Star Wars Outlaws is a game that invites you to wander. If you go through its various locations, orbits, towns and farms at a considered pace, you will discover all kinds of accessories, peculiarities and details meticulously placed to show a part of the game. Star Wars The galaxy through the shameless eyes of Kay Vess. While some locations featured in the game are known as fan favorites, Star Wars galaxy, other points are less known.
In fact, Toshara (the savannah moon that serves as a hotbed of crime that you'll visit early in the game) was designed by Massive Entertainment, in collaboration with Lucasfilm Games, marking a new entry in the Star Wars Adding a new creation to this already established world is no easy feat, and we had the chance to speak with two designers from Massive Entertainment about how the team went about building Toshara, from its inhabitants to the wildlife and even the plants, as well as bringing other popular locations to life through a new lens.
With countless pre-set locations on offer within the Star Wars As for the galaxy, Massive Entertainment had to carefully consider which locations were appropriate to tell Kay Vess and Nix’s story. The team wanted to show diversity in their settings, from classic, recognizable areas like Tatooine, Luke Skywalker’s desert home, to lesser-shown planets like Kijimi, seen briefly in “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” as a snowy refuge for the galaxy's rebels. Akiva, meanwhile, is a jungle planet that has never been seenIt is only described in the Aftermath series of Star Wars tie-in novels
Toshara Building
But Massive Entertainment created something entirely new in Toshara, the inhabited moon specifically designed and built by the studio to act as a central component of the Star Wars Outlaws Journey. After escaping her hometown of Canto Bight in Cantonica, Kay finds herself temporarily stranded on the moon, which is home to the Pyke Syndicate, as well as a host of other syndicates, ambiguous characters, hidden treasures, and prosperous opportunities for a budding outlaw.
“We wanted to bring something completely new to Star Wars that had never been seen before, and we really embraced that as our playground to tell this exact story,” says Matthieu Delisle, lead systems designer at Star Wars Outlaws. “This was the place where we could experiment the most and set a benchmark for the rest of the game.”
Toshara is a space where the various syndicates of the underworld can meet, and while it is controlled by the Pykes, it is a place where the Empire is willing to let some things slide in exchange for a few credits. Points of interest include Mirogana, a major, bustling city that houses several syndicate districts, and Jaunta's Hope, a smaller settlement. Off the beaten track in Toshara, you'll also discover numerous points of interest: flyer nests containing valuable items stolen from the locals, fields filled with wild animals, or pirate camps with delicacies ready to be taken.
“This is where we had the most freedom to define what feels good in terms of an open-world experience,” Delisle says. “We considered the distance between different activities, how we could create points that would draw attention and lead to something interesting.
Toshara is not only a completely new experience for Star Wars Fans, it's also the first truly open-world area that you can freely explore in a Star Wars game. As soon as you land here, you feel like you're in a real Star Wars It's a place you've probably seen in a classic movie, but what's even more impressive is that everything about Toshara, from its sweeping, dusty vistas to the flora and fauna that inhabit it, has been designed by Massive Entertainment in collaboration with Lucasfilm Games.
“Because we designed Toshara from scratch, we were able to recreate its entire history, from when it was formed to when it was first established and how that fits into the larger context. Star Wars “The timeline is very important,” says Benedikt Podlesnigg, artistic and global director.
“We created all the wildlife, the architecture, what the people of Toshara eat, what they wear, their relationship to the Empire, and how all these things are connected to each other. If you look closely, you’ll find food that the characters are eating growing on some tree, for example.”
Massive Entertainment hasn't just taken Toshara's visuals into account. The team even went so far as to define the planet's gravitational forces and surrounding solar winds, so that pilots will have a hard time navigating and landing their ships without crashing unless they're very familiar with its orbit and layout. This in particular seems like an extremely interesting detail that ties into Toshara's presence as a hideout for criminals with minimal Empire presence.
“It’s in Massive’s DNA to create this logic of a world where things make sense,” Delisle adds. “There’s always a reason for something to exist, and that’s really a hallmark for us – trying to establish all these locations and details to be as believable and lived-in as possible.”
An overview of Kijimi
Later in the story, Star Wars Outlaws Kay Vess travels to Kijimi, a dark and frigid planet that is home to Crimson Dawn and the Ashiga Clan, another criminal syndicate, developed by Massive Entertainment in collaboration with Lucasfilm Games. Like Toshara, Kijimi is largely ruled by anarchy, but the Empire has a much larger presence here. Unlike Toshara, Kijimi has been seen in previous Star Wars media, which gave Massive Entertainment a starting point to turn the planet's eponymous main city into an interactive space, with a unique twist, of course.
“We worked closely with Lucasfilm on Kijimi. We had access to a huge bank of concepts and behind-the-scenes material, as well as the references they used for the location, these Japanese mountain villages that served as inspiration,” Podlesnigg tells us.
“We also got to see the 3D model of Kijimi that they used as an overview of Kijimi City in (Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker), to also get a sense of orientation: where buildings are located, for example.”
Kijimi City is a densely populated area, in stark contrast to the open landscapes of Toshara and Tatooine. The urban environments are made up of small streets and alleys filled with suspicious figures; walking through the city creates a real sense of unease, as if anything could jump out at you.
“There’s a fight here between the Ashiga Clan and Crimson Dawn, and there’s an atmosphere of intrigue and mystery throughout,” Delisle adds. “We’re telling part of the main story here, but what we found interesting were the smaller stories we were able to tell about the people who ended up on Kijimi. It felt like a nice palette cleanser compared to the other, more open environments in Outlaws.”
The secret ingredient is the underworld
While all locations shown in Star Wars The outlaws vary in terms of familiarity, all of them chosen with one main goal in mind: to represent the underworld. Each location acts as another flavor of the shady dealings that Kay and Nix (mostly) willingly participate in, right from the get-go. Kay herself hails from Canto Bight, an Outer Rim game destination shown in Star Wars: “The Last Jedi”.
The place is a hotbed of the rich frivolously taking advantage of their gains, a situation Kay has learned to make the most of as a thief. The contrast between the Canto Bight setting and Kay’s upbringing sets the immediate tone for Outlaws: this story wants to show you these places not through the eyes of a well-known hero, but as a scoundrel, desperate and hopeful. In the sandy dunes of Tatooine, Kay isn’t looking at the home of Jedi Luke Skywalker, she’s focused on opportunity, prowling the alleys, inspecting the buildings, perpetually on the hunt for something that will give her an edge.
“One of the big ambitions when we started (Outlaws) was to show what’s behind the curtain,” Delisle says. “Our generation grew up watching those movies and wondering ‘what would it be like to go there?’ You see things in the movies, but you never get off the roller coaster to really look at the world, see the wildlife, talk to the people who live there, and it was really important to all of us to let the players be someone who could live in this world.”
“Every time I walk out of the Mos Eisley cantina and get into my speeder, I have a big smile on my face,” Podlesnigg adds. “This is simply a love letter to everything around me.” Star Wars.”
