Ghost of Tsushima was the "biggest reference" for Star Wars Outlaws, says director

Star Wars Outlaws is inspired by many open world games, according to game director Julian Gerighty.

In a recent interview with GamesRadar, Gerighty revealed that he was influenced by several popular role-playing games (RPGs) when creating the upcoming Star Wars game.

According to the director, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is one of his favorite Assassin’s Creed games and was used as a reference point for creating the large zones in Outlaws, which he has previously said are roughly the same size as three Odyssey zones combined.

Gerighty said it was the “freedom of approach in a very large environment – with traversal [and] curiosity at its heart, with RPG light mechanics” that he loved so much about the game and that there were Odyssey developers he would call to for pointers on Outlaws.

Just how George Lucas used Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa’s filmography as a source of inspiration when creating Star Wars, Gerighty explained that Sucker Punch Studios’ 2020 samurai RPG, Ghost of Tsushima, was his “biggest reference” when creating his open world game, as well as Red Dead Redemption.

“It’s super interesting because my biggest reference was Ghost of Tsushima, which is more on the Kurosawa side of inspiration than the Western, the John Ford side of the inspiration for George Lucas,” Gerighty also told GamesRadar.

“Red Dead Redemption is phenomenal, [because it treats] the world as a world – not as a checklist of activities that are repeated often. But I think that Ghost of Tsushima, what I loved about it was this purity of having a player fantasy and really leaning into it. This is the story, the world, the character, everything fits together with the gameplay guiding everything. That’s the fantasy of ‘you are a samurai ninja in Japan.’ That was one of the guiding lights for this.”

Star Wars Outlaws is set to launch on August 30 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.