Star Wars Outlaws director was inspired by a samurai action game more than Red Dead or Assassin's Creed: 'My biggest reference was Ghost of Tsushima'

It took a few hours, but Star Wars Outlaws eventually began winning over our staff scoundrel Morgan Park when he got his hands on a preview build earlier this month. Despite an "unmistakable sluggishness to the action," Morgan eventually found that as in previous Ubisoft games, "no one aspect is exceptional, but when it all comes together, I'm having a really good time."

Apart from the obvious reason Star Wars Outlaws feels similar to other open world Ubisoft games—because it's another open world Ubisoft game—there's an even more direct connection. Speaking to GamesRadar, Star Wars Outlaws creative director Julian Gerighty said Assassin's Creed Odyssey was one of his favorite AC games "without a doubt."

Praising its "freedom of approach in a very large environment" and the "curiosity at its heart," Gerighty told GR he would "pick up the phone" and ask members of Odyssey's development team specific questions while making Outlaws. "Okay, how did you do this? What was too big for you? What was too long a distance for traversal?" 

Odyssey wasn't the only influence on Outlaws. Gerighty also told GamesRadar that "my biggest reference was Ghost of Tsushima, which is more on the Kurosawa side of inspiration than the Western, the John Ford side of the inspiration for George Lucas."

Red Dead Redemption was another influence, because it treats "the world as a world, not as a checklist of activities that are repeated often," Gerighty said. "But I think that Ghost of Tsushima, what I loved about it was this purity of having a player fantasy and really leaning into it.

"This is the story, the world, the character, everything fits together with the gameplay guiding everything," he said. "That's the fantasy of 'you are a samurai ninja in Japan.' That was one of the guiding lights for [Star Wars Outlaws]."

It's not quite the same theme in Outlaws—as Morgan points out, Ubisoft and LucasArts have repeatedly called it a "scoundrel fantasy." As far as its inspirations like AC Odyssey, RDR, and Ghost of Tsushima, we don't have much longer to wait to see if their influence can really be felt in Gerighty's open world. Star Wars Outlaws releases on August 30.