Mag-log in bilang miyembro
Nakipag-usap kami sa Star Wars: Galactic Racer's game director tungkol sa pagpapanatili ng arcade na pakiramdam sa modernong gaming, glup shittos at paglikha ng ultimate Star Wars racing experience.
"Hello everyone, I'm Alex here with Gamereactor. I've just been checking out some Star Wars Galactic Racer. I'm here with Matt. Now Matt, I have to start this with a bit of a confession. I thought this was just a pod racing game when I was first made aware of it. And I thought, great, I love pod racing. But you guys have gone so much deeper with this. This is a speed racing game. This is kind of like the dream Star Wars racing game. Could you tell me a little bit more about how you've balanced that sort of pod racing, speed racing element and made it so addictive as well? Well, I'm glad you had that experience. That's great. Well, we knew that we couldn't, we can't make a Star Wars racing game without featuring pod races, you know, and as you played the single player in the prologue, Pax, who's the founder of the Galactic Racing League, actually says, pod races are, they're incredible, but hardly anyone can, hardly anyone can fly them. So that's what really sort of sets the stage. We wanted to expand what racing in Star Wars meant, and that meant leaning into Context Context."
"On that story, I think it's something that sort of kind of has to be done in a Star Wars game. Something else I've been looking at the minute, Star Wars Zero Company, which is sort of like a tactical game with that cinematic element. How did you go about adding in that cinematic element and how do you balance that with the technical aspect that people would expect from a racing game to make it feel tight, make it feel rewarding from a gameplay perspective as well? Yeah, well, I mean, it's important."
"We always start from Well, game feel is incredibly important to us, so how that speeder feels is intensely important. So from a racing perspective, we will start there. But we're making a Star Wars racing game, and Star Wars is a galaxy where stories are told, and so we want to tell a story here, and it's a sports-focused story that hasn't really been told before, well certainly this story hasn't been told before, introducing new characters, new canon characters, some old favorites returning, and so that meant that we needed to balance that sort of second-to-second feel, excitement, you know, the sort of fantasy fulfillment that you get there, with being inside the Star Wars galaxy and telling a story there."
"And Star Wars fans, they crave a story. So that was really important for us to do that.
And then actually joining those things together was something that we wanted to do, which was to push the racing genre forward and bring some innovation and structure with the runs-based structure inside the campaign. It actually brings those things together. You're also combining in a way, I think, because the story, I hope this isn't too much of a spoiler, is set sort of like sequel era time, but the pod racing, of course, is prequel era time. How did you go about sort of like combining those eras? Was there ever a moment where you sort of had to look at the Star Wars timeline in a big way and then zoom in on which bits you could use and which bits you could make the most of? Yeah, you're absolutely right. Well, first of all, it's worth pointing out that This is a collaboration with Lucasfilm Games, and they've been a part of this pretty much from day one with us. It's important that you set where are you on that timeline, because that enables you to understand what characters are around, what's happening in this galaxy, and what you can lean into. So we are set after the events of Return of the Jedi. But as you say, we've got everyone's favorite Doug Sebulba has made an appearance. We get to see him. In the heydays of pod racing, you've gotten to race as a young Sebald, but we also see him in the campaign as an older character as well. So how that then goes and reveals itself, we'll let players discover through the campaign. But you're right, when we're talking about eras, it's important to place yourself where we are and see what's available for us to have fun with. Did you have fun as well like making, because there's a whole roster of characters here. We've got a protagonist, Shade, but we've also got like 12 playable races. Including Shade, 12 including Shade, yeah. Which are all playable in multiplayer as well as single player, well you see them in single player. How fun was it to sort of like mess around with stuff like that, you know, they're all different types of aliens or different, have great different backstories. How free were you guys allowed to be with sort of like, you know, Star Wars lore with creating all of these characters? Well, like I said before, it's a collaboration, so we outline, you know, we have ideas of, well, first of all, we need a character like this, and that's not necessarily what it looks like, but what do you want that character archetype to be thinking about? And then we can say, well, what species suits that? And then it's a backwards and forward iteration, a collaborative effort to round those characters out. And you're right, you know, it's such a rich place to draw from."
"Context We've had a great time, you know, picking what sort of characters we would like to introduce, as well as some returning characters. And then you have our protagonist, Shade. He's a masked character. We learn a little bit more about his backstory and his history that he has with Kestar in the campaign. And then some wonderful supporting characters there. In particular, we know that people are going to fall in love with our Context, Context, Context, Context, Context You talked a bit before about game feel and that was something that I thought was really interesting when I was playing the multiplayer because before we sat down I said I'd sort of had like a blue shell moment in a way but what would you say is the key to creating that blue shell moment where you can get destroyed, you can crash right at the end or you can crash at any point and people can knock you out but you never feel Context Jump in, have an incredible moment, instantly feel like you're having a fantasy fulfillment, you're getting excited, and you're getting an audio-visual spectacle, and it's feeling great immediately. And then we have a heap of depth inside how the vehicles control, and the dynamics of the three speeder archetypes, and then of course the pod racer as well. But we also come at it from a... We want to favor the player, you know, so you're if you crash it's a it's a risk that you've pushed too far It should feel it should feel fair and and because of those sort of I think underlying Principles then when when you translate them to different modes or different play? experiences those those foundations are strong and so you have those moments of Context Something that I think made a lot of headlines when you guys were talking about this game initially is that it was sort of like no battle passes, no what we would come to expect from like traditional live service multiplayer and things like that. And I thought that was really interesting, especially when I finally had the chance to dive into the game because you guys have a lot of focus on longevity, replayability, both in the single player modes and the multiplayer modes. Could you talk a little bit more perhaps about how those came about and that design philosophy behind them?
