While visiting Massive Entertainment to Be one of the first to own Star Wars Outlaws, I enjoyed playing through the stealth sequences, gunplay, conversations, and fast-paced open-world gameplay. However, one part of the Star Wars Outlaws puzzle that I haven't had a chance to experience firsthand is the space gameplay. Thankfully, in addition to playing a bit of Star Wars Outlaws during my time in Malmö, Sweden, I also got a chance to ask the game's developers how it works when you hop on your ship and leave the planet or moon.
In Star Wars Outlaws, you play as Kay Vess and her companion Nix as they travel around the galaxy to locations both familiar and new. Players can land and explore planets and moons such as Tatooine, Kijimi, Akiva, and Toshara, but when Kay enters her ship, Pioneers, she can go into orbit and explore. The Pioneers was created in close collaboration with Lucasfilm Games to ensure it felt right for the Star Wars galaxy. Elements like silhouette, realism, and personality are all considered to create something believable in the galaxy.
For the Star Wars Outlaws team, the game's foundation of creating a scoundrel adventure meant that space gameplay was a must to complement the over-world element. “What we're trying to figure out is, 'How do we create a gaming experience with tons of different possibilities?' because we always knew that we wanted to make an open world game that was big and had space travel, fast driving, several planets, several locations to explore,” said the creative director. “I think it's an outlaw's fantasy,” said Julian Gerighty. That's really when you think, 'What do I want to do as an outlaw in Star Wars?' That's sneaky. That's the war. He's hanging out at the cantina and making choices – meaningful choices – like a scoundrel, like an outlaw. It is rushing from one place to another. other. That's all of those things. So it was important for us to have that ambition and push not only the technology but also the design team to get all of that at the highest quality level possible.”
Most of my gameplay time was spent exploring Toshara's underworld, specifically within the city walls of Mirogana. Near the end, however, I got the chance to venture outside the wall on Kay's speedboat. “There's a huge element of discovery – the openness, the vibrancy, the boldness of the landscape, the imagery and all these elements that you get from it just by going with your speeder. you go out to find places and explore parts of the world,” says art and world director Benedikt Podlesnigg. “And from there, you also have the opportunity among the stars. We fly our ship into space, which is vast but also very risky. It's amazing, lucrative but also has a lot of unknowns about it.”
Although I couldn't see it, Podlesnigg describes how one of his recent gaming sessions went. After exploring Toshara, he jumped in Pioneers and took it into orbit because he heard some information that someone in the space station was looking for an item in his possession. As Gerighty explained to me, planets and moons orbit around them, serving as Kay's explorable areas while on board. Pioneers. When you reach the edge of the explorable area around the planet or moon, you accelerate into your destination's orbit.
“This is basically a problem-solver for video games,” Gerighty said. “We want to have an orbit around it with lots of different sights, things to do, battles to engage in, places to explore. So orbits for each moon or planet that we create has to be filled with a lot of different things and we don't want to create infinite space, so you accelerate from the orbit of a planet to the orbit of a planet All the areas of space that we have have a lot of work to do.”
When Podlesnigg reaches space during his playthrough, he receives an emergency signal that a freighter is under attack, so he rushes to their location to help them fight off the attackers. Finally, he landed on a space station. While he couldn't go into detail about how big these space stations are, there's still plenty to do, including merchant vendors and possibly some side missions.
I'm not allowed to touch the controller while Kay is controlling it Pioneers, but the team hopes to attract more players by creating accessible gameplay for space flight. “We want to make space flight as accessible, fun and action-packed as possible,” Gerighty said. “The controls are extremely easy to use. There's always something to do. Movement is fast; you can speed up at any time and of course there's combat, both on an intimate dogfight scale but also on an epic scale. And there's a lot of exploration to be done in space.”
I assume we'll eventually get our hands on space games before the release of Star Wars Outlaws and beyond Complex reputation system, this element is one of my most appealing parts of the game currently. Star Wars Outlaws launches August 30 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. For more exclusive information on Massive Entertainment's upcoming scoundrel adventure, visit our news hub in the banner below!
