Star Wars Outlaws has a new Creative Director, 'biggest update' ever on the way

Ubisoft's open-world action-adventure Star Wars Outlaws launched on August 27, 2024, to mixed reviews. Most criticism focused on the game's lack of polish, bugs, simplistic mechanics, and inconsistent visuals. And with poor sales, it did little to reverse Ubisoft's current troubles as a major game publisher.

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However, Ubisoft and the development teams at Massive Entertainment and Lucasfilm Games are committed to improving the game with a massive Update 1.4 on November 21 alongside the game's Steam launch. In addition, Drew Rechner is replacing Julian Gerighty as the game's Creative Director, who will lead the post-launch development and improvements being made to the game.

In a new blog post outlining the studio's plans for the game, Drew Rechner outlines the "three key areas in which we're looking to improve the game."

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"The first key area of improvement to the game is combat, where we see a real opportunity to add more depth and excitement to the experience, further rewarding your tactics and precision," Drew Rechner explains.

"Our second key area is stealth which is not only about improving the readability and consistency of enemy detection, but also providing choice in how you want to approach each encounter. Finally, our third key area of focus is centered around the character controls, which means improving the reliability of cover, increasing the responsiveness of climbing and crouching, and generally improving the consistency of the controls overall."

He confirms that Title Update 1.4 will be Star Wars Outlaws' "biggest update yet" and is focused on "celebrating and embracing player choice." The development team will outline and go through specific details and changes in the lead-up to its November 21 release. In a lot of ways, the post sounds like Ubisoft is treating this update and further revisions to the game as a re-launch of sorts, similar in some ways to how Cyberpunk 2077 studio CD Projekt Red was able to turn that game around after a similarly lukewarm and troubled launch.

However, the pre-launch hype for Star Wars Outlaws was nowhere near Cyberpunk 2077 levels, so time will tell if this commitment to improving the game - from combat to animation to controls - turns out to be too little, too late regarding sales and general player interest.

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