The open world action game Star Wars Outlaws is coming out next month, and developer Massive Entertainment has already shown off some of the speeding bikes and laser trading in various trailers. But lately they’ve been talking a bit more about the player’s dirty travels through the galaxy, including how big some of the explorable planets will be and what happens when you piss off the Hutts. In short, you will have a price on your head. It makes sense.
“Your reputation moving in the positive direction unlocks a lot of things for you,” says Mathias Karlson, game director at Massive, telling IGN all about the different factions in the game. Getting comfortable with the Hutts, Pykes, Ashiga Clan, and Crimson Dawn will allow you to enter certain areas without being treated as hostile, for example, or can unlock landing pads in new locations. It can also get you discounts with trickier dealers, leading to some “exotic rewards”.
“But if you really get on their bad side, that’s another thing you’re going to feel dynamically in the game, because they actually send hit squads for you in the open world to take you out.”
Sounds like some of those emergent games I’ve heard so much about. But it also goes the other way around, with a good reputation sometimes making for instant allies during a fight, says Karlson.
“If, for whatever reason, you end up on a quest and you’re being chased by the Empire, and you cross paths with a syndicate that you have a really good reputation with at the moment, they might join in and help you out,” he says. .
This sounds familiar. The Division series (Massive’s previous work) often sees different factions engage in petty gunfights with each other, and Far Cry’s warring freedom fighters often clash with the enemy when you’re around. But neither is fully tied to a reputation system. The strike squads also look interesting, but again this might remind people of the mercenaries that would hunt you down in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, for example. Don’t get me wrong, open world Star Wars sounds cool. But this is a Ubisoft game after all, and they’re not ones to stray from a formula.
Elsewhere in the IGN video, the developers talk about the scale of the planets you’ll be traversing. They compare the size of some planets to two or three zones in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and say that you can speed bike across the playable surface of one of these planets, Toshara, in about five minutes.
“[It] It doesn’t sound like a lot,” says Julian Gerighty, creative director at Massive, “but once you’re committed it’s a pretty big amount and you’re always going to get distracted.”
Some of this distraction may come in the form of geographical easter eggs, landscapes and areas that fans may want to visit.
“We can lean into the virtual tourism aspect of, ‘Hey, what’s the distance between the moisture farms and Mos Eisley and the winery?'” Gerighty says. “There’s a linear roller coaster story, a golden path, if you will. And about that , of course, there is the open world.
“There’s a very structured introduction that leads you to crash on Toshara, which is a moon we created with LucasFilm Games,” he says. “And once you finish the sort of linear narrative in Toshara, the other planets open up and it becomes completely non-linear and you can choose to deal with them [worlds] any way you want.”
Everything I see about Star Wars Outlaws reminds me how much I love the visual design of Lucas’ interstellar opera. But I’m also under no illusions about the safari of icons that Ubisoft’s open worlds usually offer. So consider it my satisfied eye, but unwavering expectations. IGN’s video, on the other hand, is pretty exhaustive and contains an impressive amount of information, so it’s worth watching if you’re rubbing your Mon Calamari mitts with anticipatory glee.