Ubisoft and Massive’s open-world Star Wars game is in the early stages of development, and next to nothing is known about what the final product is going to look like. Speculation has been running rampant from fans, and many have been vocal about what they want to see from this Star Wars game.
For some ideas on what it could do with the Star Wars game, Ubisoft doesn’t have to look any further than its own history. There are a plethora of games it could use as inspiration for different mechanics or ideas to include, and odd as it may seem, two of those games that should definitely be looked at are the newest iterations of the Ghost Recon franchise, as well as Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle.
There’s a certain disconnect between most Star Wars movies and most Star Wars games. In most Star Wars movies, there isn’t just one protagonist, even if one character is the main focus. Nor is there just one character ‘type’ featured in the story; each character thinks and acts fairly different from each other. Meanwhile, most Star Wars games feature a single protagonist, and so feature only one character type as the focus.
Doing this in a Star Wars game does a couple of things. It makes the universe feel slightly different than it does in the movies, because instead of having Jedi, Smugglers, Princesses, Soldiers, so on and so forth interacting with each other and making difficult decisions, there’s just one of those perspectives. It also limits what the game is capable of doing gameplay-wise; with one character type, players are limited to only playing as a Jedi, for example. In Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, multiple playable characters are handled beautifully.
While it’s a bit easier in this instance because of the turn-based combat, what could and should be translated into the Star Wars game is how unique each character feels to play. Every character in that game plays remarkably different, and that feeling is something that the Star Wars game would need to emulate if it’s going to include characters like Jedi, Mandalorians, and so on.
Having more than one playable character would do a lot to make a Star Wars game really have that same flavor that the movies do, too. It would create that kind of rag-tag group dynamic that makes the movies so much fun, but it would also ensure the game doesn’t get stale. Having multiple playable characters with meaningfully different playstyles would add some real variety to the gameplay, ensuring the player can change it up when they might be getting bored with the same thing.
There are a few different ways this Star Wars game could handle this. One of those is the way that Ghost Recon handles teammates: with AI. The game gives the player multiple ways to control what the AI teammates are doing, from syncing shots on different targets at the same time, to putting them in the right position to get the job done. For the open-world Star Wars game, this would ensure that, if it’s single-player, there’s still a cast of characters working together at the same time.
Making all of those characters playable come in a couple of different forms, too. The player could swap between them at will, even mid-fight, much like games like Ultimate Alliance allow. This could make for some fun fluidity and synergy in the combat, and create a really high skill ceiling. It would also allow players to handle certain situations as they arise exactly how they prefer to, instead of being forced to use a certain character just because they chose to use that character for the time being.
But the game could go the other way with this, too. It could create certain areas of the game, like a ship or the occasional checkpoint, where the player could swap between characters. It would force the player to use the character that they chose until the opportunity arose where they could switch again, and this would make that decision more momentous. If it took a while to be able to change characters, players would likely put a lot of thought into what character they wanted to play, or what character they thought would best fit the situation.
While Star Wars movies usually do have a cast of characters that are all pretty unique, those characters aren’t always in the same place; in fact, that’s rarely the case. Most of the time, the group is split into two or more smaller groups that have different tasks. This is something else that could definitely be translated into Ubisoft’s open-world Star Wars game, and it could give the player as little or as much control over the situation as the game saw fit.
It could go the route of predefined groups of characters going into situations, without the player having any control over which characters go where. This would allow for a bit of a stricter narrative over the game, letting Ubisoft and Massive have complete control over how the story unfolds, and what gameplay options the player is going to have access to in each part of the game.
But the game could also allow for the player to choose exactly how they want to split the group up. This would give the player a little bit more ownership of the situations that arose throughout the game, but it would mean that there would need to be cutscenes made for every situation. Plus, gameplay would either need to be balanced in a way where things could be accomplished regardless of the team the player brought, or certain gameplay elements of the area would need to be changed accordingly. Going this route could add some replay value into the game, with situations possibly resolving differently depending on how the player chooses to go about it.
Ubisoft and Massive’s open-world Star Wars game is currently in development.
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