Leading up to the release of Star Wars Outlaws, there has been a significant focus on expanding familiar planets and landscapes within the Star Wars universe, such as Tatooine. However, Massive Entertainment has gone beyond that, bringing to life a world we’ve only read about in Clone Wars books and creating an entirely new location with Toshara Moon.
CGMagazine got to sit down with Art & World Director of Star Wars Outlaws Benedikt Podlesnigg and Associate Art Director Marthe Jonkers to talk about the process of bringing these to life and making them feel like fully actualized locations that could exist in the Star Wars universe.
What is it like working on a Star Wars project?
Benedikt Podlesnigg: This is the game I always dreamt about making since I was a little kid. The first time I watched the movies, and they arrived at Mos Eisley, I always thought, “What does the rest of the universe look like?” And Star Wars Outlaws really lets us discover that by roaming around the world. Going into the cantina and just pinpointing all the little details in it. It’s just super exciting.
Marthe Jonkers: It was always a dream of mine to work on not only a Star Wars project but an open world one. I always thought I knew a lot about Star Wars until I started working on this project, but now I am a Star Wars expert. After diving so deep into the lore and inspirations, it’s been amazing.
Besides the movies, what other Star Wars-related media did the team look at for inspiration for Star Wars Outlaws?
Benedikt Podlesnigg: Besides rewatching the movies and shows, I got into the Aftermath book because, in [Star Wars Outlaws], we have Akiva, a bunch of the art books that let us get good looks at all the costumes and stuff like that. Because we worked closely with operations, we also got access to a bunch of behind-the-scenes libraries, all the behind-the-scenes footage, photographs, concept art, and some 3D assets.
Marthe Jonkers: When we designed for Star Wars Outlaws, we didn’t want to reference other Star Wars media, but we wanted to have the same inspiration forces that they had made for the original trilogy. So, we looked at samurai and Wild West movies. Then we use all those sources to inspire us to be able to create similar designs that are in the vein of Star Wars, the Original Trilogy style, but could still be very new and like something that people haven’t seen before.
Benedikt Podlesnigg: There was a community that’s doing repairs and old TVs, and you’re looking at it, and you see these, like, 50s, 60s TVs that look very, very specific. So when you, for example, look at the slicing kit that you can get from the expert in [Star Wars Outlaws], you will probably notice on the design, a lot of references from that because it’s the thing that they would have probably used in the original movie to create props and stuff.
The team created a new moon from scratch for Star Wars Outlaws. Can you explain the process behind that and why?
Benedikt Podlesnigg: It was a very long process! When it comes to Star Wars, you have locations that are usually like a one-node kind of biome. You have your forest planet, you have your water planet, you have your desert plan. So we wanted to have a baseline kind of biome that we went to that is different from all the other locations. We have a frozen landscape, the frozen city with Kijimi. We have the jungle planet with Akiva and the desert with Tatooine.
So we wanted to have something that fits in, but it’s different. So, we started looking at the African Savanna as our baseline. But with Star Wars designs, there are always three steps that you go through, like the three elements, and that’s the familiar, which is the Savanna. There is the unfamiliar, which was inspired by stone forests, and the mound structures everywhere in the landscape in Madagascar and Southeast Asia. Then there are the exotic elements, which are the alien pieces. For us, it’s the Embry, when you see the orange Amber-like material that is literally like a material that creates the core of this moon.
Marthe Jonkers: It’s because Star Wars locations and planets feel very grounded and relatable. And we wanted to achieve the same thing. So we went very deep, not only into the biome and the weather conditions and the materials that you would find there but also into what kind of people would live there.
How is their clothing? Are inspired by their environments? What kind of food do they eat? So what kind of plants grow there? How do they hunt for their food? Then there’s all the wildlife that’s there, like everything was designed all together like so it would all fit together into this one world that would come across as very believable. It’s a place that you can imagine that would exist, and it would look like that. And I think we went very, very deep on that, and that was really cool to work on.
Speaking of animals, I’d like to talk about Nix and his design in Star Wars Outlaws. How did that come to be? Did the team know, kind of out of the gate, what they wanted from Nix design-wise, or did it evolve over time to suit what it needed to be?
Marthe Jonkers: He evolved a lot in the designs while we were working on them. We got quite a strong idea from the beginning that we wanted to have Kay as the main character and then the second main character, and that will be Nix. But for Nix specifically, it’s a new creature we designed here at Massive with Lucas Film Games. We really had a few things that we wanted this creature to have, and one of the things was he needed to feel believable, like all the things that we designed. So it’s not supposed to be this sort of cute psychic.
No, he’s actually supposed to be this animal that you can imagine; he’s from this jungle planet, and he looks like he’s from this jungle planet. He has these skills to protect him. He has claws so he can defend himself. He has very sharp teeth. So, he’s definitely an animal that can take care of himself at the same time; we really wanted this companionship to come across between Kay and Nix. So he did need to have a softer side to him.
So for us, you know, having a creature that you could see from his posing what he feels or what he thinks was very important, and that’s why he has these tentacles, which makes him very alien as well, which is definitely nice for a Star Wars design. These tentacles really show his emotions. When he’s scared, he will put them down. When he senses his environment, he puts them up. This really helps us to solidify the relationships that they have with each other.
Lastly, what is your favourite Star Wars thing outside of Star Wars Outlaws?
Benedikt Podlesnigg: In terms of movies, for me, it’s then, by Strikes Back, it’s just because of the atmosphere, the tone, and how they managed to really add a lot to that galaxy that makes it feel really big and. All the designs that were added, like the walkers and Cloud City.
Marthe Jonkers: I mean, it’s for me, Empire Strikes Back, but it was also the first movie I saw. This is the movie that made me a fan of Star Wars when I was young, and that was the one that was on television. From then on, I just started to draw all this: fan art, characters from Star Wars, and ships. And now, then, so many years later, I am actually able to do that and work on it. That, for me, is such a magical thing.
