There was plenty in Star Wars Outlaws’ meaty gameplay showing at Ubisoft Forward earlier this week that caught the eye, with one of them being the potential promise of a completely seamless open world setting, in spite of the fact that players will be hopping from planet to planet and flying through space.
Developer Ubisoft Massive has now officially confirmed that that will indeed be one of Star Wars Outlaws’ defining characteristics. In a recently published developer gameplay walkthrough breakdown video that reveals new details on the game’s Reputation system, space combat, and more, creative director Julian Gerighty has also confirmed that Star Wars Outlaws will allow players to travel from the surface of a planet and into space (and vice versa) without having to sit through any loading screens.
“One of the things that was very precious to us is having this seamless experience of going on foot, to your speeder, to your spaceship, out of the atmosphere, and into space,” Gerighty said.
The recent gameplay demo’s concluding minutes saw protagonist Kay Vess hopping into her ship, flying it up into the atmosphere, and emerging into space, all in a single, unbroken sequence. Of course, it’s still possible that the game could feature some masked load times instead of explicit ones – for instance, it seems safe to assume that when you’re travelling through Hyperspace, your target destination is being loaded in in the background – but surface-to-space and space-to-surface traversal is still going to be seamless.
Interestingly enough, around this time last year, Bethesda confirmed that its own upcoming sci-fi RPG Starfield would not allow seamless surface-to-space traversal– though given how massively it has impressed with its recent gameplay deep dive, it’s safe to say that the game is more than making up for that in other areas, at least based on the vast amount that’s been shown thus far.
Meanwhile, it’s also been confirmed that Star Wars Outlaws will feature a Wanted system. Read more on that through here.
Star Wars Outlaws launches sometime in 2024 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
