We recently had the chance to spend two days at Massive Entertainment’s studio in Malmö, Sweden, playing Star Wars Outlaws and speaking to the team behind the project to get an understanding of what’s going into the game and how it’s all coming together.
You can read our first big feature piece from the trip here, and there’s more to come, but below you’ll find a full transcript of one of our chats, in this case with Narrative Director, Navid Khavari, and Associate Narrative Director, John Bjorling.
Some comments have been edited for clarity and readability.
I don’t think it’s unfair to characterise Star Wars fans as being fairly passionate about what they like and what they don’t like. Did you look to the franchise’s history and audience reactions when you were designing Outlaws?
Navid Khavari: Not really, to be honest. It’s interesting because we’ve got this question a few times and I think the thing about it is when you’re starting out, it’s so top secret, and it’s such a small group that’s working on it that you’re really just focused on how do we tell a Star Wars story within this era? And within the underworld and the scoundrel like Kay?
I think if you start thinking too much about those things, it’s very hard to do your job. You’re setting up expectations, and there’s maybe a cloud of ‘who are we pleasing?’
For us, I think it was really just super focused on telling a scoundrel story. We’re introducing a new character in Kay and multiple characters like ND-5 and Nix. The wonderful part is that era of the Original Trilogy has been written about in the movies, and the underworld angle has been touched on in comic books, but not in games and not in films. It gave us a really blank slate to have a lot of fun.
John Bjorling: I think it was very much about us building a team and working on something that we felt passionate about, that we believed in. I think that that was the only real way to do this, to have that self-reflection rather than worrying about possible perceptions of things.
NK: It was really key that we have lots of Star Wars fans on the team, too. You also have your internal gut checks of things that keeps you true.
You’ve talked before about how Star Wars is wonderfully indebted to tropes. It’s part of the DNA of the franchise, especially with the scoundrel. Did you find when writing Outlaws that there was an awareness of these tropes? Do you think that Kay being a woman who’s playing a scoundrel this time instead of a traditional Han Solo type, does that change how you write that archetype now?
NK: I think we really just approach it from the perspective of who Kay is. It’s about keeping focus. What are we trying to tell here? This is a story of someone who’s grown up with nothing, is scraping by to survive, who is taking on jobs and maybe not doing so well with them and failing at that, and essentially ends up with this bounty on her back. That’s what we were focused on, is how does a character like this grow and change? How do we keep them relatable as well?
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I go back to the idea of Kay being one of us. I think there’s something to someone who’s on the ground, not part of that larger galactic battle, that just felt very universal. I don’t think necessarily that was top of mind, but I think it came about very organically in terms of how we’re developing the character. Then what’s interesting is once you start casting, and we brought on some fantastic actors like Jay Rincon for ND-5, and obviously, Humberly González who plays Kay, they bring such great personality and breathe life into your characters as well, that you start looking at the writing, you’re looking at what you’ve developed, and you’re saying, Okay, wait a second, how we can incorporate Humberly[‘s] flavour and approach to Kay?
You write the game throughout the whole development process, really. You have multiple recording sessions and so on. You get to hear things in-game with the character and really hear the character’s voice as you’re writing it. I think that that thing really makes it come to life and find its own little place. Humberly brought so much character, I think it helped a lot.
I would also say that I think one of the really important things for that matinee adventure tone that we wanted to emulate and approach from the Original Trilogy, it is also that sense of a character that is thrown into the deep end of the pool but is still optimistic about being able to make it to the other side, really. I think that that, if anything, is probably the one scoundrel character aspect that just feels so universal. Everything else is very much like, plucked from case specific story and character.
JB: She’ll always think she can pull it off. Even if everyone’s telling her no. Even if she’s ultimately lying to herself. But Nix knows! (laughs)
So you’ve decided to have Kay’s origin story be on Canto Bight, which is to my mind and probably Rian Johnson’s, a very political planet in The Last Jedi. You’ve talked about this being an everyman’s story, more of an overarching view of the galaxy but will Kay’s politics and reaction to something like the Empire and Imperial threat be something that evolves over time throughout the game, or has it really been put on the back burner for this?
NK: It’s a good question. I think our focus was on what’s organic when you think of where Kay comes from and what she’s experienced. Within Canto Bight, this is a moon in the middle of nowhere. She doesn’t know about the Jedi. She doesn’t know much even about the Empire. She just knows that they’re in charge. That evolution is more about, wow, okay, their reach goes quite far.
