PSU

When it was revealed that Ubisoft Massive, the team behind games like The Division would be tackling a Star Wars game, a lot of players (myself included) began dreaming of a Battlefront-esque shooter with a skeleton of a game closer to The Division. Or at the very least a third-person shooter focused on co-op gameplay that absolutely slapped. Either sounded great to me.

That’s not the game we’re getting at all though. Instead we’re getting Star Wars: Outlaws, a game that (I now know) was always going to be Ubisoft’s attempt at telling a different kind of Star Wars story, one without lightsabers and Skywalkers but instead filled with the grime, cruelty and opportunity that comes with the galaxy’s criminal underworld.

How do I know that a scoundrel-forward story was the one Ubisoft was always going to tell? Because for PSU I got to visit the Ubisoft Toronto studio where I heard about and saw how the team crafted the story for Outlaws, which included narrative director Navid Khavari talking about the fact that the original pitch from Ubisoft to Lucasfilm was to make a game set in the criminal underbelly of the galaxy with a scoundrel of a protagonist at the helm.

On a sunny Toronto day last week I got to step onto the set of Ubisoft Toronto’s motion capture studio, play around with some of the tech and props that go into modern day video game storytelling and spend some time speaking to the very people behind the story and cinematics of Outlaws.

In this article, I do my best to take you with me inside the studio on my day there, how it all felt to be there, what we did and how I saw everything. You’ll find the interviews I conducted while there in this separate article, here.

Building A Scoundrel’s Story – A Behind-The-Scenes Look At Star Wars: Outlaws At Ubisoft Toronto

If you didn’t know, (as I didn’t know), the motion capture for everything Ubisoft makes – really, everything – happens in one of two buildings. The Toronto studio, and the Ubisoft Montreal studio.

Which is why then it makes absolute perfect sense, that while Outlaws is technically being led by the Massive team out in Sweden, it was the Ubisoft Toronto team that led the way in crafting the story for Star Wars Outlaws.

That then made it even more cool to check out the motion capture studio – but I’m getting ahead of myself, that didn’t come until later in the day. First, I had to get there, which I’m thankful is actually only a short walk from where I live.

I’ve driven by the Toronto studio many times, so seeing inside of it felt akin to finally getting to see the area that is right next to your character’s home base, but is blocked for some obscure game pacing reason.

When I arrived, balloon towers, like yellow paint, marked where I needed to go, and from the moment I stepped inside I felt a shift, and the day had begun. And I immediately began taking photos of everything.

We hardly ever get to see the inside of a game studio, apart from the few times events like this happen. With the games industry becoming more and more secretive over the years, the actual buildings and the studios where games are made began to feel like hallowed and mysterious places.

The reality is both a lot more boring, but still exciting. It’s an office – one purpose-built for game development, which invites a few quirks from other corporate offices – but it’s still an office.

In that way there were parts of it that felt like a call back to reality. Even the presentations which kicked off the morning, while each intriguing, felt like a reminder about the utility of everything.

Though to be fair the dimly lit hallway we walked down towards the presentation room and the two Stormtrooper’s at the entrance did shake that up a bit.

Before we got into the really fun stuff, we had a bit of school. That is to say it felt like a class field trip where before you get to run around the candy factory you need to watch a presentation about how the candy is made. (In fairness I’ve never heard about a candy factory school field trip but my sister went to a chocolate factory when she was in elementary school, so I’m sure it happens.)

After some opening remarks from the managing director at Ubisoft Toronto, Darryl Long, who also took the chance right away to tell us not to ask about the Splinter Cell Remake and that we wouldn’t see any Splinter Cell – so don’t ask about it – in so many words.

I’d like to say that was a setup for something at the end but really, Ubisoft just wasn’t ready to share anything about Splinter Cell. Not to mention we were there for Outlaws. But if he hadn’t mentioned it, we all would’ve asked before the day was up, so fair play from Long. He said Splinter Cell was remaining “in stealth mode.”

Long also shared that Outlaws will be the 13th shipped game that the Ubisoft Toronto branch has worked on when it arrives next week, and that next year the branch will celebrate its 15th anniversary.

Following that we got straight to it with presentations from cinematic and realization director Bogdan Draghici, cinematic animation director Michael Hollenbeck and associate realization director Jason Cook.

But to kick things off we had a panel presentation featuring narrative director Navid Khavari, lead scriptwriter Nikki Foy and Humberly Gonzalez, the lead actor of the game and the voice and motion capture for Kay Vess.

