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While there are still several months left in Destiny 2’s first episode, Echoes, Bungie has already confirmed a huge detail about what players can expect in the next one. The second episode of 2024, Heresy, will deal with the Hive and its pantheon of gods, such as Savathun and Xivu Arath. And today during a developer stream, Bungie announced it’s making a big change to how story content will be delivered. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

To celebrate its 1.1 update, Last Epoch has an array of special Twitch drops available. If you want to add these items to your collection, you need to know what all of the Last Epoch Twitch drops are and how to get them. Twitch drops are usually exclusive items only available for a short ******* of time before they’re never unlockable again, so you don’t want to miss out on earning them when you can. Here are all the Last Epoch Twitch drops and how to claim them. View the full article

Star Wars Outlaws creative director Julian Gerighty recently shared some insight into how large the games planets will be and how long it could take players to navigate through them. Announced way back in 2021, Ubisoft and Massive Entertainments Star Wars Outlaws is the first open-world game set in the Star Wars universe, with players taking the role of an aspiring scoundrel named Kay Vess as she tries to pull off the biggest heist in the history of the Outer Rim. View the full article

This is a screenshot of Vampire Survivors on Steam, not an iOS device. It still effectively communicates the absolute chaos of actually playing the game. | Image: Poncle Vampire Survivors, the hit bullet ***** survival game where you take on hordes of pixelated monsters, is coming to Apple Arcade on August 1st, Apple announced on Tuesday. The game is already available for free on iOS, but this new version (technically called Vampire Survivors Plus) will be ad-free and include two DLC packs, Legacy of the Moonspell and Tides of the Foscari, that players typically have to buy separately. You’ll also be able to play multiplayer with up to four people on one iOS device. Apple revealed two more games coming to Apple Arcade, too. Temple Run: Legends, also arriving on August 1st, is “the first level-based runner in the hit franchise” with more than 500 levels, according to Apple’s press release. (If you just... Continue reading… View the full article

BerserkBoy Games, the studio behind Berserk Boy, has announced a new game called Berserk B.I.T.S. Scheduled to launch in Steam early access in 2024, it’s an idle RPG, auto-battler, chip-collecting game that will run on the player’s desktop alongside other applications. “Train and level up your B.I.T.S (Battle.Intelligent.Teammate.System),” reads an official description. “Team up with your digital buddy and take on the internet. Battle virus’ explore new biomes and defeat powerful viruses and bosses! Read More... View the full article

The Strike-like Battlegrounds activity is returning in Act Two of Destiny 2’s current Episode, Echoes, when it launches next week. In a new livestream today, Bungie confirmed three new Battlegrounds activities will be made available at the start of Act Two in Destiny 2, which will also include more battle pass tiers and story content. View the full article

In Ark of Charon, the tree of life has been consumed by darkness, and as it *****, so too did the world around it. Golems, little goblin-like beings, tend to a newly emerged ray of hope; a seedling mounted on the back of a giant, walking tree creature. But the darkness that ******* the tree is still out there, hunting the sprout, so the creature can only rest a while before it needs to move on, outrunning the dark storm. Tranquil base building and intense tower defense combine like the crests and troughs of an ocean wave. In the longer, calmer sections, Ark of Charon is a competent but uninspiring base building game. In the shorter, chaotic combat phases, it's fiendishly difficult, adding a layer of challenge that drives the game forward but soon proves overwhelming. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Unique new city builder with an amazing twist is available to play now New strategy game is a city builder atop a living World Tree sapling View the full article

The Xbox brand continues to expand beyond the reaches of consoles, and now it has found a new home thanks to Amazon. In a new ad that delightfully pays homage to the Scream franchise, Xbox announced that those who have an Amazon ***** Stick will now be able to stream Xbox games through the new Xbox app with their Game Pass Ultimate subscription. The service will be available for the ***** TV Stick 4K and 4K Max versions, both from 2023. This comes after the subscription service also became available on Samsung TVs two years ago, with the service being available for Samsung 2020 and newer televisions. View the full article

