Star Wars Outlaws Art and World Director Discusses Creating a Brand New Moon to Explore
What's it like to make a totally new location for a Star Wars game?
Star Wars Outlaws is very much about blending firsts with established pieces of the Star Wars universe. This being the first open-world game and featuring a new protagonist, Kay Vess, are perfect examples of such as are the planets that players will be able to explore in Star Wars Outlaws. Some of those confirmed planets are ones that we've seen in past Star Wars movies and other mediums including Akiva and Tatooine, though there are also brand new locales to explore.
One of those is called Toshara, and it's 100% new to the Star Wars universe thanks to Star Wars Outlaws just like Kay Vess and her companions are. While the other locations mentioned previously are indeed planets, Toshara isn't and is classified as a moon instead.
But in the Star Wars universe where there are already so many different planets that have played countless roles in different Star Wars stories, where does Star Wars Outlaws developer Massive Entertainment start when making a brand new one? During a recent hands-on opportunity with the game, we spoke with art and world director Benedikt Podlesnigg to learn more about Toshara and the work that went into it.
"So, creating a planet that is completely distinct from everything that we've seen was very interesting because in Star Wars, there are many planets. It's a big galaxy," Podlesnigg said. "We have already seen a lot, so the first thing was 'What do we want it to look like? What is the biome?' Star Wars planets usually have just a single biome, but for a game, we wanted to push it a little more to have more variety. So we're looking at 'What could we do?' and one thing that we honed into was the savannah, and especially the African Savannah which was fairly untouched, and it gave us the freedom to add an exotic element onto it."
Along with seedy undertakings, bandits, and more, Toshara is home to a striking topography filled with canyons throughout the moon as well as a unique orangish color made possible by the windiness of the moon and the effects those breezes have on the land.
"Taking that kind of familiar element of the African Savannah, pushing that very strong wind element into it that really shapes the landscape," Podlesnigg continued. "So having an exotic element, that the wind scrapes the crust off this moon, brings forward as an element to create this kind of contrast, [an] orange kind of material. Something I've never seen. Looking at a planetary scale, down at the moon, it's even more substantial so you can see the big canyons."
Star Wars Outlaws is scheduled to release on August 30th.
