Building a New Star Wars Moon for Outlaws – IGN First [IGN]

A brand new moon crafted especially for Star Wars Outlaws by the development team at Massive Entertainment, Toshara is inspired by the East African savannah. But while it has uniquely beautiful landscapes, it is – aptly for a game called ‘Star Wars Outlaws’ – a criminal hive.

“It’s run by a corrupt imperial governor,” says Navid Khavari, Outlaws’ narrative director. “And while the Empire is in charge, this is also a hub of scum and villainy, and you have all the sorts of major syndicates trying to vie for a stake of Toshara.”

To ensure Toshara is as immersive and authentic as possible, Massive approached the moon from all angles. “We had to work out the demographics of the planet,” Khavari explains. “We had to work out what the major hubs are. We had to work out fauna, flora, all of these sections that needed to come together and also be weaved by narratives.”

But before all that, Massive had to pitch Toshara to the custodians of Star Wars: Lucasfilm. Because Toshara isn’t just a location for a video game; anything in Star Wars Outlaws is canon, and so whatever Massive made would need to be fully approved by the people behind the films, shows, and Star Wars universe at large.

“It’s like they’re giving us a box of toys, we take the toys out, play with them, but then we also create our new toys and put them back for somebody else to play,” says Benedikt Podlesnigg, art and world director on Star Wars Outlaws.

A major player in such a process is Steve Blank, director of franchise content and strategy at Lucasfilm. “Massive came to us with the idea of a savannah planet,” he recalls. “Once we sort of knew the high level intention behind the story and where we wanted to go, we let them ruminate on what does that mean? What would you like to see? What do you feel like you haven’t seen before?”

The result of those conversations was a collection of unusual and familiar ideas. Massive wanted Toshara to be a world where the Star Wars mythology’s pirate-inspired elements could live – think Jabba’s barge and Luke being forced to walk the plank over a sarlacc pit. This had to be a place of high risk, high reward treasure hunting. And so was born the so-called gem of the underworld; a moon ruled by a corrupt division of the Empire and largely controlled by the galaxy’s crime syndicates. But it wasn’t enough to develop lore. The team had to start with the look and feel of the very ground itself.

“We approached Toshara in terms of the general Star Wars design tenets, where it has to be familiar but with a twist,” explains Julian Gerighty, creative director of Outlaws. The familiar is the landscapes of Tanzania, which Podlesnigg says would be the shooting location for Tosharan scenes if Outlaws were a movie. Layered on top of this is the twist: “huge mountain outcrops that have been carved so that a city can take place within those rock walls,” describes Gerighty. And then, within that rock, is Toshara’s most distinct characteristic: amberine.

Amberine is an orange, crystal-like material that runs through the crust of Toshara and juts out through its surface. Inspired by an old Austrian fortune-telling tradition in which molten lead is poured into cold water to create shapes that reveal what’s to come, the Amberine forms into a variety of striking forms. It is Blank’s favourite part of Massive’s new world.

“You find [amberine structures] sort of wherever you’re going,” he says. “They’re inside caves, they form plateaus […] and they also react beautifully to the sun over Toshara, so you get these gorgeous reflections in the lighting.”

Unusually for Star Wars, amberine isn’t a precious resource like spice or Beskar Steel, and so Toshara’s population has left it untouched and intact. That’s not to say the crystal is useless, though. The moon’s climate is incredibly windy, and those winds erode away rocks, cliff faces, even mountains – a process that gradually reveals the incredibly resilient amberine within. It made sense, then, that Toshara’s main metropolis, the city of Mirogana, would be built within an amberine structure to protect it from the winds.

Basking within the orange glow cast by sunlight filtering through that amberine shield is the Pyke Syndicate, the most dominant of Mirogana’s criminal organisations. But don’t let them put you off visiting; the city’s busy streets are full of opportunities for both a galactic scoundrel scouting for gigs, and a player looking to diversify their experience.

“Every single location we had to choose had to be a den of scum and villainy, right? And in Mirogana you can do a lot of things,” says Gerighty. “There’s the first thing that you should do as a scoundrel, as an outlaw, is go to the cantina. And in the cantina you’ll find lots of shady characters that’ll offer you jobs. Or you can just relax, eavesdrop, pick up some intel, play a couple of games of sabacc, bet on the Fathier races, play some arcade games…”

Beyond the cantina you’ll find a city split into several regions, each with their own flavour. The gambling district is constructed using different architecture and signage to the central market, while the Imperial checkpoint is built out of the Empire’s instantly recognisable flat panels and grid vents. No matter where you find an Imperial base on Toshara, it’ll stick out like a sore thumb.

“They come in, they don’t care about their environment, they just stamp down their base wherever they need,” says Podlesnigg. He paints a picture of a time when the Tosharan landscape featured a colossal amberine archway, but when the Empire arrived they simply demolished the arch to make way for the base. In the game, you’ll be able to see that very base flanked by two amberine pillars – all that remains of that historic arch. “It creates a really interesting visual that’s seen from far away that you can really use as a landmark.”

Beyond the city’s borders, the aforementioned winds have eroded away the moon’s rock surface to reveal even more unusual amberine formations. A resourceful outlaw with a speeder bike could use such formations to hit even greater speeds during hot pursuits.

“It’s very orange glowing, so it stands out very naturally in the environment,” says Podlesnigg. “So we could make ramps where you can jump off [while riding the speeder bike]. We made the wind tunnels where you can see [how they have been] carved out by the winds. I think one of the references was surfing underneath waves.”

In the process of planning out Toshara’s geography, Massive went as far as establishing that the moon’s wind currents all run north to south. This dictated the map’s population density, road networks, audio design, and – importantly – the formation of the speed-boosting wind tunnels. And so while the amberine ramps and tunnels may be a gameplay-first element, it’s all created hand-in-hand with world-building.

“For every location, no matter how small, we want to think about what happened here, what is happening now, and what is the location in general? What [do] people do here?” explains Podlesnigg. “So we have a very clear idea of the history of the place and what the place is.”

A skilled outlaw can harness the moon’s winds for their benefit, but not everyone is prepared to tackle such a climate. Echoing the derelict Star Destroyer on Jakku in The Force Awakens, Toshara is littered with crashed starships. They’re the remnants of those who tried to fight the winds and lost. It’s a smart bit of environmental storytelling, but the tale doesn’t end there. Those shipwrecks have become part of Toshara’s history and economy; with nothing but rock and amberine available to the moon’s population, the crashed ships were harvested for metal which was then used to construct many of the buildings you’ll see and explore.

With so much of Toshara’s environment being made up of harsh rock, crashed spaceships, and strange amberine structures, the finishing touch had to be something much more alive and endearing. While the crime syndicates may be the planet’s apex predators, there are plenty of other creatures in the wilds to discover and befriend. Podlesnigg describes a magpie-like flying creature that’s “attracted by everything that sparkles, and they steal everything.” It’s an amusing trait, but one that folds directly into gameplay: “When you see them circling somewhere, maybe you can go there and find something of value.”

A cuter friend can be found in Toshara’s weasel-like creatures, small pettable animals that will follow you around in groups. We can only hope that we’ll be able to round up a dozen and cause chaos in a cantina…

Toshara has yet more secrets to be discovered, but we won’t know this new moon’s best treasures until we explore it ourselves when Star Wars Outlaws arrives on August 30. Until then, you can always read more about how Massive Entertainment has tackled building the first ever true Star Wars open world game.

Matt Purslow is IGN’s Senior Features Editor.