She’s going to be encountering things like the Wanted System, for example, where, okay, now she isn’t just dealing with the Canto Bight police. She’s dealing with an extremely powerful force that has taken charge of the galaxy. I think there’s an evolution in that sense.
I think we definitely want to leave some room for players to find out some more when they play on August 30th. But I think especially that perspective, and that’s where I’d really hammer home, that perspective of, I’m not a rebel. I’m not one of them. I’m definitely not one of the Empire. How do I find my place in the galaxy was crucial to her story, and that’s something she’s going to be discovering as she goes through.
JB: It’s really that thing of Kay represents all of these people and beings across the galaxy who are just trying to survive. They can’t afford to worry about the fate of the galaxy and whoever is in control because that doesn’t really matter to them. They’re so busy with their own personal life and so on. That’s what has shaped Kay a lot and why she doesn’t really have aspirations to do something greater or anything like that. It’s a cutthroat galaxy, and she’s just looking out for herself.
NK: Kay is not a political operator. She’s a scoundrel. That’s super important for us to get to find.
I’m personally a pretty big Sequel Trilogy defender so seeing two of those planets beautifully realised in the game has been a really nice treat. Can you talk a bit about what you find thematically interesting about somewhere like Kijimi?
JB: Kijimi is really cool because, of course, you only see a glimpse of it, really, in The Rise of Skywalker. Then the sourcebooks that have been released, with Pablo Hidalgo expanding some of the stuff in some of the books. But we really felt like there was a lot of room between the Dai Bendu going to Kijimi and what you see in the Sequel Trilogy, especially through an underworld angle.
What we’re looking at there is almost like a criminal dynasty in the Ashiga Clan and how they are, because you don’t see them in Rise of Skywalker and it’s curious what happens to them. But that pretty big story of this criminal empire and what happens when they get challenged by a very powerful competitor and so on. With us going deeply into the underworld in this game, it was so cool that we could go to these different planets and [ask] what’s the underworld angle here? Really, Kijmi is about this conflict between two criminal syndicates and Kay getting caught a little bit in between.
NK: Even having Qi’ra from Crimson Dawn, who appeared in Solo as well, it was so exciting to know that she’s going to be part of this story and her perspective during this period. I think having those major players that maybe exist beyond the Original Trilogy, it just opens up new avenues of storytelling.
When writing someone like Qi’ra, because it is a pre-established character, both through the movie and the comics as well, how do you go about putting your characterisation onto someone who’s already been established?
NK: You want to be truthful to not only how she was written, but the performance from Solo, you want to honour the cadence. So little things of just how she talks, how she presents herself. Then once we nailed that, everything else comes organically. I think the approach to characters that have been established, what’s new comes in terms of how they react to the characters you’ve crafted originally. How Qi’ra perceives someone like Kay… that’s where you learn not only something new about Kay, but you’re going to learn something from them, their perception of the galaxy and their perception of what’s going on.
JB: I do think that Qi’ra is a really exciting example as well, because first we only really saw her in Solo. Then, of course, we’ve had this big comic event with Crimson Reign… then the Crimson Climb book came out that filled the gaps a little bit in that moment in Solo where they’re separated. But I think that all of them, all of these stories are bringing in nuances to Qi’ra that we’ve looked at and seen how that fits in with us. I do think that the way we look at it, Qi’ra, she’s at a very specific moment in her time during Star Wars Outlaws, and we try to, as much as possible, stay true to that. But also that it’s ultimately Kay’s journey and what does her meeting with Qi’ra look like?
Alright here’s a weird one to wrap things up. The internet really loves ND-5, are you aware of people’s reaction to the droid and how did that feel for the team internally?
NK: If anyone tells you they saw that coming, they are lying. I just love that people are excited about the character. When we were at the announcement, we were seeing the reaction, and then I was looking at ND-5, and I was like…okay, yeah, I can see it. I think it’s just exciting, right? You can work on a Star Wars story. You never know how people are going to react to [it]. That was actually a really fun surprise.
JB: I think people who liked ND-5 with what we’ve shown so far, I think they’re going to love him even more once they play the game. He’s such a huge part of Kay’s journey as well. It’s about them really getting to know one another and growing together in a way. But yeah, he does carry a lot of scars, both emotional and physical.
Star Wars Outlaws launches on August 30th for PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC. Amazon has pre-orders available for $89 with free release day delivery for Prime members.
James was a guest of Ubisoft with travel and accommodation covered for the purpose of this coverage.
