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Developers of the much-anticipated Star Wars Outlaws have talked about their approach to crafting gameplay experience for the first-ever Star Wars open-world game with hyperdrive and tons of locations to explore.
In a recent interview with Game Informer, the developers of the upcoming Star Wars Outlaws have shared some insights into their approach to designing a compelling space gameplay, which is yet to be shown to the public.
Set between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, the game follows the story of an outlaw scoundrel Kay Vess and her companion Nix as they travel across several planets, including familiar ones, like Tatooine, Kijimi, and Akiva, planning the greatest heist of the Outer Rim.
In the fashion of the Star Wars franchise, a game about a scoundrel adventure meant that space gameplay was a must to complement the world around it. As Brian Shea of Game Informer quotes Julian Gerighty, Star Wars Outlaws' Creative Director, "What would I like to do as an outlaw in Star Wars? It is stealth. It is combat. It is fisticuffs. It is hanging out at the cantina and having choices – meaningful choices – as a scoundrel, as an outlaw. It is flying. It is jumping on your speeder and going from one settlement to another. It's all of those things".
So, for the Star Wars Outlaw team, it was imperative to push not just the technology for realizing this ambition, but the design team to execute it at the highest possible quality level.
Image Credits: Massive Entertainment, Star Wars Outlaws
Image Credits: Massive Entertainment, Star Wars Outlaws
In his own gameplay session, Brian Shea was able to explore the underworld within the city walls of Mirogana. According to Art and World Director Benedikt Podlesnigg, there's a huge element of exploration in the game, "the openness, the vibrancy, the boldness of landscapes, visuals, and all these elements that you get from it just going with your speeder outside to find locations and exploring bits of the world". And of course, you will also take it to space.
As Julian Gerighty explained, planets and moons have an orbit around them that serves as an explorable area for Kay while aboard the Trailblazer, her ship. Once you reach the explorable area surrounding the planet or moon, you'll be able to hyperdrive into the orbit of your destination.
"This is problem-solving for video games, basically. We wanted to have an orbit around it with lots of different points of interest, things to do, battles to get in, places to explore.
So, 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 a planet. So, all of the space areas that we have are full of things to do."
Image Credits: Massive Entertainment, Star Wars Outlaws
Although Brian Shea didn't get to control the Trailblazer, he shared that the developers aim to appeal to a wide range of players by designing approachable gameplay for spaceflight:
"We wanted to make spaceflight as accessible, fun, and action-packed as possible. The controls are extremely easy to get into. There's always something to do.
It's fast to travel; you can hyperdrive at any moment, and there's combat, of course, both on an intimate dogfight scale but also on an epic scale too. And there's exploration. There's a lot of things to do in space", added Julian Gerighty.
Star Wars Outlaws is set to launch on August 30 across PC and consoles. Read the full article here and don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.