Star Wars Outlaws massive planets won't be procedurally generated

It’s taking every ounce of my strength not to get overly excited for Ubisoft’s open-world Star Wars game, Outlaws.

First unveiled during June’s Xbox Games Showcase, Outlaws stars scoundrel Kay Vess and her adorable, fuzzy, axolotl-like companion, Nix, in an all-new adventure set between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. As well as a GTA-inspired wanted system and an oddly seductive droid, Outlaws is shaping up to be enormous, as the devs keep teasing the overwhelming size of the game’s planets.

Take a look at the trailer for Star Wars Outlaws right here.

For reference, game director Mathias Karlson previously stated that the planet of Toshara will be larger than the entirety of The Division 2’s map, and creative director Julian Gerighty more recently claimed that planets might be around the same size as two or three zones in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. There were seven different areas in Odyssey, and so far, Star Wars fans believe they’ve spotted four or five planets in Outlaws’ trailers, so it could be even bigger than the 2018 Assassin’s Creed game.

Although we don’t currently know the total number of planets that’ll be included, as Eurogamer reports, Gerighty also confirmed in an interview with Edge magazine that all of them will be “handcrafted”. He stated: “We haven't procedurally generated an entire planet.”

Meanwhile, we already know that Bethesda’s space-exploration RPG Starfield will include some procedurally generated planets, although if I were to guess, I’d say that the scale of Starfield and Outlaws is very likely wildly different, so they’re probably not the best games to compare.

Star Wars Outlaws is currently set to release on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC at some point in 2024, at which point I’m sure we’ll once again see a surge of thirst for a droid wearing a trench coat. God help us all.