Yeah, it's a great point. I mean, what I meant when I said that was that we wanted a grounded experience right out of the thing. Not that there would be an absence of things that would come after launch, but notwithstanding. What we wanted to do was push the genre forward and by looking at, by challenging some of those racing conventions. So it starts from actually bringing consequence back into racing."
"You know, it's difficult to have consequence when you've got a rewind button. And so what we wanted to do was embrace the spectacle, the audiovisual spectacle of a crash, but also embrace the consequence of a crash. So that that's not just at a moment to moment where you'll lose a position in a race. The way we have the campaign structure is it's runs-based. So if you wreck too many times, you're out of that tour. And you start again, your speeder is scrapped, you start again. But you're starting again from a more powerful level because you get some credits and you get to upgrade. Context At a sort of hour-to-hour moment, you might be failing out of a tour, you're restarting again, you're thinking about how I'm going to succeed in that next challenge, but you've got more toys to play with. And that structure, runs-based structure, is sort of conditioned for replayability. And racing games thrive on replayability. The more I play with a vehicle, the better I understand its handling dynamics. The more I play a racetrack, I understand its configuration and how to optimize for Context The first five events are a build chase. Build the best vehicle you can for that final showdown event on Dervan Acos. Something I liked about that as well, just quickly, was that how it basically didn't overly reward you for winning, like the person who was in first all the time didn't just automatically win, but at the same time, it doesn't make you feel like you might as well hang at the back because you get loads of bonuses for just coming from last place all the time. Or, you know, some things that we've learned from the past is in certainly in multiplayer, in multiplayer series, if I don't, if I come last, let's say, in the first event, it feels like I can't, I won't ever be able to make up the difference to be competitive or even to win. So this structure that we've got in multiplayer is, well, you're progressing, of course, the better your finishing position, you know, you might get access to, well, certainly to more credits, but maybe there's, you know, a higher quality of parts coming your way. But if you haven't won, if you have come out the back, you're still moving forward. And maybe you can start to rescue victory from the jaws of defeat."
"And then you put it all on the line on that very last race. There's an incentive to stay a part of that sort of championship journey. Something that you touched on there, and I was just going to ask a bit more about, is the customization. How deep can you go with your vehicles? Because you get three that you can choose from, the bigger speeder, the little jet bike, speeder bike, and the skim speeder. And those ones are all very nice on their own, but I noticed that there was like 20 different models, and you can customize the different pieces. So how deep did you guys go with that? Well, I think there's something like 8 million combinations. So there's 12 core designs in each of those land speeders, speeder bike, and the skim speeders. But then each speeder has got six slots. And parts are interchangeable between designs. So you can really build something that is unique to you. And that's its silhouette. but it feels also authentically Star Wars. And then we have liveries and colours and patina that you can customise, and that's across the Landspeeder and the Speeder Bike and the Skimspeeder. The Skimspeeder is a brand new vehicle to Star Wars, actually, we've invented that in collaboration with Lucasfilm, so that's got its own very Star Wars feel, but it's brand new. There's one final question for you. Are you aware of the term Glubshitto? It's a bit of an inter... Yes, I had to look this up some weeks ago. I'm yes, so I have heard it. Because I think that pod racing is the biggest Glubshitto convention of all time, perhaps in Star Wars. If you remember Ben Quadrinos' name or something like that. It's very interesting because Star Wars has been with us for so long. And in different ages, I suppose, from a generational perspective, we've all got our own first entry point into Star Wars."
"And it took me by surprise a little bit when we announced this game. the depth of feeling of nostalgia for pod racing and for the characters of episode one, the pod racing in particular. I mean, I didn't even know who Ben Cordoneros was until like, I don't know, two summers ago where for some reason it blew up on TikTok. But there's a lot of love for the characters in Star Wars. The Biggie Blasts Context Context Matt, that's about all I've got for you. Thank you so much for your time. But there's one last thing. Sorry. We'll go this way, but I'm holding it in the wrong hand. When can people check out Star Wars Galactic Racer and what can they check it out on? Yeah, well, we are launching on PC and Xbox Series S and X and PlayStation 5 and we are out on October the 6th. Perfect. I'm going to be racing. I'm going to be podracing. We're going to go for another handshake. Good stuff. Thank you very much."
