But I admire the work of Julian Gerighty, the creative director at Massive Entertainment who led the hugely successful multiplayer shooter series The Division. I heard he led this project.I had to pay attention. After playing “Star Wars Outlaws” for two hours, to my surprise, my passion for Star Wars was reignited.
It’s the simplicity of the concept. A single-player Star Wars digital experience The seamless open world is a real highlight, and when I took my protagonist, Kay Beth, to a bar and started talking to some gang members, the high visual and audio fidelity really made a difference. After all, Star Wars is High-tech special effects would change mass entertainment forever, and while it remains to be seen whether the game will explore new narrative themes, it at least tickles the right parts of nostalgia in a way that doesn’t feel like pandering.
“What we did when we started the project, with our very small core team, was to rediscover what Star Wars meant to us… that feeling we had when we had our old VHS tapes and played with our Kenner toys,” Gerrity told The Washington Post. “Before the internet, before streaming services, before sequels and prequels and TV shows, before you could find Star Wars everywhere, what was the imagination that captured my imagination? It was space… sorry, I can’t say space. It was a galaxy of matter, a galaxy where everything is possible.”
Riding Kay’s speeder bike through the desert of Tatooine is a visceral thrill. Being able to go where you want at your own pace is key. Electronic Arts Star Wars Jedi Games is a great, but linear, narrative adventure; Outlaws tries to make us feel like we’re living in that world.
This compelling illusion is brought to life through a space voyage in which players rocket their customizable spaceship from the Earth’s surface, penetrate the atmosphere, and head out to the stars. Starfield is a great game that features 1000 planets.“The Outlaws” failed to deliver an immersive space travel experience. Gerrity said “Outlaws” learned from another Ubisoft game, “Starlink: Battle for Atlas,” from 2018, in which a spaceship travels seamlessly between three planets.
“[‘Starlink’] “Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare was directed by a friend, and I met with the local tech team,” he said. “The problem they had was that the world felt a little small, the galaxy felt small. So the solution was not to make an entire planet. We focused on a small area, and we made it denser, and we filled it with handcrafted things that connect with the world, and make it flow into space and into orbit. The orbits around the planet are also level designed.” He added that the spaceship scenes in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare were also a source of inspiration.
Like the political world, the video game industry has been rocked by debate and uncontrollable anger over diversity and representation. Ubisoft has been a target recently for its upcoming Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, which stars Yasuke, a historical black warrior set in feudal Japan, while Kay has been criticized for her appearance.
“Kay is a relatable character, a small-time thief who finds her way through this story, making bad decisions, and has a lot of humour and humility and strength, which is what’s important to me. And she’s beautiful,” Gerrity said. “It doesn’t make sense to me, and it’s not worth engaging with. If you engage with people who are malicious, there’s no nuance, there’s no real dialogue, so all we can do is make the best game we can.”
It’s true that Kay feels like a great audience surrogate as he stumbles through the open world. Players can ally with or betray others. Factional relationships, like the gang relationships in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, have been missing from open-world formats for the past few years, and it’s exciting to see them in a Star Wars setting.
After the preview, I went to work for the day. When I got home, I was excited to play more Star Wars Outlaws to see what would happen if I betrayed the crime boss I’d just helped, or upgraded my speeder bike. Then I realized I didn’t actually own the game yet. I was sick with it. It felt good to be excited about Ubisoft’s open world games, and Star Wars, again.
