Responding to some negative previews, Star Wars Outlaws director says demo was just an appetiser

Ubisoft provided the most comprehensive look at Star Wars Outlaws yet during a public showcase on Monday, which coincided with a hands-on demo being made available to press at Summer Game Fest.

While reactions to the game’s big reveal varied, many members of the press who had the chance to go hands-on with the title drew comparisons between its gameplay and that of Naughty Dog’s Uncharted series.

While some of these comparisons were complimentary, others said the gameplay felt dated and too close to Sony‘s action adventure franchise for its own good.

Asked about those negative reactions in an interview following Monday’s Ubisoft Forward showcase, Star War Outlaws creative director Julian Gerighty told VGC he hadn’t had the chance to catch up on the newly published previews.

He also welcomed comparisons to Naughty Dog’s work, while stating that people had only been exposed to a small amount of what Star Wars Outlaws has to offer.

“I mean, for me it wasn’t necessarily our reference point,” he said of the Uncharted series. “It’s such a wonderful game to be compared to though, so if you’re going to be compared to somebody, it might as well be the best in the industry. Naughty Dog and what they do is absolutely brilliant, so I’ll take it, but it wasn’t the point of origin.”

While some of the gameplay chosen for the Summer Game Fest demo might seem familiar to players, Gerighty described it as an appetiser for what’s to come from Massive Entertainment’s open-world game.

“I think coming into a show like this, while you’re closing a game in terms of production, you have to make a lot of choices, and our producer was like, you get one demo for all of the shows that we’re going to go to during the year, so Gamescom, ComiCon [etc].

“And they’re consumer plus journalist focused, so we had to choose something that was 20 minutes, bite-sized, lots of variety, lots of representative systems, but not the open world experience, because we’re going to expose that during the studio tour, in the preview event over here.

“So we’ll spend a lot more time on those things, so this is an amuse bouche, it’s a starter rather than the main course for the game.

“I think we have a very compelling overall game and just a part of it is represented here,” he added.

Elsewhere in the interview, Gerighty said Star War Outlaws players will be able to finish the game in about 30 hours, and that Massive originally wanted to include the ability to swim in the game.