Characters from Genshin Impact will change forever with a rumored new Natlan update mentioned in Version 5.0 leaks. The action RPG by HoYoverse is about to enter Version 4.8, a patch that will see the debut of Emilie as a playable character. However, attention is shifting toward the following update, Version 5.0, which is expected to occur in late August and, with it, bring Natlans release in Genshin Impact, along with its new roster of characters, gameplay mechanics, and more. So far, there have been a few Natlan leaks, and a new one suggests that characters will change forever. View the full article

Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail introduced eight new dungeons, but while they are all great, some will be remembered for years to come. While it ******** to be seen how Dawntrail will compare to previous expansions, many of these new dungeons were a breath of fresh air for vets of the MMO, who had gotten used to seeing many of the same mechanics repurposed over the last 10 years. Given how engaging each of the dungeons is in this expansion, it bodes well that players can expect exciting new challenges in future patches. View the full article

Forges of ***********'s gothic industrial environments are dripping in the same grimdark atmosphere from the base game, but more focused, honed—the descent into the heart of Graia's beating daemonic forge-heart is easily the apex of Boltgun's crunchy pixel presentation. The Dark Mechanicum is some of the coolest stuff in the Warhammer universe, and while Forges of *********** doesn't reach the stomach-churning heights of the Xana II Incursion from the old Horus Heresy books, it's still a fantastic take on the subject. Outside of a few moments where the forge does become truly hellish, the daemonic heavy industry of the Chaos Gods is not altogether very different from the meat grinding slavery employed by the Imperium of Man, and Forges of ***********'s new environments really succeed in conveying that dualism... Read more.View the full article

Reservations for the 2024 Pokémon World Championships pop-up store have gone live, and as expected, no one can book a reservation. By clicking on the Pokémon Center link, trainers can reserve a space in the pop-up store in Honolulu, Hawaii, anytime from Aug 14 to 18 to get exclusive merchandise that won’t be available anywhere else. Or, at least, you should, if the site wasn’t being overflooded with visitors. View the full article

When is the next Once Human server wipe? Losing all your in-game progress can be a difficult pill to ********, but in a seasonal live-service survival game like Once Human, it's a necessary evil to make way for new content. The best way to ahead of a server wipe is to be prepared and keep an eye on the calendar so it doesn't come as a ****** shock when the season rolls over. Thankfully, we can tell you exactly when to expect the next Once Human server wipe, and offer some handy tips on how to save some of your hard-won items in the free PC game. Given Once Human is a live service, we expect developer Starry Studio to remain receptive to player feedback following the Once Human release time, so the server wipe frequency may be subject to change in the future. Keep up to date with all the latest news about Once Human server wipes right here on PCGamesN. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Does Once Human support private servers? The best Once Human Deviations - All Deviant companions Does Once Human have PvP? View the full article

Does Once Human have PvP? Yes, the upcoming survival game does feature both PvP and PvE servers, and seeing as you won't be able to transfer your data between servers, it's worth understanding the difference between the game modes before you jump in. Though there are two types of servers in Once Human, within each server there are Worlds which you can switch between without losing your character progression, unlike servers. These Worlds do let you carry over your gear and items, and you can even use the Move Territory function to transfer over entire buildings. If you're concerned about the servers at launch, keep up to date with the Once Human server status, and whether you'll be able to play with mates across platforms with our Once Human crossplay guide. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Does Once Human support private servers? The best Once Human Deviations - All Deviant companions When is the next Once Human server wipe? View the full article

Anime art returns to Magic: The Gathering in Bloomburrow featuring artists like Issei Murakami, MINATO, Noki, and Atushi Furusawa. Here’s every anime card in the set, how to pull it, and how much they’re worth on the secondary market (once Bloomburrow officially releases). Wizards of the Coast has included 20 exclusive anime art cards within the MTG Bloomburrow Standard-legal set. ***** into the full list of MTG anime cards and remember they’re only available through Collector booster packs. View the full article

