Star Wars Outlaws’ “Biggest Reference” for the Open World Was Ghost of Tsushima, Director Says

As an open world game coming from Ubisoft, you’d expect that Star Wars Outlaws would be following a very particular kind of template that the company has become synonymous with over the years (at least as far as open world games are concerned), but the upcoming space-faring adventure is looking to carve out its own identity. Its makers at Massive Entertainment have spoken a few times about how the open world is going to differ from your typical Ubisoft experience in some key ways- but what, then, is a closer point of reference for Star Wars Outlaws?

Speaking with GamesRadar, creative director Julian Gerighty touched on the same, and when asked about Star Wars Outlaws’ similarities with Red Dead Redemption 2 and its open world structure and mechanics, he revealed that the “biggest reference” for the game was actually Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima, with the goal for Massive Entertainment having been to thoroughly immerse in the game’s world and its fantasy.

“It’s super interesting because my biggest reference was Ghost of Tsushima, which is more on the Kurosawa side of inspiration than the Western, the John Ford side of the inspiration for George Lucas,” Gerighty said. “Red Dead Redemption is phenomenal, [because it treats] the world as a world – not as a checklist of activities that are repeated often. But I think that Ghost of Tsushima, what I loved about it was this purity of having a player fantasy and really leaning into it. This is the story, the world, the character, everything fits together with the gameplay guiding everything. That’s the fantasy of ‘you are a samurai ninja in Japan.’ That was one of the guiding lights for this.”

Star Wars Outlaws has, of course, been billed as the ultimate Star Wars scoundrel fantasy by Massive and Ubisoft, so it’s not entirely surprising that the key design philosophy for the game’s open world has been to completely immerse players in that fantasy. Whether it does it as well as something like Ghost of Tsushima remains to be seen.

Star Wars Outlaws launches for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on August 30. Check out its PC requirements through here, and read our recent hands-off preview of the game through here.