Ubisoft and Lucasfilm games have announced that Ubisoft Massive is working on an open-world Star Wars game, breaking EA’s exclusive rights to the franchise. Few details have been released about the project, but with plenty of hugely successful open-world games released over the last decade, Ubisoft Massive could take the game’s design in many different directions.
An open-world Star Wars game has the opportunity to take the franchise back to its roots: Framing the player character as a Ronin-like Force user, wandering the galaxy looking to do good and serve the light or, depending on the player, the dark side. There’s one key feature that Ubisoft Massive could lift from Ghost of Tsushima to bring the new Star Wars game’s swordplay back to its samurai roots.
Lethal Lightsabers
Shortly after its release, Ghost of Tsushima had already become the PS4’s fastest selling first-party IP, but it wasn’t without its criticisms. Some fans found that enemies had a tendency to circle the player to attack one at a time, even in hard mode. This was also a common complaint in some older Ubisoft open-world games, particularly in the Assassin’s Creed series. To avoid enemies seeming damage spongey on hard mode, Ghost of Tsushima’s developers introduced a new difficulty setting in one of the game’s early patches. “Lethal” difficulty mode wasn’t only a particularly intense way to play the game, but also an extremely immersive one.
The description of Ghost of Tsushima's lethal difficulty mode reads “death is always close at hand. A single sword strike is lethal.” The genius of lethal mode is that this applies to both the player and their enemies. The real skill in mastering Ghost of Tsushima’s lethal difficulty is anticipating, blocking, and deflecting attacks long enough to find an opening to strike, just like in real sword fighting.
This makes for intense, cinematic combat that can actually be far faster than lower difficulty modes. This is a nice change from many games, where increasing the difficult can cause fights to become far more drawn out. It also complements the story – it adds to both the main character Jin Sakai’s sense of vulnerability, and helps realize him far more clearly as the “Ghost of Tsushima” when the player is able to find opportunities to strike with deadly precision.
Adding a Lethal difficulty-style mode to Ubisoft Massive’s upcoming open-world Star Wars game could make combat far more intense and rewarding, without sacrificing its dynamism. Instead of having the player and an enemy hit each other with their lightsabers over and over again to see who drops dead first, the world could feel more realistically dangerous and immersive.
Although it may have to be executed differently, there are ways that the principles of Ghost of Tsushima’s lethal difficulty could still be applied even if lightsabers aren’t involved. The identity of the upcoming game’s protagonist has yet to be revealed, and it’s possible that they’ll be able to choose from different classes or may not even have the option to play as a Jedi Knight at all.
Balancing Blasters
Fortunately, the interconnected influence of both Samurai and Western movies means that the same rules could be broadly applied to quick draw blaster fights, an aspect of the series rarely returned to since Han shot first. If both the player and their NPC enemy are using lightsabers, it’s easy to see how the Ghost of Tsushima style of combat could work as-is. If just the player is a Jedi and their opponent is using a blaster, the same principals could be applied, especially with the Jedi proficiency for blocking blaster bolts with their lightsabers.
If both the open-world Star Wars game’s player and their enemies are using blasters, perhaps the game could draw on features like Red Dead Redemption 2’s Dead Eye mechanic. Dead Eye allows the Red Dead 2 player to slow time and line up a series of quick successive shots, while still having a high penalty if the player is careless enough to get hit. The challenge for Ubisoft Massive would likely be figuring out a way to make sure that the differences between lightsabers and blasters didn’t lead to imbalanced combat.
Despite the challenges, it would be incredible to see an open-world Star Wars game where the player character makes it through the story by the skin of their teeth instead of absorbing damage like a classic video game protagonist. It will likely be a long time before fans see a roguelike Star Wars game where the player’s death forces them to restart. However, Lethal mode could add an additional degree of intensity to combat that would make it feel higher-stakes, without the risk of frustration that comes with roguelikes.
Speed And Swordplay
There’s another interesting aspect of Ghost of Tsushima’s sword-fight design that could do wonders for Ubisoft Massive’s Star Wars game. In Ghost of Tsushima, players often only have enough time to react to an enemies initial attack, but are then able to use that first attack to anticipate the string of attempted blows likely to follow. This design allowed the developer to make those subsequent attacks extremely fast without having to worry that they would become impossible to react to.
The result is combat which is far from impossible, but nonetheless feels mentally exhausting in a way few games have been able to capture. Before going into combat in Ghost of Tsushima, players have to figure out what kind of enemy they’re facing and what kind of attacks they might expect before launching into the fascinatingly fast swordplay the game offers.
Ghost of Tsushima has a lot it can teach an open-world Star Wars game, perhaps more than Ubisoft franchises like Assassin’s Creed that lack the same focus on open-world sword-fighting. How exactly Ubisoft Massive plans to execute its open-world game, however, remains to be seen. It's still possible that the game will turn away from the series' traditional focus on lightsaber fights to tell a story about a character who isn’t Force sensitive.
Ubisoft Massive's Star Wars game is currently in development.