If you were worried that Star Wars Outlaws was going to end up being an infinite Ubisoft timesink ala Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, the developers at Massive Entertainment want to put you at ease, noting that the experience will be «very manageable».
25.07.2023 - 20:55 / ign.com / Julian Gerighty / Kay Vess / Navid Khavari / Be A
Ubisoft has a penchant for making long games. A completionist run in Assassin's Creed Valhalla run can take up to 143 hours according to HowLongtoBeat, and some fans are worried that Star Wars Outlaws may be more of the same.
The concerns stem from a recent interview confirming that a Star Wars Outlaws planet will comprise "two to three zones" from Assassin's Creed Valhalla. One of the main criticisms of Valhalla was that it felt bloated with content that many players felt underwhelming, which was exemplified by its huge number of map icons — an Ubisoft staple.
Speaking with IGN during San Diego Comic-Con, creative director Julian Gerighty and narrative director Navid Khavari addressed the question of what they consider to be "too big" in Star Wars Outlaws. Gerighty responded that "too big is a game that people don't manage to play, enjoy, and finish."
"Our objective is to really get people into a very dense, rich adventure, open world adventure that they can explore at their own rhythm," Gerighty said. "So it is absolutely not a 200 or 300 hour epic unfinishable RPG. This is a very focused action-adventure RPG that will take people on a ride and is very manageable."
Khavari added that Ubisoft wants players to "experience Kay Vess' journey."
"We've talked about this a lot on the team is that yes, we're building open worlds, we're building bustling cities and cantinas and wide open plains, but we always try to approach it from a place of character, from a place of story and realizing that this might be Kay Vess' first entry into a planet like Toshara that we've crafted for this. So that's always in top of mind, is fusing that narrative element with the game."
Billed as an open world Star Wars adventure featuring Kay Vess as a newly-minted scoundrel, Star Wars Outlaws will let players explore multiple worlds, navigate the politics of the galaxy's criminal syndicates, and take on missions from Jabba the Hutt (or just betray him, whereupon the famously vengeful hunt will send out the bounty hunters).
Star Wars Outlaws was first revealed during Summer Game Fest and subsequently shown in greater detail at San Diego Comic-Con, with Ubisoft discussing the process of crafting a fully-explorable Tatooine and teasing some sort of role for food.
We haven't had a chance to try out Star Wars Outlaws for ourselves yet, so it's unclear to what extent it will resemble a typical Ubisoft game. However, Khavid did suggest that it won't be quire so packed with icons this time around.
"I think our job is to make sure that the player organizes their experience according to their desires," Khavid said. "That's one of the big pluses with an open world game is the agency of the player. So if we do our job right, it'll be so dense and
If you were worried that Star Wars Outlaws was going to end up being an infinite Ubisoft timesink ala Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, the developers at Massive Entertainment want to put you at ease, noting that the experience will be «very manageable».
Ubisoft knows its way around compelling open worlds, but Star Wars Outlaws is shaping up to be one of its biggest and most densely detailed yet. As previously announced, each planet in the release will be fully explorable, with enough open space to give you a meaningful sense of adventure. And the French publisher is handcrafting every one: there’s no procedural generation.
Ever wondered what kind of nightmarish, extraterrestrial smoothy you could whip up with the disgusting liquids that barbarian Luke Skywalker was always chugging down? It might not actually taste that bad; as dedicated fans well know, George Lucas had a bad habit of making things sound worse than they actually are (see "Jizz" as an example of this, the specific kind of space-jazz employed by the Max Rebo band).
In some circles of videogameland it's common wisdom that more is better—I remember a quaint time when 30 hours was a «long» game, but today's big budget releases have been pushing that boundary well into the triple digits. In a recent interview with IGN, though, two Star Wars Outlaws devs promise to buck that trend with a «dense» and «rich» game that doesn't wear out its welcome.
In a recent interview, developers at Massive outlined the size and scope of Star Wars Outlaws stating that the title is «not a 200 or 300-hour epic unfinishable RPG.»
Despite its open world, Star Wars Outlaws won't be a «300 hour epic unfinishable RPG». Phew.
If you’re a fan of the Star Wars franchise, then you might understand that there is a dark underbelly in the galaxy. Most might instantly think of the Jedi and Sith as being the focal point. But those that are not Force-sensitive have other areas to worry about. We know that there are a few criminal syndicates that thrive in this galaxy, with the Hutt Clan being one of the more notoriously known. However, if you dig deeper into the franchise, you might come across other notable crime syndicates citizens are fighting back against or aligning with. You’ll find that these criminal syndicates will play a big role in Star Wars Outlaws.
Coming up with a Star Wars game is harder than you might imagine. There’s a lot to be mindful of regarding keeping things canon. You certainly don’t want to write against what a movie, film, novel, or comic book has already established. So we imagine the efforts to deliver the Star Wars Outlaws game were challenging and rewarding for the team. Fortunately, we can go into this game knowing that the developers took quite a bit of time ensuring that it remains authentic to the franchise.
One of the reasons that Star Wars Outlaws intrigued gamers from the moment it was revealed was that, on the surface, it looked like no other game set in the galaxy far, far away that we had seen before. Primarily, games from this galaxy focus on the Jedi/Sith or are based on the movies that have come out. Oh, or are LEGO versions of those films. Just saying. This game from Ubisoft is in a much different position because it focuses on the smuggler Kay Vess, who is trying to obtain her freedom and start a new life for herself.
Since the last three Assassin's Creed games are gigantic RPGs with equally as expansive maps, there's understandable anxiety when Ubisoft announces a new RPG--will it be an unfathomable time sink of hundreds of hours? With Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft says no.
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Star Wars Outlaws creative director Julian Gerighty and narrative director Navid Khavari have revealed that the game won’t be a 200-300 hour game. Speaking with IGN during San Diego Comic-Con, the duo spoke about what it means for a game to be “too big”.