'Star Wars: Outlaws' is a free-wheeling, open adventure free of the Force

Ubisoft’s next big game isn’t about an elite order of assassins or the intrigues of Persian princes.

Instead, “Star Wars Outlaws,” debuting Aug. 30, takes a more grounded approach to the galaxy far, far away.

“We've seen in the films, the Rebellion versus the Empire story, we've seen Jedi versus Sith,” says Narrative Director Navid Khavari. “We were really excited to tell something new.”

The hero of “Star Wars Outlaws,” Kay Vess, starts the game equipped only with a simple blaster and a dream to make it big. She has to rely on her wits, her lockpicking prowess, and more than a little luck to navigate a criminal underworld set between “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi” movies.

“This is someone who didn't grow up as a chosen one,” Khavari says. “She sees the galaxy as rigged — and I think what people are sort of looking for is that relatability.”

This kind of Force-free game about a scrappy upstart has few predecessors, as franchise titles typically focused on noble Jedi or ace rebel fighters. Indeed, its mix of “Uncharted”-style acrobatics, gunplay, and stealth echoed “Star Wars 1313,” a hotly-anticipated project that Disney scrapped when it bought out Lucasfilm.

But more than a decade after that acquisition, and after a recent boom in movies and spin-off shows, audiences may be burning out on “Star Wars.” Disney just cancelled the streaming show "The Acolyte" after strong viewership dwindled by the end of its first season. The free-wheeling crime story of “Outlaws” may instead offer exhausted fans a fresh outlet.

“When you play the game, it feels like you're stepping into this galaxy for the first time, even though it's existed for 30, 40 years,” says Khavari, “We have the guardrails off a little bit to experiment.”

People will remember something about Han Solo in the original 1977 Star Wars film, that he’s not afraid to shoot first and ask questions later. Is that the world that your game's main character inhabits?

“I feel confident in saying that Kay would shoot first! I feel pretty strongly about that. But that's exactly it. And what's really fun, I think, for players who are new to ‘Star Wars’ is that you're in this journey with her sort of from the beginning. She's new to the underworld. She's new to this sort of scoundrel lifestyle with all these syndicates and organizations she has to play off each other. It's a nice gateway into that sort of story.”

You've been working in games for a long time and I wonder if it's a challenge for a writer because the story has to react to the player's choices, right? 

“It's one of the hardest things that are possible to do in the storytelling space. There's always a bit of a learning curve if you've never written for games and might have worked in TV or film because the player is in the driver's seat and the characters need to be able to react to what you're doing. But interestingly enough, on this project, I really tried to introduce the concept of writer rooms, where we would work hand in hand with folks from gameplay teams, art teams, character artists. And we would talk about the content and bring it into the room, wrap our narrative around it, pitch ideas to it. It allowed us to keep this thing perpetually going.

“And I think the big difference maybe from other mediums is like, you know, I've been working on this project for over three years, right? So there is there is a longer cycle where you're producing some of this content, but it also is so rewarding, to be able to deliver something that I've always wanted to play as a kid, which is being able to step into the ‘Star Wars’ universe like the the reward outweighs all of that.”

Have you found yourself and your team at the creative table saying, ‘A lot of people know the ‘Star Wars’ games and stories. They may be a little tired of it. How do we not make it predictable?’

“That was a concern of mine right from the start because I'm a fan of ‘Star Wars.’ I gave myself a week to sort of freak out and be like, ‘How are we going to approach this?’ And then honestly, ever after that, I just put that on the shelf and kind of have to say to myself to do justice to this, we can't really be beholden or too reverent to what came before. And so as we were building out the team and as we started these sort of story rooms and developing, we were always conscious of the fact of like, what is Kay’s experience here? And the gift that that kept giving really was that she isn't part of that Jedi fight. She's not part of that Rebellion. And so the entire underworld itself was such a fresh space. And, you know, when we maybe got caught in the trap of being reverent to a Jabba or Lando or something like that, or trying to steer the story a certain way, we would always go back to who Kay was.

“That really just opened up the floodgates for us whenever … we got in those jams. And I don't care who you are, every writer, every creative room gets at a jam. And you just have to take a step back and look at the bigger picture of the themes you're trying to have.”

James Perkins Mastromarino and produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Mark Navin. Perkins-Mastromarino adapted it for the web.