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STAR WARS OUTLAWS

QUEST DESIGNER




Released: August 30th 2024
Platform: PC, Playstation 5, Windows Xbox Seriex X/S
Developer: Massive Entertainment
Publisher: Ubisoft
Website: 'Star Wars Outlaws' Official Site

PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Star Wars Outlaws is an action-adventure game in which the player gets to explore locations across the Star Wars galaxy as Kay Vess. Set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Kay has to assemble a team for a massive heist, crossing paths with iconic locations, characters and enemies on her adventures.

MY RESPONSIBILITES

  • Conceptualizing, designing, building and scripting six named Main Quests and one Side Quest
  • Working within Quest Cells consisting of many disciplines (such as Level Design, Level Art etc) to drive and deliver quests from start to completion, while upholding the excitement and well-being of quest cell members
  • Iterating and tweaking story beats, gameplay flow and narrative pacing while making sure the project vision is respected and ensuring the success of the story
  • Collaborating with cinematic teams to ensure coherence and seamlessness between gameplay and cutscenes.
  • Designing and implementing high level "in-between" quest-moments needed for progression and thematic coherency
  • Onboarding, mentoring and providing guidelines for newer Quest Designers and various members of the team
  • Building quest design documents, templates, tools and technical solutions (often together with game designers and gameplay programmers) to improve and standardize our workflow from both a tech and usability perspective
  • Developing the Quest Team culture and guidelines
  • Taking on the role of Lead Quest Designer for post-release and DLC

ABOUT MY WORK


STAR WARS OUTLAWS - World Premiere Trailer
Being a life-long Star Wars fan, the opportunity to work on a Star Wars game was in every way a dream come true for me, and when I was offered the role of Quest Designer on Star Wars Outlaws I immediately jumped on the chance. Having worked as both level designer and narrative designer, this was the perfect bridge - getting to both help shape the story while still having one foot firmly planted in gameplay design and scripting. Working alongside a small but amazing core team of Quest Designers (Maximilien Lutz, Sam Luckhardt, and lead Chris Nonis) we would work seperately within 'quest cells', typically consisiting of (but never limited to) a Quest Designer, Level Designer, Level Artist and Writer who would work together to design and build any given quest under the parameters given to them.

With my fantastic quest cells, I worked on seven quests from ideation to finalization, six of which were Main Quests - many of which introduced core concepts to the player. I was also tasked with designing many holistic "in-between" quest-moments and tech solutions, such as planetary dialogue introductions, the introduction of the Reputation mechanic, the introduction of the ship vendor system, handling certain characters when they are not handled by quest scripts, helping out with datapad and in-game computer tech, and more.

TOSHARA - The planet created for Star Wars Outlaws on which most of my quests take place.
Towards the tail-end of the project, roughly two montsh before release, I was promoted to Lead Quest Designer and oversaw the last tweaks and bugfixes, before ramping up on post-release content, a large title update that would see large changes to the gameplay systems and quest structures, while also working on the second DLC - Star Wars Outlaws: A Pirate's Fortune.

Below you will find details on a few of the Main Quests I worked on.

QUEST - UNDERWORLD



Underworld sees Kay's first introducion to the world of the syndicates that play a crucial role throughout Outlaws.

The Underworld is the second Main Quest on the first fully explorable planet of the game; Toshara. Following immediately after 'Crashed' (Quest Designer: Sam Luckhardt)- a quest in which we see Kay crash-land her ship on Toshara, The Underworld starts as the player enters the capital city of Toshara; Mirogana.

The quest had to onboard the player to many gameplay concepts such as Faction Districts, advanced stealth, alarms and reinforcements and the Reputation systmem as a whole. It also had to present many important story concepts and narrative elements, such as the city being under Imperial control, but also being a haven for crime syndicates that paid their dues to the corrupted local Imperial governor, and lastly introducing key local players in the Mirogana Underworld, such as Danka the information broker, Gorak the Pyke Underboss and Eleera the Crimson Dawn spy.

This was also one of the first quests designed for the entire game. It went through many, many iterations and was in many ways the testing grounds for many core concepts of design and gameplay mechanics that would inform many things on the project moving forward.

QUEST - FALSE FLAG



False Flag takes Kay and Nix on a dangerous mission on an Imperial Fuel Station. Image by Zack Parkinson.

CONTRIBUTORS

WRITING
Nikki Foy
LEVEL DESIGN
Ronnie Talon

VFX DESIGN
Baptiste Erades
LEVEL ART
Zack Parkinson
LIGHTING ART
Roberto Libralato

SOUND DESIGN
Joel Green
False Flag might be the thing I have had the most fun building throughout my career. The quest sees Kay get her ship back to a flight-worthy state, only to immediately get roped into a dangerous mission for Crimson Dawn that entails boarding an Imperial Fuel Station, sneaking in, deleting data and then extracting a strange alien accountant by the name of Bosnok out all while the fuel station is alerted to Kay's presence and sends an army of stormtroopers after her. It was so exciting getting to play with a set piece that felt straight out of the original trilogy, taking place within the iconic imagery of Imperial infrastructure and design.

This quest was also the player's first introduction to spaceship mechanics, space flight and spaceship controls which required a thorough collaboration with the gameplay team, the space combat team, the tutorialization team and the writers to ensure a smooth yet narratively interesting onboarding that made sense within the game and universe we were building upon.

Much like The Underworld, this quest was one of the earliest built, and therefore went through many iterations and changes along the way - including one post release that saw the Fail on Alarm state disappear from the quest, which was a tricky undertaking but was well-received by players. All in all, this quest packs such a punch due to the large amount of passion and the many fantastic ideas that was thrown at it from everyone working on it, and I am so pleased to have

QUEST - THE WRECK



The Wreck centers around the Castellan - a high republic shipwreck. Image by Wouter Gillioen.

CONTRIBUTORS

WRITING
Nikki Foy
LEVEL DESIGN
Kendal Husband

VFX DESIGN
Baptiste Erades
LIGHTING ART
Roberto Libralato

SOUND DESIGN
Joel Green
Differing from the previous quests, The Wreck is almost entirely non-combat and instead focuses on traversal, exploration, mystery and spectacle. In order to get off-planet, Kay needs to find a nav computer compatible with her ship, and her newly aquainted mechanic-friend Waka has located one deep within a 200 year old High Republic shipwreck that has proven too dangerous for others to scavange off of. As Kay explores the dilapidated ship, reactives the ship's old reactor and finally finds the bridge, she manages to extract the nav computer, only to be backstabbed by Waka, who has sold her out to Zerek Besh - a new, lethal crime syndicate and Vail Tormin, a bounty hunter who has now tracked her down. In a panicked effort to get away, Kay activates the old ships engines, causing it to collapse in onto itself, allowing her to make a narrow getaway.

As mentioned above, this quest was a big outlier in terms of gameplay as it is one of very few quests in the game with a large emphasis on mood and exploration with barely any combat at all - something the quest cell fought hard for, believing the quest would feel unique because of it, a sentiment which was later shared by the players upon release.

Large efforts were put into big set pieces like climbing the ship's reactor and the explosive finale of the quest in which the shipwreck collapses around the player as they have to dash towards the exit. This involved very complex and delicate scripting and was a very large multi-disciplinary collaborative effort with artists, VFX, cinematics, sound, lighting and more, helping out to make these moments feel as bombastic and exciting as we could make them.

Lastly, this quest also introduces the iconic droid companion to Kay; ND-5 along with Jaylen Vrax, the mastermind behind the heist that the rest of the game is centered around. It is the last large main quest on Toshara, and leads into a sequence in which the player can freely choose which

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