Ubisoft is banking a lot on the upcoming Star Wars Outlaws and for obvious reasons. This is their first title in the galaxy far, far away, and they want it to be good. Not to mention, the games that Ubisoft has made recently have been hit-or-miss in the quality department. That might seem mean, but when you look at a certain pirate game that was supposed to be a “AAAA title,” and yet was nowhere close to that! Or perhaps that trip to Pandora was only enjoyed by certain people, despite Ubisoft claiming it was a “masterpiece” during a recent Ubisoft Forward event.
The point is, they want Star Wars Outlaws to be good, but they have to ensure they can do it the right way. One of the biggest questions, when it came to making the game, was how big to make the planets that Kay Vess and her allies would go on. So, as noted by GamesRadar, the games’ creative director, Julian Gerighty, noted that Assassin’s Creed Odyssey helped set the tone. In fact, the director called the team behind the game to see how they handled the Greek islands and built up from there:
“I think it was this freedom of approach in a very large environment – with traversal [and] curiosity at its heart, with RPG light mechanics.”
He noted that this particular entry was his favorite of the series, and he wasn’t kidding about asking that specific Ubisoft team for help.
Gerighty specifically noted he had “people that I could pick up the phone, talk to, and say ‘okay, how did you do this? What was too big for you? What was too long a distance for traversal?'”
We know now that the upcoming title will have areas that will take about 5 minutes to speed across via the vehicles that Kay Vess has. That doesn’t touch on the space elements that Kay can do via her ship, including getting into fights in orbit or helping out others in need.
It’s a good idea that things are a bit more contained in this sense, for if they went too big, they’d have the classic “empty world” that many people are tired of seeing, especially in Ubisoft titles.
Ubisoft also noted how fun it was to create new areas for the game, including a moon with diverse biomes. We’ll find out next month just how well the game plays.