One of the new characters arriving in Multiversus is Agent Smith, the rogue AI program from The Matrix series equipped with powerful moves and perks to use in battle. Multiple costumes for this iconic movie villain allow you to delete even the most rebellious foes in style. The perfected programming of this character may be tricky for novice agents to use unless they learn to manipulate simulations to their favor. View the full article

In the year of our lord 2003, there was a lot of competition for exceptional video game releases and a few of them were from Ubisoft. In two months, the French publisher would release two heavyweight games: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Beyond Good & Evil. Both games were released on Xbox, […] Source View the full article

How do you beat the Once Human Great Ones? These terrifying behemoths are only some of the mutations, or deviations, you come across in Once Human, but they're by far the most powerful and the most difficult to defeat. Thanks to Stardust deviation, Once Human is filled with weird, wonderful, and horrifying creatures. Some Deviants are cute companions that aid in combat, farming, and crafting. Others, though, have deviated for the worst, becoming huge, destructive bosses. The worst of these, The Great Ones, take a team to defeat, so find out about Once Human crossplay before you get your team together. Then, make sure you and your companions in the survival game are correctly prepared and defeat The Great Ones together with this information on all Once Human bosses. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Does Once Human have PvP? When is the next Once Human server wipe? Once Human server status - is Once Human down? View the full article

Total War Pharaoh had a rough start. Released back in October, Creative Assembly's Egyptian strategy game was originally met with criticism owing to its perceived similarity to other games in the series and absence of fresh ideas. Gradually, though, its developers have turned things around. The upcoming Dynasties update revolutionizes battles with the new lethality system and improved maps - and out of nowhere, Creative Assembly has just dropped the release date. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Total War Pharaoh maps are about to get much, much ******* Conquer the ages with Total War's massive Steam *****, but act fast Total War Pharaoh gets much ******* with huge free update View the full article

Image: Razer Razer is launching a new Snap Tap mode for its Huntsman V3 Pro keyboards today that’s designed to appeal to competitive gamers. Snap Tap is very similar to Wooting’s promised Rappy Snappy feature and works by prioritizing the latest input between two selected keys to allow Counter-Strike 2 and Valorant players to counter-strafe more quickly. The Snap Tap mode means you don’t have to release the previous key when you’re strafing, so if you enable A and D for Snap Tap, then it makes strafing near instant, improving directional changes and movement in esports games. The difference is only a couple of milliseconds, but that’s enough to get a ***** quicker than your opponent. “Snap Tap Mode, integrated directly into the firmware, allows for... Continue reading… View the full article

Recently published sales data shows that Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 isn't faring too well commercially in the ******* States. The long-awaited follow-up to 2017's Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice and the only Xbox first-party title released so far in 2024, Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 launched for Xbox Series consoles and PC on May 21. View the full article

A new, minor update went live in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone today, full of bug fixes and minor tweaks. The major content is still a few weeks away in CoD, with season five set to begin on July 24. For now, Activision is focused on fixing current issues and changing up some of the game as it stands, so the update has little for most to truly get excited for. View the full article

Soulslike fans can look forward to the August 8 release of Deathbound, a unique party-based action RPG with a ghostly twist. Announced back in 2023, Deathbound most recently piqued the interest of longtime fans of the genre during its appearance at this year's Summer Game Fest, where developers unveiled a new trailer and teased its impending debut. Now, a concrete release date has finally been confirmed, and fans won't have to wait much longer to experience the party-based Soulslike for themselves on Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. View the full article

Prolific fantasy author and number one Ranni stan (“I'll pick the ending where my character gets a waifu”) Brandon Sanderson has been thinking a lot about how to apply Elden Ring and the Souls games' signature storytelling approach to novels. During a recent playthrough on his YouTube channel, he was asked if he thinks there’s a way to replicate Souls-like descriptions in books. “I’ve wondered that. I really have,” Sanderson replies. Read more View the full article

