Ubisoft Incorporated Star Fox Into 'Starlink' Before Getting Nintendo's Approval

The developers at Ubisoft Toronto took some big risks with the open-world space adventure Starlink: Battle For Atlas, which just came out last week. But perhaps the biggest risk of all was what it did with the Nintendo Switch version, as it started to incorporate elements from the classic Star Fox series before Nintendo even granted them permission.

While speaking with Okay Cool, Matthew Rose, who serves as the game's producer, said they talked pretty often with Nintendo about getting the legendary hero involved with the series, even going as far as to create a 3D printed model of his Arwing, which would eventually serve as the physical model included with the Switch version of the game.

"We're so excited by even them having this conversation with us, even though they hadn't confirmed anything. And so we started working. We started drawing concepts, we made a 3D-printed Arwing that had their proper connectors and toys in it so that you could take it apart and everything," he explained.

Granted, having Nintendo's permission would've been nice, but it eventually worked out anyway. "Well, you know, what's amazing is that's kind of the strength of Ubisoft. Ubisoft almost runs each team like a bunch of entrepreneurial ventures. Each team really has this freedom to experiment and try things and go places and take calculated risks. And draw upon the incredible resources that the Ubisoft network has to offer, but not necessarily be constrained by needing to get clearance up some crazy chain.

"So for us, you know, we have our partners in Paris that we work so closely with, and we were like 'hey, we are so passionate and excited, we think we can make this work. We're gonna go for it.' So we just started working, but we were a little cautious. We didn't want to dedicate all of our resources to it, and then we got the [Kyoto] invitation."

From there, the team put together the 3D model, even with a limited time frame. "Fortunately, we had started work before we were really… confirmed [for] anything. So we scrambled to put together this pitch and pull everything together and, for instance, we had this 3D-printed Arwing, but we didn't have time to paint it properly – to like 'pro paint' it. Because, you know, if you've gotta do it, you gotta do it right – especially for Nintendo...[The] 3D-printed plastic it was like beige. It looked kind of ugly, so we spray painted it this kind of really neutral grey colour...It was this nice, you can imagine, you know, it was almost like you'd see an untextured 3D model in a game, and so we spray painted it grey and brought it over."

Eventually, though, it paid off successfully; and now we have one of Star Fox's best game appearances in years, since Starlink: Battle For Atlas is so unbeatable on the Switch front.

You can check out Starlink: Battle For Atlas now on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and PC.