Star Wars Outlaws is set to release later this year, offering players an open-world adventure and the chance to embody a scoundrel named Kay Vess. This represents a significant shift from the lightsaber-swinging action seen in recent Star Wars Jedi games. However, the creative director of Outlaws shared that the concept of featuring Jedi as the main focus “didn’t even enter the picture.”Outlaws may not be the first Star Wars game to let us play as a non-Jedi character, but the concept of exploring an open world with a crime system as a scoundrel is intriguing. In a recent interview with Game Informer, creative director Julian Gerighty discussed developer Massive Entertainment’s decision to take an unconventional approach by not featuring another playable Jedi. He explained that it was largely influenced by the team’s favorite character from the Star Wars films.
“I genuinely think it’s part of who we are as a team,” Gerighty says. “When we were thinking about it, our favorite character wasn’t Luke Skywalker, it was Han Solo in the movies. It was the outlaw, the scoundrel traveling the Galaxy, dodging one syndicate to pay off another syndicate, and traveling with his best friend, Chewbacca. I mean, that was our favorite character of those original movies. So for us, Jedis are fantastic, but they didn’t even enter the picture at that point.”
Once the decision was made, Massive Entertainment faced the task of designing a character that could stand out from iconic scoundrels like Han Solo, Indiana Jones, and James Bond. Creative director Julian Gerighty noted that there are many scoundrels in popular media, emphasizing the challenge of creating a character who would be compelling, interesting, and powerful enough not to be overshadowed by all these incredible figures.
“And that’s where Kay Vess was born, and the journey of Kay Vess is really a journey of a coming of age story – going from a street thief to a fully-fledged scoundrel that’s well known and kind of respected and feared by the syndicates.”Julian Gerighty first disclosed the Han Solo inspiration for Kay Vess’s creation last year. However, he explained that Massive Entertainment aimed to make Outlaws’ protagonist more relatable and akin to a rookie, a petty thief, who finds themselves caught up in a situation far beyond their expectations.
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