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Star Wars is home to some of the most iconic weapons, with the lightsaber wielded by the Jedi and the Sith being the most famed and recognizable. But with Star Wars Outlaws set to let us live out our own scoundrel fantasy, Kay Vess will be taking matters into her own hands with something that befits her character perfectly: the blaster gun. After all, as lead gameplay designer Fredrik Thylander asks at developer Massive's studio in Malmo, Sweden: "what would a scoundrel be without a sidearm?".
With the Han Solo archetype inspiring the direction of Outlaws, the blaster gun feels like the obvious choice. I'm reminded of Solo's quote, "hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a blaster at your side", which makes the weapon even more fitting for Kay who doesn't use the Force, or have anything to do with the Jedi. In order to make the blaster unique to Kay, the team worked with LucasFilm to ensure the weapon is an integral tool that you can't, and more crucially, don't want to be without.
"We came to a dilemma," Thylander says, "because really, you want an iconic sidearm that she always has, but you also want really varied gunplay. So how do you do that? Well, Kay's blaster's a unique blaster, the VM 19 that we developed with Lucasfilm, and it has modules that she can swap [out] sort of like a six shooter with quick reload during combat. She can find new modules that allow her to shoot new types of projectiles, and she can also upgrade or modify them to behave differently."
"Maybe you want your blaster to be rapid fire instead of single fire," Thylander suggests. "Maybe you want it to behave a little bit like a hand cannon, if that's your playstyle. All of this is available, and you can even upgrade it to gain new gameplay effects such as perfect reload that gives you a bonus after the reload minigame [where you have] to hit the exact right spot. This really lets you choose how you want to play."
Personal piece
During my hands-on time with Star Wars Outlaws, I got to try out a few of the different modules on the blaster, from an electrified shot that can be used to stun enemies and is also against shields or droids, to a more lethal blaster shot, and an ability that lets me line up several precise shots against various foes in one go - Red Dead Redemption Dead Eye style – I'm eager to see what other effects and upgrades we'll be able to get our hands on. Since the blaster will be your core weapon, the modules promise to help you shake things up in combat, but there's also the option to briefly cause chaos with guns we find in the world or take from foes.
"[The varied gunplay is also] supplemented with maybe a preference for picking up certain weapons from the enemies that you love to use as well," Thylander says. "Those will be used and discarded as they run out of ammo, so you can't carry them with you forever. But you can strategize around which enemies you take out first, depending on if you like their weapons or not."
The blaster isn't "just for shooting enemies" either, as Thylander points out, with the team designing certain modules "that interact with parts of the world as well". I've already experienced how the blaster can be used to solve environmental puzzles, with a shot powering up nodes that open up doors in a run-down reactor. It's again all part of Massive's efforts to make the weapon a varied, multipurpose tool that Kay not only relies on, but has an attachment to. With smaller touches that really showcase it as a personal belonging - such as a small carving of Nix that's been etched onto the handle - a lot of attention to detail and thought has gone into the VM 19 to offer varied gunplay and make it unique to Kay.
"We explored whether or not she should have different blasters," Thylander says. "But at the end of the day, each iconic scoundrel has their own iconic blaster that's theirs and you can recognize it. So we really wanted that, which of course then has to marry with the fact that we want very varied gameplay. And, this is with Lucasfilm, how we came up with this idea of modules that you can swap out swiftly on the fly as you play to have multiple ways of shooting with you at any given time. And then on top of that, modifying it to suit your playstyle to be full auto, or hand-cannon-like etc. So, yes, we really wanted that iconic blaster, but we wanted you to have a full fat shooting experience."