I should say, we weren’t allowed to take photo or video of these presentations, or take any photos or videos of the space we were in, we were only allowed to record audio for reference. I also can’t share that recording, but trust me when I tell you they were very informative and educational.

It was at this part in the day where Khavari revealed that a scoundrel story was he and the team always wanted to tell. “We wanted to tell a story about a normal person,” and what that person’s life is like living in the Star Wars universe.

Foy and Khavari also talked about what it was like when they first found out they would be working on a Star Wars game. Both of them told their respective brothers first. Star Wars – as it is for so many people around the world – was an obsession shared with family for both of them.

Daunting as the task seemed at first, after taking some time to let it all sink in, Foy for her part said she found the restrictions of the known Star Wars universe were a huge boon in the creative process, because it prevented her from the even more overwhelming feeling of knowing you could go in any direction at all.

Of course they still felt the weight of working on a Star Wars project, but hearing both Khavari and Foy speak about how they grew up with the franchise and their love for it, there was just something that reassured me they were more than up to the task.

You’ll hear all about that in my full review of course, but at this point I’d yet to play anything beyond my preview some weeks ago now, so in that moment my hopes for the game soared just a little bit higher. Gonzalez, for her part, had a slightly different reaction when she learned that she was auditioning for a Star Wars role – and it was actually a key aspect as to why she got the part.

Rather than closing in on herself and feeling overwhelmed by hearing in an audition ‘So, you’re actually auditioning for Star Wars,’ she held that freak-out in and put on her boldest face, and instead gave a “Let’s f****** go” reaction to the Ubisoft team. That kind of fearlessness when you’re actually losing your mind on the inside is one of the core pieces of connective tissue between Gonzalez and Kay Vess.

Khavari and Foy also talked about what it was like to craft the story with a full writers room of people working together. It may be standard practice to have a writers room for film and TV, but it’s still an uncommon occurrence in games. The team storyboarded nearly every bit of the game, as Draghici would later point out in his presentation there were more than 1,000 panels drawn for the game.

Though when it came to the dialogue, according to Foy and Khavari nothing was absolutely nailed down until it was recorded on set. Once actors were saying the words, that’s what went in. Until then, it was always malleable.

Draghici’s presentation and the presentation from Hollenbeck and Cook together both got more into the weeds of how the studio approached the look and the feel of the game and its story. Draghici’s presentation looked at the cinematography of the game, casting, which he pointed out as “quite important,” cinematic workflow, and the key factors behind the game’s success.

This is just a personal note, but Draghici’s presentation was my favourite of the day. He spoke about how he and the cinematic team studied the original trilogy of films since Outlaws is set right between Episode’s V and VI, how the more recent Rogue One film was a huge inspiration for them in how to modernize that older style.

He even quoted Rogue One’s cinematographer Greig Fraser from an interview where Fraser said that their goal with Rogue One was to recreate how we remembered something. “Sometimes your memory of something can be slightly different from reality, so what we did for Rogue One, is we tried to match it to the aesthetic of our ‘mind’s eye’, and what we remember from Star Wars growing up,” Fraser said.

For the team on Outlaws and Draghici, that was the approach. It’s also worth mentioning that Draghici is no stranger to Star Wars – he previously worked on the visual effects for Solo: A Star Wars Story, which is only one of the major films he’s worked on in his career.

In so many ways Draghici was right in his element, and it showed the rest of the presentation with how he discussed the work put in to Outlaws. His presentation was also in a way the coolest because he showed us a lot of behind-the-scenes clips.

Things like recorded auditions between Gonzalez and Jay Rincon, the actor behind the droid ND-5, and a full breakdown of one of the game’s early cinematics. From how it looked storyboarded, to an early rendering, and then the final cut.

Regarding what Draghici outlined as the key factors behind the game’s success (even though, we technically don’t know the full scale of that success yet), he named the collaboration with Lucasfilm as imperative to the game. The wealth of art and lore and information on everything to do with Star Wars that the studio houses, and Lucasfilm’s constant encouragement to go further with their ideas could not be understated in its importance, Draghici essentially laid out.

But as is the case with all of Ubisoft’s major projects, Draghici emphasized that different teams working together across the globe make everything happen at the end of the day.

Last for the presentations were Hollenbeck and Cook, who talked about how their work on the game’s “mini-cinematics” they called them. The scenes where you’re not exactly playing, but it’s not a cinematic. Things like taking off and landing for example, as a time for a mini-cinematic or realization scene. Events where you lose control of the player character, and a scene just plays out – but it’s not a full cutscene where you leave gameplay.

