As Ubisoft makes its big Star Wars debut, Massive makes the bold decision to go small

By Alex Spencer

Just as vital as getting the character of Kay Vess right, Julian Gerighty says, was nailing her supporting cast. ND-5 and Nix were conceived to reflect different parts of Vess’ personality

Game Star Wars: Outlaws

Developer Massive Entertainment

Publisher Ubisoft, Lucasfilm Games

Format PC, PS5, Xbox Series

Release TBA

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In order to develop both this game and Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora side by side, Massive has divided itself into “two very separate teams”, Gerighty explains. Both games are, of course, a step away from Massive’s previous work – “after eight years of The Division, Outlaws seems, that the latter is actually the “slightly larger team within Massive”. Though of course, given the way Ubisoft operates, that doesn’t tell the full story. There are nine other studios credited on Outlaws, from Bucharest to Shanghai, and Gerighty admits even he doesn’t know the total number of people working on it across the world. the core team felt like it was time for us to stretch our muscles in another direction,” he tells us – but we’re surprised to hear, given how ambitious

As the unmistakable roar of TIE fighters tears through LA’s Novo Theater, the crowd responds with equal volume. Our feelings about overenthusiastic attendees at these things have been made clear – doubly so when the entire presentation, as with the Xbox showcase we’re here to watch, has been prerecorded. And yet all that cynicism melts away for a moment as we’re transported back to all the other dark, tightly packed rooms we’ve shared with people whooping at space battles up on the big screen.

Besides, in a June that’s otherwise low on the unexpected, this manages to feel like a surprise attack. No small feat, given we’ve known this game was coming since 2021, when Lucasfilm announced it was bringing EA’s exclusive Star Wars licence to an end and working with Ubisoft’s Massive Entertainment. At that time, though, we might have imagined something akin to the Swedish studio’s Division games: a lootheavy co-op shooter with the military hardware swapped out for blasters, the Washington Monument for a moisture vaporator.

Instead, we begin out in space, as a Rebel blockade runner crashes into the prow of an inbound star destroyer – aneat inversion of A New Hope’s opening moments, and a way of establishing the relative fortunes of the Empire and Rebellion at the point Outlaws is set, between The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi. Not that this wider picture much concerns our protagonist, who is introduced in a scummy Outer Rim cantina, cheating at the intergalactic equivalent of poker. Kay Vess, you have to suspect, is not much of a joiner.

“Scoundrel” is the word that recurs in our conversation with creative director Julian Gerighty – the seed, he tells us, of the entire project. It was this untapped fantasy that Massive first took to Lucasfilm in February 2020, capitalising on the contacts it had made via its other ongoing project, Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora (that movie series joined Star Wars in the Disney stable with 2019’s Fox acquisition).