What's it like adding a world to Star Wars? The Outlaws developers explain

rockpapershotgun.com:

Star Wars: Outlaws isn't just an open world retread of existing Star Wars locations, like Tatooine. It contains a whole new moon of developer Massive Entertainment's creation - Toshara, which is home to the Pyke criminal gang and visually defined by huge deposits of crystalline orange material and cities hacked out of mountains. What's it like adding a whole bloody world to Star Wars? Here are some quick thoughts from Massive Entertainment's creative director Julian Gerighty.

"It's really, really fun and it was a process that taught us that no matter how much you think you know about Star Wars, you don't know enough about Star Wars," he told Game Informer, in an interview published this week. "There is a beauty and a simplicity in terms of the design of every single one of those locations that we've really learned a lot from."

What makes a Star Wars location Star Warsy? A balance of recognisability - in this case, the setting is influenced by the savannas of east Africa - and weirdness, which seems pretty worldbuilding 101 to me, but then again, I have never created a billion-dollar sci-fi license. "It has to be familiar, it has to be something that you could almost recognize on Earth but there's always a twist," Gerighty continued. "And in the case of Tashara, it's these huge streaks of Amberite material, that's translucent [and] forms part of the landscape, but it's also within the cities. The city is carved into a mountain, it's very windswept - everything is very familiar, and yet there's a twist that makes it uniquely Star Wars."

The game contains a bunch of stuff of Massive's devising - new characters in the shape of "emerging scoundrel" Kay Vess and her de rigeur floofy sidekick Nix, a brand new ship for the player, the Trailblazer, and a new underworld crime syndicate, the insectile Ashiga clan. As Kay, you'll tangle with several of these syndicates in succession as you try to outrun your erstwhile patrons, the Zerek Besh, who operate out of the