Cody Matthew Johnson explains how he has scoured every sonic corner, from spider monkeys’ chatter to gamelan, to write tunes a space travelling street thief would hear Have you ever thought what walking into a sweaty, dusty club on one of Star Wars’ desert planets would sound like? About what plays on the radios in the casinos on those Las Vegas-like planets? What do the merchants and miscreants of Tatooine listen to when they’re not working the moisture farms or fending off Tusken Raiders? Pondering questions like that has been Cody Matthew Johnson’s life for the past few years. The composer and artist has flirted with video game music before, with credits on Devil May Cry, Resident Evil, Bayonetta, and the cult indie Kurosawa-inspired side-scroller, Trek to Yomi. But for Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws, he was tasked with making music for its seedy criminal underbelly. “There is a limited scope of in-world musical expression in the original trilogy, and this was our opportunity to explore music canonically during that time in a much wider scope,” said Johnson, when I asked how much of a guideline the original trilogy provided for his work on Outlaws. “There are some ‘rules’, per se, to creating cantina music in the style of the original trilogy, and while this game does take place during that time period, we were encouraged to only be slightly influenced by the original trilogy cantina music.” Continue reading...

PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S A genuinely likable new lead and intense attention to the mythology of the Star Wars films made this a nostalgic thrill Nostalgia is a funny thing – there are times it just swoops in out of nowhere like a TIE fighter and blasts you right in the guts, leaving you confused and in pain. An hour into playing Star Wars Outlaws, I didn’t expect to become emotionally overwhelmed during a minor quest that involved buying spare parts from a group of Jawas. But then I rode my speeder out into the Dune Sea and saw their transport there, black and monolithic under the low suns, and then those little chaps were scuttling about, fixing droids … and it took me right back to being 12 years old, watching Star Wars on VHS in our living room, eating a bowl of Monster Munch my mum had brought to me, repeating the lines along with Luke. There are many moments like this in Ubisoft’s sprawling adventure, and they save its life on more than one occasion. For all the pre-release talk about this not being a typical Ubisoft open-world game, Star Wars Outlaws sure feels a lot like a typical Ubisoft open-world game. You play as Kay Vess, a street thief quietly living off her guile until a lucrative heist goes wrong and she ends up stealing a spaceship, then crashing it on the remote moon of Toshara. From here, she must survive by working for the galaxy’s many criminal gangs, playing them off against each other and building a rep for herself as a skilled mercenary and thief. This is where things become familiar. You’re instantly plied with main story quests, dozens of optional minor tasks and also the opportunity to take on side jobs for various smugglers and ne’er-do-wells, usually involving travelling somewhere and fetching things or blowing them up – like in Assassin’s Creed. Or Far Cry. Or Watch Dogs. It’s Star Wars: The Busy Work Strikes Back. Continue reading...

Set in the year between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Outlaws follows Kay, an ambitious street thief as she plots a giant heist. We meet the gang behind the gang About 10 minutes into the latest preview build of Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft’s forthcoming open-world adventure, lead character Kay Vess enters Mirogana: a densely populated, worn-down city on the desolate moon of Toshara. Around us is a mix of sandstone hovels and metallic sci-fi buildings, crammed with flickering computer panels, neon signs and holographic adverts. Exotic aliens lurk in quiet corners, R2 droids glide past twittering to themselves. Nearby is a cantina, its shady clientele visible through the smoky doorway, and just to the side is a dimly lit gambling parlour. As you explore, robotic voices read out imperial propaganda over public address systems and stormtroopers patrol the streets, checking IDs. At least as far as this lifelong Star Wars fan is concerned, these moments perfectly capture the aesthetics and atmosphere of the original trilogy. Like A New Hope itself, it’s a promising beginning. Continue reading...