Ubisoftās upcoming Star Wars Outlaws looks to be a massive open-world video game spanning multiple planets and cities. However, according to the gameās creative director, completing everything in Outlaws isnāt going to take you 100 to 200 hours like in some past Ubisoft games.
Pre-order Star Wars Outlaws:Ā Ubisoft | Best Buy
Star Wars Outlaws was announced during Summer Game Fest 2023. Itās being developed by Massive Entertainment, the same studio behind The Division 2 and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora While those games were big, Outlaws has the potential to be even larger as it is set in the pre-existing and giant Star Wars universe. If that has you worried that this might be an Assassinās Creed: Odyssey-sized open-world adventure, Julian Gerighty, the creative director on Outlaws, says that it isnāt the case.
In an interview with VGC, Gerighty explained that āvery early onā the studio decided that the main campaign or āgolden pathā in Outlaws would only take most players about 30 hours to complete. For folks looking to do everything, the creative director suggested between 50 to 60 hours.
āFor a guy with a family and a job, itās still a fair amount of time,ā Gerighty told VGC, āBut itās not Assassinās Creed epic, 200 hoursā worth of gameplay. So that allows us to really focus on the detail, it allows us to focus, maybe with a smaller team, on executing something that is manageable.ā
In Kotakuās hands-on preview of Outlaws, Alyssa Mercante noted the amount of detail on display in the game, explaining that she sometimes just wanted to stop playing and look around the incredibly dense Star Wars locales in the gameās SGF demo. So it seems that the decision to focus on quality over quantity will pay off in the long run.
You canāt swim in Outlaws, but you can play arcade games
Elsewhere in VGCās interview, the creative director behind Outlaws explained that heās a ābig believerā in creating a plan early on that is āexciting, ambitiousā but also āachievable.ā
As an example of making sure the game doesnāt get too big or hard to manage, Gerighty shared a story about how, early on, Massive wanted to add swimming to Outlaws.
āSo, for example, removed ā we wanted swimming, like the first few iterations of the pitch that we did, weād have loved to have had swimming. Itās not possible, animation said, itās not possible in terms of the scope. So, OK, we can live without that, weāll do without it, thereās plenty of other things that we can explore,ā said Gerighty.
But, the director also explained that sometimes plans change and you end up making stuff you never intended to when you first started development.
āAll of the mini-games [like Sabacc and the arcade games] that we have…none of those were planned originally, so those were added during the development, so thereās a little bit of give and take.ā
Star Wars Outlaws launches August 30 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
Pre-order Star Wars Outlaws:Ā Ubisoft | Best Buy
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