This week began with a flurry of showcases. One of the games featured in the showcases earlier this week was Star Wars Outlaws, the first open-world Star Wars game. The game got a new 10-minute gameplay at Ubisoft Forward. The showcase also coincided with a hands-on demo made available to the press at Summer Game Fest.
The reaction to the game has been diverse. Some press members who were privileged to get a hands-on experience of the game praised it while others thought it was an imitation of Naughty Dog’s Uncharted series. Some of those in the latter category also said the gameplay felt dated.
Following the Ubisoft Forward showcase on Monday, the game’s creative director Julian Gerighty granted an interview to pressmen. When asked about the negative reactions surrounding the game, Gerighty said the comparison with Uncharted was welcomed. However, he insinuated the comments on the game were too early because only a teeny portion of the game has been revealed.
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“I mean, for me it wasn’t necessarily our reference point,” he said in response to the Uncharted series comparison. “It’s such a wonderful game to be compared to though, so if you’re going to be compared to somebody, it might as well be the best in the industry. Naughty Dog and what they do is absolutely brilliant, so I’ll take it, but it wasn’t the point of origin.”
Gerighty said the choice of the demo for Summer Game Fest was an appetizer for what is to come from Massive Entertainment. He mentioned that Star Wars Outlaws will also feature in other upcoming showcases and would get a new gameplay demo each time.
“I think coming into a show like this, while you’re closing a game in terms of production, you have to make a lot of choices, and our producer was like, you get one demo for all of the shows that we’re going to go to during the year, so Gamescom, ComiCon [etc].
“And they’re consumer plus journalist focused, so we had to choose something that was 20 minutes, bite-sized, lots of variety, lots of representative systems, but not the open world experience, because we’re going to expose that during the studio tour, in the preview event over here.
“So, we’ll spend a lot more time on those things, so this is an amuse-bouche, it’s a starter rather than the main course for the game. I think we have a very compelling overall game and just a part of it is represented here.”
Star Wars Outlaws campaign will take 30 hours to beat
During the interview, Gerighty also revealed that the campaign of Star Wars Outlaws will be 30 hours long. However, for those who love exploration, it will take significantly longer.
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“Very, very early on, we decided this is going to be a 25, 30 hours golden path adventure, 50 hours, 60 hours for completionists, and that is, for a guy with a family and a job, it’s still a fair amount of time.
“But it’s not Assassin’s Creed epic, 200 hours’ 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.”
Gerighty was asked if Massive Entertainment was able to incorporate all its Star Wars visions into Outlaws or whether they had to make some sacrifices to get the game to where it is today.
“As a creator, I’m a big believer in setting an initial vision that’s exciting, ambitious, and achievable,” Gerighty said. “It’s super important to make sure that everybody who’s working on the game is working in the same direction towards the same goal.”
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“On The Division, The Division 2, and Star Wars Outlaws, that vision has been more or less respected, I mean 95% respected. Some things are added, a few things have been changed or removed, but very, very little.
“So, for example, removed – we wanted swimming, like the first few iterations of the pitch that we did, we’d have loved to have had swimming. It’s not possible, animation said, it’s not possible in terms of the scope. So, OK, we can live without that, we’ll do without it, there’s plenty of other things that we can explore.
“But all of the mini-games that we have—I don’t know if you played Sabacc or the arcade games—none of those were planned originally, so those were added during the development, so there’s a little bit of give and take.”
