Ubisoft has announced that it has appointed a new Star Wars Outlaws creative director, and he'll be helming what will be the game's biggest update yet.
According to a blog post on the official Star Wars Outlaws website, Drew Rechner will be stepping up to the plate as the game's new creative director. Whether previous directors Julian Gerighty and Mathias Karlson will still be playing a role in the game's ongoing development remains to be seen.
In the blog post, Rechner says he's identified "three key areas" in which he and the team would like to improve Star Wars Outlaws, namely combat, stealth, and character control.
With regards to combat, Rechner says the studio is looking to add "more depth and excitement to the experience" in order to further reward players' "tactics and precision".
When it comes to stealth, the plan is to improve the "readability and consistency of enemy detection" and to provide more "choice" in how you want to approach encounters.
Finally, character control improvements will apparently involve "improving the reliability of cover, increasing the responsiveness of climbing and crouching, and generally improving the consistency of the controls".
These are areas in which previous Star Wars Outlaws updates have sought to make improvements as well, particularly in the case of stealth, but Rechner says the forthcoming update 1.4 will be Star Wars Outlaws' "biggest yet" when it lands on November 21st.
If you're not familiar with Star Wars Outlaws, it's an open-world action-adventure game developed by Ubisoft and set, believe it or not, in the Star Wars universe.
You play scoundrel Kay Vess, who must wheel and deal her way through the underworld's crime syndicates as she plans the heist of a lifetime. The game mixes shooter-style combat, stealth, and open-world exploration.
Despite the popularity of its IP, Star Wars Outlaws underperformed for Ubisoft financially, leading to the company rethinking some of its strategies; Ubisoft games will be released on Steam on day one from now on, and the company is also dropping the season pass model for future releases.
Star Wars Outlaws is available right now on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, and it's also coming to Steam on November 21st, the same day the next update arrives. You can read our review of the game here to find out if this is a Kessel run worth making.
