through - I mean, it’s even in the name - but it’s really cultivating the feeling of being an outlaw in the world, and it’s exploring this seedy underbelly part that we don’t really get to see. How were you and the team trying to make sure that the player is always getting that feeling viscerally of, “I’m an outlaw. I’m becoming a scoundrel.”
Julian Gerighty: It’s genuinely the focus of everything. Every decision we take is: it needs to be an outlaw experience. It needs to be a scoundrel experience. It needs to be an open-world scoundrel experience. That was the heart of the first ever communication that we sent to the team, was this is what the game is going to be about.
All the decisions about every single feature, every single system within the game, every character that you’re going to meet is, does this make sense for an outlaw? If it’s dealing with the criminal syndicates and bouncing in between the reputation that you have with The Hutts or The Pykes, that’s truly an outlaw thing to do. The planets that you go to, all hives of scum and villainy, all places with criminal syndicates and different influence plus an Empire presence, so it allows the player to really truly embrace that outlaw lifestyle.
A lot of previousStar Warsgames and properties are tackling these very big sort of good-versus-evil concepts, whereas this is almost more of a morally ambiguous, extremely character driven story that you’re telling. When you’re creating a brand new protagonist where it is that super character-focused story, so much is hinging on this protagonist that you’re creating, how are you building that supremely interesting person from the ground up?
Julian Gerighty: I think character is incredibly important, but agency and player agency with that author character is just as important. For the character, very clearly what we wanted to do was to make them as relatable as possible. This isn’t a Jedi story, it’s not a story about the Empire, it’s not a story about the Rebels. It’s ambiguous, right? Your actions are going to determine whether you are seen as somebody who’s good or somebody who’s a little bit of a rogue, an outlaw, and that’s super important to us.
The relatability of the character comes through everything. The fact that they don’t have super powers, the fact that they have a blaster, that they’re good at melee fighting or fisticuffs, the fact that they’re not perfect, they’re not the coolest character on earth, they’re just a rookie thief that finds themselves catapulted into this incredible adventure, in dangers, in situations that they would never have believed that they could be in. But all for the pursuit of freedom of pure agency, and that’s really linked with the core concept of the game too.
With that player agency, just how much of where the storyline ends up are players controlling with the decisions they make?
Julian Gerighty: It’s an awesome question. The story is linear, so every player will end up at the same point of the story. That’s the conclusion of this first step into the underworld. But the reputation system and how you manage your reputation with the different criminal syndicates, that’s going to be unique to every player and unique to their decisions within the story, so by the end of the game, your reputation with The Pykes is going to be absolutely a consequence of every single decision that you’ve made.
Can you talk a little bit about - obviously you’re able to’t give that much away - but in terms of decisions, is it things like who you’re killing? Is it things like what you’re choosing to steal?
Julian Gerighty: It’s exactly those things. Every main sort of quest that we have in the game, at its heart it often has a dilemma. Do you steal this information for The Pykes or do you steal it for the Ashiga Clan? If you give it to The Pykes, then the Ashiga Clan are going to be very disappointed in you and ding your reputation there. That reputation is important, because the friendlier you are with each one of the criminal factions, the more access you’ll have into their strongholds, the more access you’ll have to their special equipment. You’ll get discounts on their special equipment. You’ll get contracts and quests that are exclusive to that higher level of reputation and even exclusive vanity with gameplay features attached to those costume pieces.
It’s a real motivation for you to push your reputation as high as possible. On the other side of the spectrum, if you’re in terrible relationship with the syndicate, they’re going to send people after you, so you’re going to have to manage those with much like spinning plates.
You were mentioning with places like Toshara, they’re inspired by the African savanna. Where do you land on an inspiration like that in the first place when you’re creating these entirely new areas?
Julian Gerighty: I think there, the lens we took for it was, “How do we create an open world that feels very different from things that we’ve already seen in Star Wars, but that feels very authentic to Star Wars as well?” We knew we were going to Tatooine, we knew we were going to Kijimi and Akiva, so we felt that the visual variety and gameplay variety that we could bring with something inspired by the African savanna was very, very different.
Just talking about inspiration in general, have there been any pieces of media,Star Warsor otherwise, that you’ve found yourself taking particular inspiration from on this project?
Julian Gerighty: Great question. I think the original trilogy is where we got the most inspiration, because fundamentally that was our connection with the really strong emotions that we had linked to Star Wars. But apart from that, Rogue One takes the original trilogy and uses all of these packages of new technologies for its execution, and that was very important for us too. What we did was take a lot of references and inspiration from the overall visual execution of a modern film, but with a seventies aesthetic retro-futurist aesthetic.
If you saw when you were playing, the presentation is in ultra widescreen, that’s on by default, but you can change it to the aspect ratio that you want. But there’s a lens project, there’s a lens that we’ve created within Snowdrop that allows us to replicate the lenses of the cameras of the 1970s, with the lens flare, the breathing, the vignetting, all of these technical things that kind of subconsciously place you in the middle of a cinematic seventies, retro futuristic Star Wars adventure. That was very important. Very much inspired by Rogue 1.
Do you have, of the new areas that are in the game, a favorite that you just particularly love being in?
Julian Gerighty: I love Kijimi. It’s frozen, it’s cold, but there are hot spots. There’s a bath house. The cantina has lots of steam and smoke in it. Somehow it feels homey as well as dangerous because it’s a city of thieves, so it feels very different from all of the other areas.
Nix is also so adorable, and in an interview I was doing before, they had mentioned it was inspired by a pet. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Julian Gerighty: I don’t want to say it’s inspired by my dog, I don’t want to not say it’s inspired by my dog. But it really is this, what we wanted to do at its heart was a companion that didn’t leave your side and a companion that was lovable and adorable and super cute, but at the same time super fierce and ready to fight for you. Having that juxtaposition there, taking inspiration from armadillos, from axolotls, from our pets, our dogs, and our cats, we created something that really feels authentic to Star Wars and very relatable as well. If you have a pet, if have a dog or a cat, it’s a very relatable relationship as well.
Something that was really noticeable during the time that I got with the game today is it’s not only aesthetically interesting, but also just the way that you are traversing across the world is consistently varying and engaging. What is it like making a world like that for the player, where it’s both supposed to be aesthetically interesting, but also full of all these secrets and strange ways to get around?
Julian Gerighty: It’s very tough. It’s not easy. Making video games is not easy, and making a game that has a lot of different ways to explore on foot, on your Speeder, in the ship, providing a dynamic world and a world that’s filled with secrets and things to discover.
But it’s really what we wanted to do when we took the challenge of, “Okay, it’s an open-world Star Wars game,” that was part of the deal. Being an outlaw, you need a Speeder. Being an outlaw, you need a Starship. All of those things were kind of inbuilt from that first day where we decided this is what we want to do.
