Star Wars Outlaws’ Planets Sound Like They Fix A Major Ubisoft Problem

Star Wars Outlaws is nearly here and a lot of players are likely excited to hop into this open-world Star Wars game featuring five large planets. And according to Ubisoft, three of these worlds will take about five minutes to travel across using a speeder bike.

Announced in June 2023, Star Wars Outlaws is Ubisoft’s upcoming open-world game set in that famous galaxy far, far away. You play as scoundrel and thief Kay Vess in a new, canonical story set between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. We’ve known for some time now that Outlaws would be a large game, though (thankfully) not quite as big as some of Ubisoft’s over-stuffed Assassin’s Creed titles. And a new interview with Outlaws’ creative director Julian Gerighty further explained that planets in the game will be big, but manageable.

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In an interview with IGN, Gerighty explained that Ubisoft’s goal with Outlaws was “less about how big” to make the game, but instead “how long in terms of traversal” it takes to explore planets while on a hoverbike.

“[Toshara takes] four or five minutes nonstop, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but once you’re committed it’s a fairly large amount and you are always going to be distracted,” said Gerighty. “Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, which was one of the games that we were looking at while creating this, you have different zones on the map…[Toshara is] two or three of those put together.”

You won’t need a hyperdrive to explore these planets

Tatooine, Toshara, Akiva, Kijimi, and Cantonica—the five confirmed planets in Star Wars Outlaws—aren’t all the same size. According to Ubisoft, Toshara and Akiva are similar in size with Tatooine being “a bit larger.” So that would seem to imply these three planets will all take about five minutes to cross while on a speeder. As for the other planets, they sound more urban and possibly more dense, not ideal for a speeder.

Planets in Outlaws being roughly the same size as two or three zones from Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is something we previously heard from Ubisoft. It also likely means that some of these worlds will be larger than older Assassin’s Creed games, like Syndicate or Unity. It’s nice to hear that traveling around these planets was a main focus for the team and that it won’t take up too much time thanks to your speedy hoverbike. And players won’t end up fast traveling everywhere all the time because it takes too long to reach places, a problem in many open world games.

Previously, Ubisoft had suggested that Star Wars Outlaws won’t take 100 hours to complete, like some previously published Ubisoft open-world games, and instead many players will likely reach the end after about 30 hours or so.

“So we don’t want things to be just big for big sake,” explained Gerighty. “We need it to be contained, always fun, always proposing different activities. So the traversal of the whole thing had to feel like a journey, a commitment when you get on your speeder and you want it to go from one end to the next.”

Star Wars Outlaws launches on August 30 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.

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