“I think, in general, making games is really tough. Making open-world games is really, really tough. And making Star Wars open-world games is the next level of difficulty.” Julian Gerighty, creative director at Massive Entertainment, is up for a challenge. For the first time ever, we’re getting a fully open-world Star Wars video game. It’s been a long time coming, but after back-to-back successes with both The Division and The Division 2, Gerighty was in the mood to take a risk. “I think this is maybe just my approach, but even if it's scary, you've got to do it,” he says. “You've got to lean into it. What's the downside to pitching a Star Wars game in San Francisco at LucasFilm Games in George Lucas' old office? [...] If it doesn't work, it doesn't work, but you still have that experience.” Fast forward several years after that meeting and Massive Entertainment is less than two months away from releasing Star Wars Outlaws, a fully realised version of the original pitch described in that office: an open world of dual ambitions – maintain the cinematic legacy of the films, and create immersive scoundrel gameplay that grants you the freedom of the galaxy. “I think it's taken this long to get an open-world Star Wars game because of how, excuse the pun, massive it is to build a game like this. There are only so many studios in the world who build games of this scale,” says Steve Blank, director of franchise content and strategy at Lucasfilm. “The door is then open for Massive to come to us and say, this is what we're interested in doing, this is the type of game design and gameplay we want. This is what we're thinking about in terms of an archetype.” There are only so many studios in the world who build games of this scale. “It's the outlaw player fantasy and it's open world, those were the two main pillars that we pitched,” explains Gerighty. “Why open world? Because the outlaw fantasy really needs that to live and breathe.” “It's a combination of our DNA as a studio, our background, when we think, ‘Okay, what do we have a lot of experience doing? What do we think we're good at?’ And this fantasy, this scoundrel in Star Wars begs for freedom,” adds game director Mathias Karlson. Massive was fully confident in its abilities to create engaging open worlds – The Division offered a bullet-filled action playground, while last year’s Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora displayed an ability to work well within a Disney license by building a near-unmatched visual paradise. But Star Wars was the new challenge that this team yearned for. Of course, locking down what kind of experience would live inside a Star Wars open world was the first thing that had to be decided. “We took a step back of course and thought, ‘Okay, Star Wars open world. What an opportunity. What does that naturally want to be?’” Karlson says. “It wants to be the full scale, from the very small to the very big, meaning sitting inside a cantina, playing Sabacc, being able to walk through the street, jump on your speeder or drive across the planet surface, literally park your bike in your own ship, take off into space seamlessly, and explore that region.” That vision of “full scale” helped secure a green light from Star Wars’ custodians. But getting LucasFilm’s blessing was just the key in the ignition. Translating the cinematic spectacle of the original Star Wars movie trilogy into an open-world game – set between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, two of the most iconic films of all-time – was the actual challenge. One that Massive set out to address in every aspect of Outlaws, from the way it looks and sounds, to the type of action-adventure gameplay it supplies. Making an Open World Cinematic “For us, the sort of cinematic ambition that we had was in presentation,” explains Gerighty. For that, he went straight to the source. “What we did was take a lot of inspiration from the original trilogy, but with today's technology, so very similar to what Rogue One did with its references to the production design of the original trilogy. [Its aim] was to replicate a lot of the filmic effects of those lenses in the 1970s. So you'll see barrel distortion on the sides, vignetting, film grain, chromatic aberration, and of course all wrapped up in an ultra-widescreen presentation.” You can expect that level of detail in Outlaws’ cutscenes. But Gerighty notes that making a game cinematic “doesn't mean cinematics necessarily. What I care the most about is the interactive part.” “I think it's a key point for open-world games at large, scaling does not always need to be grand, but it needs to be conscious,” Karlson theorises. “The scale of Tatooine needs, should, and does in our game feels very different. It breathes, it’s open sand dunes and long sightlines. It's easy to pick up any little anomaly on the horizon and there might be an opportunity for you, compared to the dense streets of Kijimi, which is a city in perpetual winter where people are