The Trailblazer ship in Star Wars Outlaws drew inspiration from an unlikely place: turtles
When it comes to creating something new within the Star Wars universe, inspiration can sometimes come from the most unexpected of places. For Star Wars Outlaws, developer Massive Entertainment not only brought to life a fresh cast, but it also designed a new ship in collaboration with LucasFilm that we’ll be able to fly. Known as the Trailblazer – which lead gameplay designer Fredrick Thylander says is a ship Kay Vess has “permanently borrowed” – features a curved design. While the art team drew from the original trilogy and the ’60s and ’70s to make the vehicle era-appropriate, the distinctive rounded silhouette was actually influenced by lead concept artist Samuel De Vos’ affinity for a particular reptile.
“I was talking to Benedikt [Podlesnigg], the world and art director, about what the main inspiration was for the Trailblazer, and it was actually a turtle,” De Vos says. “Somebody was asking me about pets, and then I remembered the only pets I ever had were two turtles. So it’s really a full circle moment for me. But you can see a turtle shell; the bottom and the top part of the Trailblazer is really reminiscent of that.”
Home away from home
The turtle-like look becomes more apparent once you know the reptile’s shell influenced the design. But it also wouldn’t look out of place in the original movie trilogy, which speaks to the team’s efforts to capture the era: “It was important to create something that feels very grounded,” explains De Vos. “So if you would look at the Trailblazer and look at some ships from the original trilogy, we wanted to take inspiration from the same era. For the Trailblazer, specifically the ’70s, monorails were also a big inspiration, and the front takes inspiration from a Ford Mustang – that’s, of course, a timeless design as well.”
In Star Wars Outlaws, one of the first locations we’ll get to explore is Kay’s home, which is in an attic above a cantina. For all intents and purposes, though, the curved ship will, as De Vos explains, be “a little bit like Kay’s home when she’s away”. Offering the means to navigate the Outer Rim outside of planet surfaces, the Trailblazer is one of the main tools at our disposal when it comes to exploration, alongside the speeder. Not unlike Starfield ship customization – although not quite as extensive in terms of placing various parts and assembling the vehicle – you’ll be able to upgrade and customize the look of the spacecraft. Not only will the customization allow you to give the ship a personal touch with some cosmetic options, but you’ll be able to enhance certain features to suit your playstyle.
“During the course of the game, there are ship vendors,” Thylander says, “there are key parts that she can find that allows her to change things like cannons, missiles, the hull, the shields, the engine, and customize the different liveries, and even exhaust fuel to change the color of the exhausts. Really, this is about customizing how you like to play in space, but also a separate kind of power journey as you get into more and more dangerous scrapes, possibly when pissing off some of the syndicates.”
“We wanted to give the player a lot of freedom to change their look as they go throughout the galaxy”
Samuel De Vos, lead concept artist
“For the Trailblazer and the speeder, we wanted to give the player a lot of freedom to change their look as they go throughout the galaxy”, says De Vos. “There are additional things that will change your gameplay experience slightly, but the actual visuals of the Trailblazer the color doesn’t impact that, but some of the gameplay upgrades are visible once you upgrade them.”
The “power journey” Thylander mentions refers to the upgrades that may help you out in dogfights among the stars. During my hands-on time, I got the chance to try out a short stint in space in the ship, with Imperial TIE fighters in hot pursuit thanks to my wanted level. I’m curious to see how dicey and dangerous space could potentially become should you anger both The Empire and the syndicates – I imagine upgrades would certainly come in handy then. Ultimately, the customization options are baked into the experience to suit your own style – cosmetically and otherwise.
“When it comes to customization, it’s very important for us and for the team to respect the shapes that are established with that initial design,” De Vos says. “But at the same time, give the player a lot of agency in defining, ‘how do I want to look when I’m in a dogfight?’, or, ‘what do I want to look at when I turn around the corner and I see the Trailblazer after not having seen it for a few minutes or during a quest?’. So it’s a lot of fun to see how big of a spectrum we can do in variety for the Trailblazer, but also for the speeder. It’s such an honor to be involved with that type of stuff and the team did an amazing job.”