Star Wars Outlaws’ next big expansion, Wild Card is out now.
Ubisoft shares this description on their official blog:
“Kay’s journey continues with the first story pack, Star Wars Outlaws: Wild Card, featuring notorious high roller Lando Calrissian.
Kay crosses paths with Lando as she infiltrates a high-stakes Sabacc tournament, where she quickly learns that another game is being played. “
Now, some of you may see Lando in the trailer, and think his cameo is what makes this DLC the proper integration into the Star Wars universe. But that would only reflect that you weren’t as invested in Star Wars lore as the hardcore fans are.
Lando was already in Star Wars Outlaws before this DLC, and you already had a side mission to beat him in a game of Kessel Sabacc. So, what is the point of this DLC?
Getting back to Ubisoft’s blog, they described this DLC as Ocean’s Eleven meets Casino Royale meets Star Wars. You are playing in the Star Wars equivalent of a high-stakes casino, with spies and criminals everywhere.
Ubisoft goes on to explain that they took this DLC as an opportunity to tell Lando’s story before he had to clean himself up and become mayor of Cloud City.
Ubisoft Massive’s Narrative Director, Navid Khavari, explained how they approached their chance to add to Lando’s story:
“I think what’s most important is that, much like the other characters that we’ve had in Outlaws from the original trilogy, we don’t think of Lando as a cameo.
If a character you might know is there, they must serve not only Kay’s story, but their own aims and goals. We all love Lando, so we needed to treat him just as we would any other major character, and give the character the respect he deserves.
So, the question became, what does he want? And how does that compete or align with Kay’s goals? Then, what do these two learn from each other? The story needs to organically flow from there.”
Really, Star Wars Outlaws: Wild Card revolves around sabacc, a high-stakes card game that’s been a part of the universe since A New Hope, all the way back in 1977.
Because it may not have had that name yet, but sabacc was the game where Han Solo beat Lando to nab for himself the Millennium Falcon. And sabacc happens to have over 80 variations, with kessel sabacc specially designed by Ubisoft with LucasArts just for this game.
We don’t need to dwell on the mistakes and lessons Massive and Ubisoft made with Star Wars Outlaws. As we reported, Ubisoft went through the trouble of giving the game a new creative director, to do all those fixes and changes that the game needs to meet our expectations. And that’s where Massive is going with this game now, starting with this DLC.
You can watch the official trailer below.