trying to stay warm.” Scaling does not always need to be grand, but it needs to be conscious. Scale is something written into the very DNA of Star Wars, whether seen on the big or small screen. Greig Fraser, Rogue One’s director of photography, recently told IGN that “If you watch any Star Wars film, that's what it's all about. It's knowing how big a human is going into this massive Millennium Falcon, how big the Millennium Falcon is going to this massive ****** Star. It's scale upon scale upon scale.” It’s a philosophy Gerighty and the team at Massive took into Outlaws when crafting the introduction to its open world. “One of our intentions for the beginning of the game was to make it feel very small and then [get] ******* and ******* and ******* and *******,” explains Gerighty. “So [at the] beginning of the game, you start off in one room and it's claustrophobic and it's meant to make you feel a little bit trapped. You open up and it's city streets, but it's contained. And then you get into some narrative stuff and you steal a ship and you explode into the galaxy and all of a sudden you ****** land on this planet, which is a wide open world.” The aim here is to create a “sense of everything growing for you and not just the scale of the galaxy, but the scale of the possibilities for you as a character.” Outlaws’ campaign tells the tale of Kay Vess, a young scoundrel looking to build a team from across the stars in order to pull off one big space heist and remove the “****** mark” placed on her by the Zerek Besh ****** syndicate. It’s the basis of a story that evokes many other adventures from across both games and film. “I love Mass Effect 2. It’s one of my favourite games,” states Navid Khavari, Outlaws’ narrative director. “There were so many influences. I think you look at everything from Ocean’s 11 and Ocean’s 8 to Star Wars itself. The previous films and that heist feeling was always kind of in the fabric.” He also namechecks Kurosawa, the ********* director whose samurai stories were so influential on George Lucas’ original trilogy. Knowing what sort of story you want to tell is one thing. Telling an engaging story in an open-world setting is another task altogether, and one that Khavari is well aware of, having written for Far Cry 4, 5, and 6, as well as The Division. “It's one of the things you always have to keep in mind,” he says. “How are we going to weave a narrative and an open world together, so that we're telling the story, but also giving you the freedom to go wherever you'd like?” We knew early on that if you got distracted by curiosity, the world had to react to that. “We had a really clear approach on Outlaws,” he explains. ”There was Kay's journey[...] There were key points that we knew we wanted her to hit, and then that makes her story part of the wider Star Wars narrative. But between those moments, we knew early on that if you got distracted by curiosity, the world had to react to that. It had to expect that the player's going to go off the beaten path.” The things that lie off the beaten path are built in accordance to something Massive refers to as “the three-second rule,” where within a few blinks of an eye you can instantly understand the nature of a location or character and the story behind them. “Before you even put life in them, they need to visually tell a story about what kind of place it is, what's happened in the past, what type of life and events have taken place in them so that they get that lived-in feeling,” Karlson explains. “That lived-in, relatable, substantial feel, I think is a hallmark of any good open world, but also very Star Wars when you think about it.” Star Wars’ aesthetic has always been rooted in the idea of the “used future”, where everything from the largest spaceships to the tiniest droids have that instantly recognisable layer of grime. Those small details build up into authentic, cool, and bespoke spaces – something Massive has always managed to build into its own open worlds. The Division and its sequel are packed full of memorable levels ranging from New York landmarks to Washington DC museums, and that philosophy is being transferred to Outlaws’ many planets. Its main missions promise to take us to iconic locations such as Imperial bases and Jabba’s Palace. “We can lean into the virtual tourism aspect of, ‘Hey, what is the distance between the moisture farms and Mos Eisley and the cantina?” says Gerighty. “There is a linear roller coaster story, a golden path, if you will. And around that, of course, there's the open world.” That sort of connective tissue of planet or moon to space was crucial to our whole approach. “That's the dream I know I had as a ****,” Khavari adds. “That is what I've always wanted from a Star Wars game. That when I'm on a journey, when I'm entering into a quest, it might start on foot, it might start with me navigating a High Republic cruiser that's crashed, but I want to be able to jump into my speeder and blast off, [...], take off into