HIGHLIGHTS

• Star Wars Outlaws borrows GTA’s wanted system for endgame challenges, providing a large-scale adventure in the Star Wars universe.
• Difficulty can be adjusted to match player’s playstyle, with the wanted system offering a tough endgame challenge at level six.
• Inspired by Mass Effect 2 and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Outlaws promises a unique narrative experience with influences from various films.

To share the hype of next year’s Grand Theft Auto 6, Massive Entertainment’s Star Wars Outlaws borrows a familiar wanted system from the Rockstar Games series to challenge players’ escape strategy from the Empire and Syndicates. The material we’ve seen so far from the Ubisoft title has promised a large-scale adventure while building on the Star Wars lore, alongside introducing the new character Kay Vess.

Even though the Summer Game Fest footage was impressive, the action-adventure’s latest 10-minute preview has unfortunately underwhelmed gamers. Downgraded graphics, empty environments, and rocky textures became a cause for concern since the game is only six weeks from its release date.

Star Wars Outlaws’ Wanted System Will Serve Endgame Challenges

In an interview with GamesRadar during a trip behind the scenes at the studio’s base in Malmo, Sweden, lead systems designer Matthieu Delisle and lead gameplay designer Fredrick Thylander discussed Outlaws’ difficulty settings and how this can be altered to match players’ specific playstyles.

It was confirmed that you could “adjust the difficulty to your playstyle or your needs” and “mess with the emergence” of the game’s wanted system. This system is similar to the one found in the GTA franchise, and in Outlaws, its difficulty can be increased to give scoundrels more of a challenge.

Specifically, Delisle said, “It’s definitely a lot of fun to kind of bring it [the wanted level] to level six and then see if you can survive it.” It was stressed that this level was not for the faint-hearted, however, as Delisle continued “And spoiler alert, it’s very difficult, especially at the beginning of the game.”

Additionally, Delisle thought dialing the wanted system up to level six worked well as a “kind of end game challenge” for players to indulge in before fully completing the game, and gaining the satisfaction of outrunning overbearing Star Wars enemies would maximize that completion.

The designer also explained how different experiences can be extracted from the wanted system depending on what planet you’re on, because “The Empire has a different presence on the different planets and space. Same thing with the syndicates.”

Adding that Kay can be on the “bad side of several syndicates”, Delisle described Outlaws’ wanted system as the “ultimate open-world playground type of self-imposed challenge, because if you push it that far, you are really looking for it.”

Star Wars Outlaws is scheduled for release on August 30, 2024.