Star Wars Outlaws cast and creatives unpack their galaxy-hopping scoundrel story (exclusive)

Just one week before the COVID-19 lockdown began in March 2020, the team at Massive Entertainment pitched their idea for a brand-new Star Wars video game to Lucasfilm Games in San Francisco. It wasn’t your typical Jedi origin story, nor was it the classic "Rebels versus Empire" tale that gamers played before. It wasn't even a LEGO remake. Instead, it was a heartfelt and harrowing story of a rookie scoundrel who must fight to survive amongst the galaxy’s most ruthless crime lords and, hopefully, manage to pull off one of the greatest heists of all time along the way. 

The idea became Star Wars Outlaws, the franchise’s first-ever open-world video game, soon to be released by Ubisoft on Windows, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S on Aug. 30. Set in the one-year gap between the events of 1980's Empire Strikes Back and 1983’s Return of the Jedi, the single-narrative game follows Kay Vess (Humberly González), a plucky street thief from Canto Bight, and her Merqaal sidekick Nix (voiced by Bad Batch alum Dee Bradley Baker). Their lives are forever changed when their decision to steal a spaceship from the notorious crime syndicate Zerek Besh results in a death mark placed upon their heads. 

"The pure scoundrel fantasy really takes flight when the galaxy is in chaos,” Outlaws creative director Julian Gerighty tells Entertainment Weekly. “The Rebels have lost the battle of Hoth and they're on the back foot. The Empire is taking more and more power in the galaxy, but that creates a space for criminal activities and criminal syndicates. That's really the time of the underworld.” 

A new iconic scoundrel

Developing their own in-universe character, however, proved to be a much more daunting task. Gerighty acknowledges the "great scoundrels of cinema," like Captain Jack Sparrow and Indiana Jones, as well as the scoundrels of Star Wars, like Han Solo and Lando Calrissian.

"How do you make a brand-new scoundrel really shine and stand out from these previous examples?” he asks. “What we wanted to do was make [Vess] incredibly relatable in the sense that she isn't a fully developed scoundrel; she doesn't have the confidence or the cool of a Han Solo, she's learning the ropes. She’s faking it until she makes it. So it doesn't come from a place of 100 percent confidence. It comes from a place of taking the risk.”

Her freewheeling attitude also meant that Massive could inject humor into the game. “This isn't a dark piece in the galaxy of Star Wars," he adds. "This is really reminiscent of the original movies — Indiana Jones, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, all of the inspirations for Star Wars, as well."

González, who voices Vess and performed motion capture for the game, views the character almost like a gender-bent Han Solo, and says she gleaned inspiration from the fellow scoundrel for the part. The actress points to a scene from the original trailer for Star Wars Outlaws in which Vess sees Han Solo in carbonite upon entering Jabba the Hutt’s palace but doesn't recognize him.

“It's seeing a mirror of herself and someone that she would have looked up to as inspiration," she remarks of that sequence. "It’s almost like destiny. It's like him passing the baton; you get to be this hero now and find peace, find your way in this world, in this war that she wants nothing to do with. She just wants to be free.”

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Aside from Han Solo, players can expect to encounter some other familiar faces on their quest. Gerighty calls it an obvious decision to highlight the Hutts in a game that tackles criminal syndicates. He also mentions Qi’ra (notably played by Emilia Clarke in 2018's Solo: A Star Wars Story) and her organization, the Crimson Dawn. "Those two characters become very much part of the story," Gerighty says. "But, of course, you're going to meet some other people who are fan favorites too. Who knows? You may even meet some of the more legendary, or established, scoundrels in Star Wars, as well.”

Dishing on droids

Accompanying Vess on her journey is Nix, her equal parts cute and ferocious companion who not only provides her with a strong emotional connection, but also physical support whenever the pair find themselves caught in a firefight. This camaraderie leads to a whole host of opportunities to play the game in different ways, whether it's stealth or racing full throttle into the fray or, say, setting off explosive barrels as a distraction.

González notes that Nix, whose design was inspired by armadillos and the Massive team’s pet dogs, often displays Vess’ real feelings during a confrontation. "They really help each other get through how hard it is to actually have a frickin’ death mark on us," she says. "And we're on the run and in a world that she has no experience in, so it's a strong duo.”

