The slow death of Star Wars

The video game Star Wars Outlaws is to be released this week. The game is set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi – so in the universe of the original, still-greatest film trilogy – and has been several years in development. According to its ‘narrative director’ Navid Khavari, ‘We didn’t just look at the original films, we looked at George Lucas’s own inspirations: Akira Kurosawa, world war two movies like The Dambusters and spaghetti westerns. You see the care that was taken in that original trilogy to make it tonally consistent. We need to make this feel like it has high stakes, lighthearted humour, emotional tension, growth between characters [and] the hero’s journey.’ All of which makes this expensive game rather more exciting than the usual run-of-the-mill fare. The player takes on the guise of Kay Vess, a young woman who lives by her wits and is planning a heist to pay off a syndicate.