Ubisoft has addressed some worries about Star Wars Outlaws’ playtime.
In a new interview with IGN, creative director Julian Gerighty made it clear that Star Wars Outlaws will not be 200 to 300 hours long. When he was asked if the game could be too big, Gerighty responded that “too big is a game that people don’t manage to play, enjoy, and finish.”
Narrative director Navid Khavari also chimed in, saying:
“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.”
This new statement is apparently a reaction to fans complaining when the devs earlier made a comparison between Star Wars Outlaws and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Fans have definitely not been shy talking about how they feel that open world games like Assassin’s Creed feel like they have been made artificially long, just so the devs they can say they gave the players a lot of playtime. That presupposes that time played equals time the player enjoyed playing.
But then, what kinds of games take 200 to 300 hours? One should note that the dense worlds of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild or The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom are 100 plus hour games, not quite up to that level.
There really isn’t any game right now that would take a minimum of 300 or 200 hours to play, thankfully. With that in mind, Bethesda’s games can take that much time to play and finish, especially if gamers play through it to enjoy and not necessarily with speedrunning in mind.
Elite: Dangerous is also another game that could run up to the 200 hour period. As open ended and potentially infinite its gameplay can be, it would take about 200 hours to complete the set content. Mapping the universe out could go beyond 400 hours.
Similarly, and surprisingly, massive would be Xenoblade Chronicles X, still stuck in Wii U probation and waiting for that long promised Switch port. Xenoblade Chronicles X’s story content can take close to 70 hours, but exploring the entire planet, which involves getting around in a giant mech, and also leaving the mech to explore can take over 300 hours. That’s longer than what it takes to finish Xenoblade Chronicles 1 to 3 combined.
You can bet that Starfield will also be that long, but then, these developers aren’t Ubisoft. Hopefully Ubisoft plays to their strengths and makes Star Wars Outlaws’ open world as tight and immersive only as much as it has to be.
Star Wars Outlaws will be released on 2024 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows via Ubisoft Connect.
