Difficulty spikes in video games are nothing new, but in the case of Star Wars Outlaws early missions they are a bit too punishing - even for the developer's taste. However, the developers at Ubisoft Massive can "see through data" some elements that are not working as intended.
We asked creative director Julian Gerighty about the game's controversial instant-fail stealth missions. "So especially, I mean, you're probably thinking of one of the early missions in Mirogana, which is incredibly punishing," Gerighty tells 12DOVE. That's almost certainly the early mission to infiltrate Gorak's base which is one long drawn out insta-fail sneaking section."And for me, that is a mistake, and this is something that we're going to work on improving." He goes on to say "I don't think it means removing the fail state completely, but I do think there are millions of low hanging fruits where we can make it so much more enjoyable and understandable."
Difficulty comes in all forms, and Gerighty wants to create a "sort of tension" in these moments. However, things are currently not tuned how the team intended. Gerighty tells 12DOVE that "we just don't want it to feel unfair. And today, I think it feels unfair. And believe it or not, this wasn't our intention. This is more of something that crept in in the last week or so, and that we're correcting already for a patch that's coming out maybe in 10 days."
- Hyper Light Breaker devs were "caught off guard a bit by how oppressive the difficulty was for players," even if some people are "very upset that we’ve made it easier"
- "If someone can’t play the game, the game sucks": Hyper Light Breaker devs explain what went wrong with their open-world roguelike and how they're fixing it
The team is already working to retool certain early missions and create what they believe is a fairer version for players to enjoy. Director Mathias Karlson says that the devs want players to be "in that knife edge range between, 'okay, I'm completely in stealth, oh shit: They're about to see me. They saw me, but I can still do something about it, as long as I don't raise the alarm. I can create chaos locally to be able to avoid that happening.'" He goes on to say, "However, if that turns out to not connect with its current tuning and with enough people, it's, of course, something we take very, very seriously, and we'll consider."
The team is open to exploring other options for later points in the story too if it's preventing players from enjoying the game. Gerighty mentions "if you tell me today that that's a blocker for people enjoying the game, then we're going to tweak the narrative context, right? We'll have an announcement on the PA saying [does pretend PA voice] 'well, stormtroopers have gone down Toshara and now we have the skeleton crew on site.' The context will change, just so that we can get people to enjoy those moments as much as possible."
The end goal is to ensure players feel that they have as much choice within the narrative context of quests to complete them as they want. Gerighty and Karlson are "100% believers in player agency."
Check out our full exclusive interview with the Star Wars Outlaws directors for more. If you're having trouble with some of the earlier missions, check out our Star Wars Outlaws tips.
