Image: Ubisoft
Each planet will reportedly be as big as ‘two zones’ from Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.
Ubisoft’s open-world game Star Wars Outlaws is set in space, like Starfield, and features multiple planets, like Starfield, but each of those planets will be handcrafted, unlike Starfield. Developer Massive Entertainment also pointed out that these planets are the size of ‘two to three zones’ from Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.
In an interview with Edge Magazine (spotted by PCGamer), creative director Julian Gerighty said that the development team, “hasn’t procedurally generated an entire planet,” opting to handcraft its environments instead. When asked about the size of these planets, Gerighty said, “It's a crude analogy, but the size of one planet might be about [equivalent to] two of the zones in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, for example. It could be two to three zones. But it's not, you know, this sort of epic 'the whole of England recreated' approach."
Zones in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey can be as small as a few islands grouped together in the sea or as large as huge swathes of land in Ancient Greece, so that’s a tricky comparison. Gerighty confirms that these are still open world environments however, so they won’t be small in scale: “We're really focusing on what 'open world' means to the player, which is full freedom of approach.”
Starfield famously showed off thousands of explorable planets within its sci-fi universe this year, with the caveat that these planets are procedurally generated - consisting of tilesets that are automatically generated to create a planet that might not be as full of content as, say, one of the Skyrim’s cities. Star Wars Outlaws won’t have thousands of planets, but it sounds like players will have plenty to do in the few planets the game has to offer.
Gerighty also confirmed that players won’t be able to fly in space around these planets freely, but they will be able to land at specific points in the map and explore the near-orbit of different planets and moons. They might also be able to fly around in these designated spaces as well.
The creative director also talked about bringing the feel of the original Star Wars trilogy to the game by replicating its visuals. "So you have the vignetting, film grain, lens breathing, the curvature of a thicker lens, the slight lens flares - all of these things that are very subtle, but come together to give you a more cinematic experience,” he said of its 1970s-inspired effects.
Star Wars Outlaws is set to launch in 2024. Starfield has a one-year head start, launching on September 6, 2023.