Cook and Hollenbeck highlighted that because it was something they felt was important in that mission to “respect the franchise” and by extension respecting the players and fans of Star Wars. Entering space, going to lightspeed are iconic visual moments that they knew needed to be included. So even if we weren’t getting a No Man’s Sky-esque seamless transition from planet to space, we weren’t really missing out on much. It’s definitely better than a loading screen.

As part of this final presentation we also got some numbers on the making of Outlaws story. In total, Outlaws required 75 actors, 726,573 character seconds and 201hrs of motion capture footage to come together.

Each of these presentations for our school-filled morning was a great way to kick things off, but after hearing so much about the motion capture studio, everyone there – myself included – wanted nothing more than to check the studio out for ourselves.

The first thing about the motion capture studio you’ll notice if you’re ever lucky enough to visit the one they have at Ubisoft Toronto, is that it’s huge. It’s this big bright space that because of the wall structure feels like you should be able to bounce around it but you know you can’t because everything else in there is crazy expensive.

It’s also just a really big empty space. Even filled with the small setup of mats and the actors all geared and dotted up, ready to demonstrate a bit of what a day like shooting would be, it feels really empty. Though you can also say it’s full of space.

I’d argue that’s the more apt description, because when they began rehearsing, it felt akin to the rehearsal rooms I knew from another lifetime. The pre-pandemic one, where I’m working in theatre and not writing about video games.

In many ways, it helped me to feel, even more than I already knew, just how valuable motion-capture is to storytelling in games like this. Of course games tell stories in all kinds of ways, but when you’re going for the kind of cinematic feel that Outlaws is, the weight of it all lands when you see first-hand how close it really is to a film set or a rehearsal room in a theatre. It’s the same, just with a lot more bells and whistles, which also come with their own quirks, like needing to T-pose every so often.

Watching Gonzalez and the rest of the actors work with Draghici, Khavari and Foy all there to support the storytelling was altogether quite the treat, particularly because we got to see how the technology works in tandem with everything they’re doing on set.

It also showed once again that Gonzalez really was the right choice for Kay Vess. Earlier in the day during the panel presentation, Khavari and Foy both credited Gonzalez for shaping the role beyond what they had originally penned.

The quip-y and snarky dialogue Gonzalez saw on the page didn’t resonate with her, and through Gonzalez influence Kay became much more grounded and vulnerable.

But what was likely the most special part of going down to the studio for the first time, was seeing the puppet they used to capture Nix and his movements. It looks terrifying and adorable in the best way, and was arguably the highlight for a lot of people.

It’s even more interesting to know that the puppeteer who was piloting Nix during filming built him up little by little as his design was nailed down. And just as Kay and Nix are bonded, Gonzalez and the puppeteer would remain in-character between shoots, with Gonzalez gently petting the puppet while they waited for the next call of “Action!”

When the demonstration was done we got to walk onto set, pet the Nix puppet, and generally play around with the props and get a closer look at the space. After a fire alarm interrupted the fun for a few minutes and sent us all outside, we then broke off into groups to cycle through going on a whole tour through the rest of the motion capture studio and their production rooms and then a chance to play the game one last time ahead of the review period.

The tour had a few special standouts, like a 3D model of Giancarlo Esposito’s teeth the team printed after scanning him, the workshop where they build plenty of their props, and their storage filled with props and pieces used in filming a variety of things across every Ubisoft franchise.

There was also a fun photo-op here, where everyone got the chance to take a photo on the motion-capture speeder built to film the moments where Kay is zooming across whatever planet you’re on.

Mixed in-between were our scheduled interviews which as a reminder you can find here, but once all that had wrapped up, so had the day.

Opting not to play the demo again, since it was the same build I’d played for my preview just a few weeks prior and the review period was only days away at the point, I instead spent some time talking to some of the other developers who were there facilitating the demos.

I also took some time to try my hand at a claw machine they had, filled with plush toys of Kay’s companion, Nix. I was able to win one after about some 30 attempts, and now my dog has a new cuddle buddy.

All that aside, the Star Wars-filled day and showcase of the facilities at Ubisoft Toronto really showed how much goes into a massive game like this – and this was just with the Toronto team focusing on the narrative of Outlaws.

You can imagine visiting the Ubisoft Massive studio in Sweden and seeing their workflows and hearing from them on what it was like building Outlaws would be its own experience.

And as another personal note, it was a special point of pride to know that the studio in my hometown has all of this, just up the street from where I live no less.

I got to see on a first-hand level a bit of the gargantuan effort Ubisoft put into making Outlaws. Hopefully when my review of Outlaws is up, you’ll be able to read all about the ways in which that effort was clear on screen.