The pair find kinship in another outcast: a BX Commando droid named ND-5 (Jay Rincon) that is wrestling with the heavy burden of his past after fighting in the Clone Wars. “He has the weight of the world on his shoulders,” Gerighty says of the droid. “That's a character that we wanted to build with a little bit of an edge, so he wasn't the chirpy, quirky droid that we could have had; this was somebody a little bit more serious. You're going to discover a lot of his secrets and his background.”

Rincon tried his best to step away from Star Wars’ traditional droid behavior as ND-5. “There's no way to not be a droid. There is a cadence of the writing that is wonderful [in] the sardonic nature of a droid. You probably see it right away in the trailers and in the gameplay with Kay Vess causing some trouble,” he teases. “I did want to stay true to what droids are, but I very much wanted to humanize this one as much as possible, as much as they would let me.”

Through his adventures with Vess, Rincon says that ND-5 gets a chance to “see the world in a different way” than before. “[Vess], for some reason, somehow affects him. That's a really, really important thing and it's a really important part of the story, and how that relationship kind of lives out and the journey that it takes.” 

New galaxies far, far away

The new shipmates will certainly have plenty of places to explore together on their journey. As Vess, players will find themselves traveling through space to five distinct destinations: Kijimi (first seen in The Rise of Skywalker), Akiva (from the animated Clone Wars series), Tatooine, Canto Bight, and the newly created moon of Toshara. Each location has its unique wilderness environment, orbit, and bustling cities, but they all share one very important locale: the cantina.

“As a scoundrel, the first thing that you're going to do when you land in a new location is head to the cantina to see what opportunities are available to you, what things you can eavesdrop on, and maybe pick up some intel to be able to go on your own journeys," Gerighty explains.

Each city is tied to a different crime syndicate that you can choose to form an alliance with: the Hutts, the Pykes (from Book of Boba Fett and Solo), the Crimson Dawn, and the Ashiga Clan. The latter was created by Massive and Lucasfilm for the game. Gerighty describes the Ashiga Clan as a “secretive” and “imposing” organization that finds itself “trying to forge allegiances, with the Empire or with some other actors” amid a growing internal power struggle. 

Every time Vess accepts a mission from one of these factions, it will have a direct effect on her reputation with the others. “Being able to balance your reputation with those four is how you're going to tell the personal story of your adventure throughout this galaxy,” Gerighty says.

Having a good reputation with a syndicate means you get access to exclusive rewards, such as vendors selling special items and access to different locations. “This said, it really is a dilemma, because you can't have a good reputation with everybody," Gerighty adds. "So you're going to have to sacrifice some of your reputation for one of the factions to build up your reputation with, let's say, the Hutts. That means the Crimson Dawn are going to send some people after you, as well. It's very reminiscent of Jabba sending some bounty hunters to find a target that owes him a lot of credits.”

Just don't catch the attention of the Empire, which has outposts in each of the four locations. “Think the police in Grand Theft Auto,” Gerighty says of the concept, which has six levels of severity. “If you start being seen doing crimes, that will start getting them to chase you. If you take some of them out, then it gets worse and worse, where they'll send, at the ultimate level, Death Troopers — and maybe even worse."

Space travel is also a fully fleshed out part of the game, Gerighty notes, from combat missions to smuggling missions to contract gigs. “They'll even be space stations that you can dock into seamlessly, go into the space station's cantina, have a few drinks, pull off some new intel to find some new treasures, new opportunities, all of those things are completely available to you,” he says. “And dogfights? That's just one part of it. You can have — and there will be — monumental, epic fights against much, much larger targets.” 

The end result is a game that González says shows a "very different hero's journey" and a "more grounded side of Star Wars" than ever before.

"Finding your way through the game — who you choose to make friends with, who you choose to betray — you have control over the storyline," she explains. "It was fun for me to see how each choice leads us to a different route, different dialogue, different relationships, [and] develop different syndicates that will be on your side. To me, that's a very exciting part of the game, and to have it all placed in the trilogy in an open-world setting... It's an adventure. So lean into the adventure."

Star Wars Outlaws will be released on Aug. 30.