space, maybe land in a space station and meet some characters that factor into my quest or journey along the way. And so that sort of connective tissue of planet or moon to space was crucial to our whole approach, right? Because that's kind of the fantasy that I think players are hoping for.” That fantasy and freedom is evidently at the core of Outlaws, and while all five planets and moons (Toshara, Tatooine, Akiva, Kijimi, and Cantonica) won’t be instantly available to hyperdrive between, Gerighty claims it won’t be long into Kay’s journey until the galaxy opens up. “There's a very structured intro that leads you to ****** land on Toshara, which is a moon that we created with LucasFilm Games,” he says. “And once you finish the sort of linear narrative on Toshara, the other planets open up and it becomes completely non-linear and you can choose to tackle those [worlds] in any order you want.” A Galaxy of Exploration Exploration of these worlds is highly encouraged, with maps that are not (at least initially) flooded with icons and points of interest because you’re seeing these places from a fresh perspective. “Kay hasn't seen the galaxy, she doesn't know everything,” Karlson explains. “The first time you come to Toshara you'll have a map where you can see mountains over there and stuff, but discovery is what gives you more information.” “You're going to have to take some risks,” says Gerighty. “You're going to have to go to a cantina [...] and you can eavesdrop and pick up on some conversations that will lead you to another location that reveals a location within the open world that you have to get on your speeder to go and find. And there will be a fog of war that you'll be able to clear up and that's really where your curiosity will open things up even more.” Each of Outlaws’ worlds vary in size. Toshara, Massive’s newly created moon, is around the same size as the jungle planet of Akiva, but a little smaller than the vast desert of Tatooine. *********'s Creed Odyssey has different zones on the map. Toshara is two or three of those put together. “It was less about how big, but more about how long in terms of traversal with the speeder it would be,” Gerighty reveals. “[Toshara takes] four or five minutes nonstop, which doesn't sound like a lot, but once you're committed it's a fairly large amount and you are always going to be distracted. *********'s Creed Odyssey, which was one of the games that we were looking at while creating this, you have different zones on the map [...][Toshara is] two or three of those put together.” And that doesn’t even take into account the vast areas of space that surround each planet and serve as entirely different areas of orbital exploration and opportunity. We’ll cover that, as well as the starship side of the game, in greater depth later on in this month’s IGN First. Experts, Reputation, and the Wanted System In terms of mission design, we’ve seen action ranging from stealth infiltrations, frantic dogfights, high-speed chases, and intense blaster battles, with some quests even evolving to include all of these elements at different stages. Star Wars Outlaws is thus perhaps better thought of as a single-player narrative action adventure in the wrappings of an open world – something more akin to Marvel’s Spider-Man than dense RPGs like The Witcher or Ubisoft’s recent *********’s Creed games. Its mixture of popcorn action and blockbuster narrative ambition is a departure from Massive’s gear-based experience on The Division. It is a new chapter in the continued evolution of a studio that started life as a real-time strategy developer. “I think if you look at the evolution of the open world, there's a life, a dynamism, a systemic quality to The Division 2 that we didn't have in The Division 1,” states Gerighty. “I'm not talking about the presentation, the soft values at all. I'm talking about pure gameplay experience, single-player or cooperative. That was very, very important to us to have as a living, breathing element that engages players while they're playing Outlaws.” It’s an evolution of what Massive has been doing in their games for years now – keeping worlds feeling bustling and alive, even when set against post-apocalyptic backdrops or in the midst of galactic wars. “We in both Division games, but especially in the second one, developed what we call ‘living world systems’,” explains Karlson. “So same thing here. We have systems that make sure that the world is always alive with movement, traffic, speeders, zipping around the Empire, patrolling syndicates have footholds out there, and these can cross paths. Also sometimes more substantial events happen and it's really up to you if you want to engage or not.” Perhaps Outlaws’ most interesting method of breathing life into its open world is its approach to character progression. There’s no levelling up or incremental stat boosts to drop experience points into. Instead, Kay’s abilities and equipment are linked to experts – people you’ll meet across