Highlights
- Star Wars Outlaws, the upcoming open world game, won't have an overwhelming time commitment like Ubisoft's recent Assassin's Creed games.
- The creative director reassured fans that Outlaws will provide a dense and rich adventure that can be explored at their own pace.
- The game's world size will be smaller and more focused, similar to Massive Entertainment's previous games, The Division series.
Expectations and concerns about Star Wars Outlaws' time commitment are addressed by the upcoming game's creative director. Star Wars Outlaws is the first ever open world Star Wars game coming from Ubisoft's Massive Entertainment, the studio behind The Division series. First revealed at Ubisoft Forward during this past Summer Game Fest, Outlaws will have players following the story of a scoundrel named Kay Vess as she navigates the crime-riddled underworld of the Star Wars universe between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.
There's no denying that Ubisoft's past few Assassin's Creed offerings have been getting longer and longer to beat. Assassin's Creed Odyssey takes roughly 45 hours and Valhalla clocks in at a whopping 60 hours, and that's just for the main story. Going for full completion would require well over 100 hours for each game, not including their massive DLC expansions. This increase in game length and world size came part and parcel with the franchise's shift toward becoming a bona fide RPG. While some fans enjoy the bang for their buck Odyssey and Valhalla offer, many fans are valid in their criticisms of these past two Assassin's Creed games being just too overwhelmingly large. Ubisoft seems to have taken this criticism to heart, as its upcoming Assassin's Creed Mirage is touted as being much smaller and more focused, akin to the earlier titles in the franchise.
Fans worrying about Massive Entertainment's Star Wars Outlaws following the precedent set by Odyssey and Valhalla need not fret any longer. Speaking with IGN, Outlaws' creative director Julian Gerighty confirmed that Kay Vess' adventure through the criminal underworld of Star Wars, while featuring several planets with large open areas, won't be an overwhelmingly huge time commitment. This makes even more sense when considering Massive Entertainment's previous games, The Division and its sequel, also sport smaller, more dense and focused open worlds.
"Our objective is to really get people into a very dense, rich adventure, open world adventure that they can explore at their own rhythm. So it is absolutely not a 200 or 300-hour epic unfinishable RPG." - Julian Gerighty, Creative Director of Star Wars Outlaws via IGN
This reassurance comes just a few weeks after Gerighty's interview with Edge Magazine about Star Wars Outlaws where he compared the size of each planet's open area to roughly one or two regions of Assassin's Creed Odyssey's Greece. This tempered expectations for fans thinking Outlaws' size would compare to Bethesda's imminent space-faring RPG Starfield, but it still left many wondering about how Outlaws sizes up to Ubisoft's other behemoth open worlds. While the number of planets Outlaws will offer is still unknown, Gerighty's metrics make it seem plausible that the total amount of explorable land could still end up being as large or larger than Odyssey or Valhalla.
Star Wars Outlaws has become one of the most hotly anticipated upcoming games of 2024 ever since its impressive reveal last month. It's great that Gerighty is getting ahead in making sure fans' expectations are set accordingly with regard to the game's scope and scale, and reassuring eager fans that Star Wars Outlaws won't be as much of a major time sink as some of Ubisoft's recent outings.
Star Wars Outlaws is coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S in 2024.
Source: Push Square (via IGN)
