Star Wars Outlaws lead wants you to know it’s not just another Ubisoft open-world game: “We are hyper conscious of the Ubisoft house style … Massive is quite unique”

Julian Gerighty, creative director of Ubisoft’s Massive Entertainment, says Star Wars Outlaws won’t be like most Ubisoft open-world games.

Talking to GamesIndustry, Gerighty laid out two key reasons why he thinks Star Wars Outlaws will surprise anyone expecting a typical Ubisoft open-world game set in a galaxy far, far away.

“We are hyper conscious of the Ubisoft house style,” Gerighty said. “Massive has always been different. The Division and The Division 2 were different. Originally Massive was an independent studio, then an Activision studio, so it has always thought very differently. The DNA of Massive is quite unique from Ubisoft. But there are so many great lessons to be learned by the Ubisoft way of making games.

Ubisoft has billed Star Wars Outlaws as the franchise’s first open-world game since its reveal, and Lucasfilm recently heaped praise on Massive, saying “there are only so many studios in the world who build games of this scale.” 

For our Star Wars Outlaws preview, Gerighty told us the concept of an open-world Star Wars game spawned from a single sentence that also serves as a compact synopsis and admittedly effective elevator pitch for the game: “Be a scoundrel in a galaxy of wonder and opportunity.” We also called it “one of the most ambitious open-world games” of the year, so there’s reason to be hopeful about Star Wars Outlaws breaking out of the Ubisoft open-world mold and doing something special.

Even the open-world itself is structurally very different from a traditional map, letting players loose in five different planets that comprise the Outer Rim, and although most of them should only take around five minutes to cross from one end to the other on a speeder, Gerighty maintains that “once you’re committed it’s a fairly large amount and you are always going to be distracted.” For more on the game’s scale and the associated technical demands. For more on that, don’t miss our chat with Star Wars Outlaws’ directors on the technical demands of its seamless open world.

And for more still, read our piece on the making of Star Wars Outlaws’ galaxy: “We instantly realized that the true Star Wars open-world experience needs to go beyond planet surfaces”.