2024-08-22 13:24:28
A working method inspired by television series, a speeder wooden frames to film scenes with greater realism, more than ten thousand hand-drawn drawings to help actors and developers: these are some of the discoveries that caught my attention during a recent visit to Ubisoft Toronto studios, a few days before the launch of the highly anticipated Star Wars Outlaws.
The team had a ” writer’s room “, like on TV
An excerpt from Star Wars Outlaws. Credit: Ubisoft.
The thousands of lines of text, but also the story itself, the different characters and some missions were created in a ” writer’s room », or writers’ room in French, a concept widespread on television, and which has gained popularity in recent years in the world of video games.
“It was a room that lasted throughout the project. We had the writers, but also the mission designers, artists and the director,” explains the game’s narrative director Navid Khaviari.
“At the beginning of the process, we made a list of all the things we would like to see in a story like this. After all, we are all fans of Star Wars“Throughout the project, we had access to this huge list, and we really liked that,” notes head writer Nikki Foy.
“Then it was like a school project. We would break into small groups, refine ideas, write texts, and then come back as a large group. We iterated on these ideas for years, bouncing off each other’s concepts and texts. It really was everyone’s baby,” she adds.
The game’s time period was proposed by Lucasfilm.
Star Wars Outlaws takes place between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Credit: Ubisoft.
The premise of Star Wars Outlaws is quite simple: you play as Kay Vess, a sort of early-career Han Solo who must rise through the ranks in the world of bandit cartels and assemble a team to carry out a major heist.
“When we presented the project to Lucasfilm, they were really excited, and they suggested that the story take place betweenEmpire Strikes Back and the Return of the Jedi. I turned to the person next to me and said quietly, ‘Quick, let’s get back on the plane before they change their minds,'” says Navid Khaviari.
In Star Wars Outlawsthe Empire exists, but it is occupied with the Rebels, which makes this period a veritable golden age for cartels and scoundrels (to use the expression used in the French version of the Star Wars). There are no Jedi in sight, but we do get to know Jabba the Hut (or Jabba the Forester, to use the translation of A new hope).
The cutscenes were shot like in the movies
I had the opportunity to attend a cinematic shoot with some of the game’s actors, including Huberly Gonzalez, who plays the main character Kay Vess.
These motion capture shoots have evolved a lot in recent years, getting closer and closer to film and television. “We hire real film crews, and we have four cameras that film the scenes,” notes director Bogdan Draghici. The shots are no longer created on the computer in post-production, but framed directly during filming, which helps speed up the process.
Particular attention was also paid to the aesthetics of the shots, as in the cinema. Everything from the framing favored by the directors of the films of Star Wars to the camera lenses they used has been carefully studied by Bodgan Draghici and his team. “The aim is not to make a pastiche of these films,” he specifies, but rather that Star Wars Outlaws is aesthetically consistent with the period in which the game is set.
Nix has his puppet (and I have my speeder)
Actress Huberly Gonzalez (Kay Vess) and the puppet of the character Nix.
Photo: Maxime Johnson.
The filming of the cutscenes and short scenes that take place before the action in the video games is done with numerous custom-designed accessories, a few steps from the filming studios in the Ubisoft Toronto premises (it should be noted in passing that only part of the cutscenes were filmed here: the largest portion was filmed in Montreal).
To allow Huberly Gonzalez to interact more naturally with Nix, Kay Vess’ animal companion, a fairly complex model was designed by a puppeteer, who also had to control it during filming (which is still a nice tribute to the original films, since after all, Yoda was also a puppet).
I was like a kid in a candy store with the wooden speeder used to shoot some scenes from Star Wars Outlaws.
Photo: Carl-Edwin Michel
For my part, I really enjoyed trying the Speeder Kay’s, which can be tilted thanks to a surprisingly complex pneumatic system for an accessory that will later be digitized.
Over 1000 storyboards were drawn for the game
Interestingly, every scene shot (and there are over 201 hours of motion capture in Star Wars Outlaws!) was accompanied by a storyboard (storyboardin English).
“There were over 1,000 storyboards done, and each one has 15 to 20 drawings. And they were all hand-drawn, it’s absolutely incredible,” says Navid Khaviari.
In various examples of scenes shot that were presented at the launch event, the action on screen was in the vast majority of cases faithful to the storyboard drawings.
Storyboards aren’t unique to Star Wars Outlaws in the world of video games, but the quality of the latter deserves to be highlighted. It is also another parallel that demonstrates how the line is increasingly thin between video games, films and TV series in the universe of Star Wars.
Now it only remains to be seen whether Star Wars Outlaws will live up to expectations when it launches on August 30 for PC, PS5, and Xbox.
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