This story takes place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but it has nothing to do with Jedi Knights, the Force or the Galactic Empire. It is the story of Kay Vess, a smuggler who leaves her planet to explore space and, in the process, star in a Star Wars Outlawsthe first open-world video game in the galactic franchise and one of the most anticipated games of the year.
“The big question when we started the project was: how do we do something never seen before?”, he says in the huge studios of the developer Massive Entertainment (belonging to the giant Ubisoft) in Malmö, where they invited Julian Gerighty, the creative director of the game and the visible head of all this, to EL PAÍS. They started to think and came up with the feelings that had left them not the current situation of the franchise, but the viewings of the first films in the cinema, decades ago. “It wasn’t the Jedi, it wasn’t the empire… what left the biggest impression on us was Han Solo and his world of smugglers. That guy who was the coolest guy in the galaxy!” says Mathias Karlson, director of the game. They began to gather ideas and came up with a phrase that stuck with them: “Be a scoundrel in a galaxy of wonder and opportunity”It’s a phrase that’s repeated in every corner of the studio, at every work table, at every company meal: be a scoundrel in a galaxy full of wonders and opportunities. The game, which goes on sale on August 30, is nothing more than that, a “Han Solo simulator,” in the words of the creative team. A female Han Solo, by the way.
Kay Vess, who we control, is the absolute protagonist. She fights, infiltrates, pilots ships (space battles play a fundamental role) and land vehicles, explores, trades. And she speaks, because the narrative development is fundamental in this game, which has some 25,000 lines of human dialogue and some 20,000 in alien languages; an unbelievable script that becomes the cornerstone of the experience. In fact, if anything distinguishes this game from the rest of the games set in the universe created by George Lucas, it is the unbribable cinematic will. “We want to make one of the most cinematic games ever made,” Gerighty says. The bar is high, but what EL PAÍS was able to see is promising: it is not just the 3D sound with reverberation or the lighting of the new generation of video games (many games have this), but the visual aesthetic is very specific and replicates the lenses of the original trilogy. What is seen on screen, they explain, has chromatic aberrations in the background of the plane and a focus that slightly resembles a fisheye, which leaves a visual flavor very similar to that of the original films.
The cinematic vocation is total. The developers worked with the creators of Rogue One (2016); Greig Fraser, the director of photography for that film, was involved; and dozens of actors participated in the game, starting with Humberly González, who gives face, voice and body to Kay Vess. This cinematic purpose will also be seen in the duration. It is the first open-world game in the entire universe. Star Warswhich means that we will be free to explore the different planets (five) and carry out our tasks in the order we want, but the Swedish team did not want to make “a 150-hour game. We wanted something very simple: that everyone who started it, would finish it,” says Gerighty, pointing out one of the problems of open-world games: the hyperinflation of hours and padding with inane missions. Outlaws The game will be short, with a campaign that will last around 25 hours. The main mission is also far from the Star Wars story prototype: “It’s a robbery, the biggest heist the galaxy has ever seen, although the end of the game will depend on the decisions we make and the actions we carry out,” says Karlson.
Kay will not be alone in this adventure that takes place between The Empire Strikes Back y Return of the Jedi. In addition to the robot ND-5 (a very complete interpretation by Jay Rincon), she is accompanied at all times by Nix, a pet the size of a cat, a mix between a dog and an axolotl, who helps the protagonist in a couple dynamic that is very appreciated in the world of video games, similar to that proposed by games like Jak and Daxter o Ratchet & Clank: We control the protagonist while the companion “distracts enemies, gives clues, searches for or marks enemies,” explains Karlson.
The room of history
“TV series have a writers’ room. We have a story room,” says Navid Khavari, narrative director of Outlaws. “The story room We lay the foundations not only for narratives, but also for the objects and spaces that developers can use or not. We write a script, but we also define a tangible universe.” Video games are now an essential link in popular culture. Last year, Massive developed Avatar: Frontiers of Pandoraa game that was intended to be the James Cameron franchise’s approach to interactive entertainment, in an example of how intellectual properties branch out across all fronts of the transmedia ecosystem. Outlaws It’s another thing. Historically, the games of Star Wars (and we’re talking about 125) have not been as good as expected. Honorable exceptions aside, they were generally by-products built on the power of the brand and without much to say on core aspects of the franchise (what is known as Star Wars canon). In 2019 Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (from the EA company) changed things. Not only because it was a very good game, but because Lucasfilms (in essence, the owners of the galactic franchise) used the game as a battering ram to introduce many new concepts and characters from the saga that were developed in the following products of the audiovisual franchise: The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka…
How is the narrative creation process forged in a transmedia franchise in which each piece affects the others?: “We have constant and transparent communication with Lucasfilms. They are the guardians of the essence, and we ask them the questions that arise. We have had access to a Starwarspedia, “an internal and confidential database where all the data of this universe is found, and with which we resolve our doubts.” Does Lucasfilms interfere in the work of the scriptwriter? “Not so much,” explains Khavari, “they are always there to resolve your doubts, but they also want to help you develop your own ideas. Today a cultural product like this is more like a work of art. patchwork (a sewing technique that consists of sewing pieces of fabric into a larger design) in which each person adds their ideas.” These ideas are new planets, such as Toshara or Akiya (which had been named, but not visualized), new characters such as Jaylen, a kind of new Han Solo; Sliro, the antagonist, a celebrity in the underworld; or the Ashiga clan, a criminal organization formed by insectoids. All of these are creations of the game, but also seeds of a common universe that we will most likely see developed from now on in other products of the franchise.
The game’s budget isn’t public, but it is a Triple-A budget, the industry designation for the biggest blockbusters, which are well over $100 million. To put it in a nutshell, Massive employs 700 people of 57 nationalities. Reduced to math, it’s simple: Ubisoft + Star Wars = world event. “George Lucas once said, ‘Making movies is really hard. If you don’t love them, they’re not really worth it.’ We can say the same about making video games,” Gerighty says. “But it’s definitely worth it for us.” The galaxy awaits. So do the players.
