Star Wars Outlaws developer teases iconic character cameos

There are Star Wars Easter eggs galore, says Navid Khavari

Star Wars Outlaws / Ubisoft

Star Wars Outlaws is absolutely stuffed with classic cameos and easter eggs. 

That’s according to the game’s narrative director Navid Khavari, who tells us in an interview “there are so many” that “the list got too big and we stopped managing it.”

Set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, right after the Battle of Hoth, Ubisoft picked prime territory for its hugely anticipated open-world Star Wars game. 

We already know Jabba’s in there, with protagonist Kay Vess venturing to his palace on Tatooine and encountering the heavyweight cartel leader. Recently, Ubisoft also revealed a cameo from Cloud City leader Lando Calrissian. But who else?

Read on below for the full interview with Khavari, which dives into more of the game’s story, setting, and potential easter eggs.

Star Wars Outlaws / Ubisoft

Sports Illustrated: What do you bring to the game in terms of your expertise? 

Navid Khavari: I spent my career developing open-world narratives and I think the exciting part about this was to try and blend an open-world narrative with the world of Star Wars, which has such a rich history of storytelling characters, and planets. And so it was really exciting to bring that all together. 

What makes the scoundrel story so interesting, and why did you want to base this game around that concept? 

I think it’s a bit of a combination of both the era and the fact that we’re telling a scoundrel story. When we knew that we were going to look between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, we’d knew it had already been explored. The Jedi, Sith, Empire versus Rebellion kind of story. But if we were going to tell a scoundrel story, we needed to embrace the underworld in this period. So it all comes down to relatability and the idea as well of if you’ve never played a Star Wars game, if you’ve never seen a Star Wars film, how can we have that? 

You feel like you’re stepping into Star Wars with that visceral feeling for the first time, and to do that, it was like OK, let’s do a scoundrel perspective, and we’re going to do a scoundrel perspective within this era. That you’re going through this journey with a rookie scoundrel as well really made it feel organic and natural to go in that direction. I think there’s the narrative side, but there’s also the gameplay side, the opportunity to have a blaster. Modules that give you different abilities. Nix, the pet who you’ve grown up with. These are things as a scoundrel thief that Kay and that world bring to the table, that you might not necessarily see if we had decided to go the Jedi route or that kind of thing. 

Star Wars Outlaws / Ubisoft

It’s a really interesting setting, just following the Battle of Hoth. How did you land on that? 

This was the period right from the beginning, because we knew early on that we want to build around the scoundrel fantasy, we want to tell something related to a character in the underworld. But when we met with Lucasfilm, it was actually them who were saying you have an opportunity here between The Empire Strikes Back and  Return of the Jedi, and to us it was like, are you serious?

You’re gonna let us go into that playground? And so it was very early on that we landed on that, and things just organically grew from there. 

Did you meet with George Lucas at all?

Not on this project, no. But we were very obviously inspired by what he did and we actually tried very hard to not just look at the original films but look at what he was looking at originally, whether it was the Kurosawa films, westerns, samurai films and that kind of thing. So the DNA, hopefully, is in there. 

Kay’s a normal human, she’s got no superpowers. How did that inform what you do in the game and the story? 

In a lot of ways. I think it was actually the most exciting part of this was it felt like the idea of having a character that is relatable. Someone you might walk into a bar and know, that was really exciting and it opened up. OK, as someone who’s going to use a blaster, as someone who’s going to have a pet like Nix who’s going to be an extension of her arm. Almost like if you have a dog, go fetch me that plasma blaster rifle, go open up that door. 

Star Wars Outlaws / Ubisoft

My favorite is to launch Nix onto stormtroopers and then go in for a sucker punch. But it opens up all of those different possibilities and informs the gameplay and the narrative as well. There were just opportunities, especially between her and the different syndicates, that felt very organic and natural. So we were looking at the underworld and then we were fusing that as well with a matinee action spirit, so that thrill of action adventure that feels interesting, because when you play the game you’re stepping into something that feels familiar but hopefully feels new as well. So that’s what we were trying to capture. 

People will be interested in what classic Star Wars characters are in there. Can you give us some hints at others? 

Jabba was a big one, but we’ve also just revealed that Lando Calrissian is going to be featured, who was, growing up, one of my favorite characters of all time, and as well Lady Kira. If you’ve seen the Solo film, she was the leader of Crimson Dawn. So there’s more characters as well that I wish I could go into. 

But it was also important to us that these characters were really informing Kay’s story. We weren’t just throwing them in there like a meme or something, but that they were informing Kay’s growth and change. So that was really really important to us. 

When I was playing, I noticed a little worker droid that I remember from one of the earlier films. Have you got any other easter eggs in the game? 

There are so many, but if I spoil them, that’s the tough part. It’s really interesting because at a certain point we might have started listing them out, but the list got too big and we’ve stopped managing it. But the level of detail that’s gone into building these worlds and these planets, from the droids to the architecture, there’s gonna be a lot for players to find. I can guarantee that. 

Star Wars Outlaws / Ubisoft

Do you have a favorite moment of working on the game? 

When we got the hyperdrive working on the Trailblazer and you could just jump from planet to planet to planet, I was spamming that controller just because it felt so good. This is what I’ve always dreamed about as a kid. So that’s from a gameplay sense. But I think probably the dream moment for me was I remember it was a really long day, we’d been writing scripts and reviewing them and was walking onto set for the Jabba scene that you saw. 

And when you do motion capture there’s tons of tech and tech people, and there’s the actors, and it’s busy, and I was really tired that day. But I looked up and then I saw Umberley with Nix the puppet, and she’s sort of petting the puppet, and the puppeteer is reacting to her. We’re not shooting anything, like they’re just having fun. 

Then I look to my right and I see this giant stand and the actor is playing Jabba sitting on top and I’m like, this is happening. This is actually getting made. We’ve moved out of this room where we’re sort of dreaming about things to now we’re actually creating this, and so I think that was probably the moment that clicks the most to me. 

Where does the story of Kay go after this? 

Oh, I wish I could tell you, but I can’t. I could say that Kay is going to go through a real journey of change in Outlaws, and I think where she ends up hopefully feels true to Star Wars.