the galaxy who’ll grant you upgrades in exchange for work. “They are full-on characters,” Karlson explains. “So they're spread out in the world and you don't know exactly who they are, what exactly they have to offer you and how to reach them from the very beginning. So there's this journey of discovery here as well. And once you reach them, there's a character there to interact with and an adventure to go on because they won’t instantly just, oh, here you go. And then they essentially open up a little regional progression for you where the nature of those things is also very tangible.” An upgrade definitely ties into Kay pulling off the heist, but it's also very much its own journey, which is in the Star Wars tradition as well. For example, after finding a Jawa by sourcing their location from overheard intel at a cantina, you can complete a mission for them in order to gain a new skill. In this case, it’s to venture into a ***** Sarlacc to find a pristine tooth from its second mouth, which you can then exchange for a laser turret for the Trailblazer, Kay’s starship. It’s a smart way of blending gameplay progression with a narrative befitting of the Star Wars ********* underbelly. “You can go on a journey with a character such as an expert who is going to teach Kay a new skill and give her a new upgrade to her blaster,” says Khavari. “Now, that skill, that upgrade definitely ties into Kay pulling off the heist, but it's also very much its own journey, which is in the Star Wars tradition as well.” Beyond the main missions, expert side missions, and the reputation system at the core of it all, many other snackable activities exist in Outlaws’ open world. These range from quick contracts such as smuggling and stealing, gambling in Sabacc (Star Wars poker), to playing asteroid field arcade shooter games and ******** on Canto Bight’s Fathier Racing. All of these activities bolster your ever-growing supply of credits which can be used to purchase new customisation and gear options for Kay, her ****-like alien companion Nix, and the Trailblazer. And yet, there’s more. Emergent events frequently take place throughout the open world, whether on land or in space. “Every two, three minutes there'll be something that's happening, whether it's an ambush or the empire arresting some civilians or getting into combat with some ********* syndicates. And it's up to you whether you want to engage or not,” Gerighty reveals. We don't want things to be just big for big sake. With so much to do in Star Wars Outlaws, how does Massive go about avoiding open-world “bloat”? With a near-endless galaxy of opportunity, there’s the worry that things may spiral, feature creep sets in, and everything just gets “too big”. The studio had a clear plan from the start, though, leading with variety over size – quality over quantity, if you will. “So we don't want things to be just big for big sake. We need it to be contained, always fun, always proposing different activities,” Gerighty confirms. “It's about calibrating size to substance,” adds Karlson. “When you see something that breaks pattern, that stands out for whatever reason, and you go there and look, there's something there to do, and that repeats frequently enough. [We also make sure] the quests, the bespoke content of the game, makes use of it so that it doesn't feel like a separate experience, but it's all one.” Of course, no matter how much there will be to do in Outlaws, one thing that can be expected is a healthy helping of nods to the larger Star Wars galaxy. Lando is set to make an appearance, and we’ve already seen a glimpse of Han Solo in carbonite, but it sounds like they might just be the tip of the iceberg. “What I would say is there are Easter eggs,” Khavari reveals. “There's characters that you'll meet along the way across the main quests and whether it's the experts or the wider stories you're going to stumble across. August 30th is a really great date. I recommend bookmarking it in your calendar.” August 30 is right around the corner, a short wait for many players for whom an open-world game set in a galaxy far, far away has been a long-held dream. I could feel a similar passion for Star Wars coming out of each person I spoke to at Massive, and for them, I can’t help but get the sense that the dream is a shared one. Making open world games is tough. And bringing open world to Star Wars may well bring an extra level of difficulty, but for Gerighty and the team it’s been a challenge worth taking on. “I'm getting to that point where I think I can count the number of games I can do until I'm put out to pasture on one hand,” Gerighty says. “And it becomes more and more important to me to choose what I do because it's really important for me to do quality work with people that I love working with. And Star Wars is definitely on the bucket list.” Simon Cardy once got kicked out of a school assembly for calling somebody Salacious Crumb. Follow him on Twitter at @CardySimon. View the full article