Star Wars Outlaws may feature a brand new smuggler character named Kay Vess, but it will include plenty of returning characters from the Star Wars movies as well. Lando Calrissian and a carbonite-frozen Han Solo have both appeared in the game’s trailers, while characters like Jabba the Hutt and Qi’ra return as leaders of some of the criminal underworld Syndicates that players must work with. Lead writer Nikki Foy told Digital Trends at a Star Wars Outlaws preview event that bringing characters like Qi’ra back was taken very seriously.
“It’s a huge responsibility. I think these are characters that belong to so many people. They’re beloved by them as they’ve grown up with them. Our whole team takes it very seriously when writing for these characters,” Foy tells Digital Trends.
I specifically asked about Qi’ra, who most fans will recognize thanks to Emila Clarke’s performance in Solo: A Star Wars Story. The film ended on somewhat of a cliffhanger with her character, as she was working for Darth Maul and assuming leadership of the Crimson Dawn crime syndicate. Star Wars comics have since filled in the gaps of what Qi’ra was doing during the events of the original trilogy, but a lot of potential with the character has been left untapped. Star Wars Outlaws will be the first time a lot of people will see the character since 2018. Foy appreciated all of the material Lucasfilm had to let them work with for Crimson Dawn compared to some of the other Syndicates and how it allowed Qi’ra to coexist as a fleshed-out character alongside Kay Vess.
“We’re all nerds and fans of the comics, and we really loved what they were doing with Crimson Dawn, so bringing Qi’ra back was a really fun challenge,” Foy says. “We have all this great material to work with. We know exactly when Star Wars Outlaws is happening; we know the past and what’s going to happen in the future. It sets us up to really make Q’ira and Crimson Dawn exist parallel to Kay and explore how Kay can help them or exploit them, which is fun. It was nice to have a Syndicate that was that fleshed out already.”
Star Wars Outlaws launches for PC, PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on July 30. I went hands-on with the game for over four hours, so make sure you check out my preview of Ubisoft’s latest as well.
