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The Star Wars Outlaws flop - Guillemot blames waning interest in the franchise
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this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2025
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these arrogant assholes.
just like movies and TV, the waning interest in the franchise is only because you keep making shitty games with it.
If you people start making GOOD star wars stuff again, we WILL eat it up.
Andor is an example of excellent Star Wars content that people want to see. They just produced crap.
I actually strongly disagree.
Andor was an example of actually telling a new story. Yes, people were eager to know who Cassian was. But If you had polled the entire Star Wars fanbase, like five of us would have said "Oh, I want a deeply political story with a massive focus on social justice that heavily focuses on a politician and a spymaster's daughter. Also, hold back zero punches about the kind of people who would spearhead a rebellion. Like, how crazy can Forrest go?". And we would have fully admitted we were on our bullshit.
Which was basically the problem with Outlaws. Everyone has been asking for a Han Solo game since people realized a Star Wars Pacman could be a thing. And you need to go REAL hard to make that live up to people's expectations.
Which, getting back to Andor: I would go so far as to say everything up until The Prison is REALLY rough. You have moments of brilliance (basically any time Skarsgard is on screen) but it spends too much time on a plot point it had already dropped and Cassian is kind of a mary sue. But we were enthralled because this was something NEW (well, less so if you have ever read a political thriller but... Star Wars!). And once it found its legs... it was painful beauty in all the best ways.
And, to go back to "It is a Han Solo game" or "It is a Jedi knight but not a Jedi Knight" and so forth? It doesn't take much to realize "I have seen this story a million times" and wander off. Like, I know I basically did that once I heard there were insta-fail stealth sections (although I generally try to not give Ubi money to begin with). Same with Ginger McBoring Face Survivor. It had an interesting hook (I LOVED Dark Times and Dass Jennir) and the gameplay was fine but when it came time to come back for seconds it was just "Eh, I'm good".
Nah. We need more Star Wars that people don't KNOW they want to see. Not just the tired crap that an exec would think was gold.
I think you guys are saying the same thing. People want to see something they haven't seen before, even in the star wars universe.
I want to see my man Nom Anor messing things up for both the Rebels and Empire. Maybe make the Peace Brigade while he's at it.
Its a fundamental mindset that goes into pitch meetings and the like.
Its the same idea behind game design/balance. If you listen to The Gamers, everything will be insanely OP and there will be no curve or balance at all. When the reality is they DO want that balance even if it means their favorite gun is slightly nerfed. But it will basically never be what they actually say when asked "what do you want?"
And same with franchises. People will always say "I want a game where I am Han or Luke" or "I want another KOTOR" and so forth. When the reality is that they don't actually know what they want.
"why do you balance/Nerf in a single player game? Stupid devs!" Pretty much every single "gamer" with no knowledge of what makes a game fun/challenging. Cracks me up every time.
I would have been one of those five people. I've always wanted adult Star Wars, and Andor finally gave it to me.
I'm very curious why you think the Aldhani raid was rough. Also, season 2 is already done, and I think it in some ways surpasses season 1. Have you seen it?
Like I said immediately after that. Moments of it are brilliant but it is clear there were still a lot of ways the plot could have gone and the showrunners were keeping their options over. And, while I think Aldhani was good, the Citra weirdness and Cassian being a mary sue who could do the entire rebellion better than anyone who was there. Whereas once Vel became more of a main character (and used to contrast Mon's inability to overtly act) and they focused more on one story rather than having the option to tell ten, it became one of my favorite shows of all time.
As for Season 2? I strongly disliked how zany and fun Cassian's infiltration of the prototype facility was but also understand that they needed to make something so that the trailers aren't just bleak and horrifying while speeding Cassian to the point of not just being a Believer but being a Leader. But after that time skip it resumed being one of my favorite shows of all time And a big part of that was not even pretending that Mon isn't the actual main character with Cassian and Kleya more a means to an end... which also fits with what they actually came to accept over the years.
Oh man, I thought I was the only one who didn't care what was happening until the prison. People were constantly gushing about how amazing it is...but like, it was fine...
Personally I'm pretty tired of Star wars, every entertainment product doesn't need to belong to a Disney franchise
Same, all the Star Wars slop Disney has churned out has completely washed any lingering magic out of the fabric of the franchise for me. I don't even feel the desire to watch supposedly good Star Wars products like Andor these days.
Yeah, the Baby Yoda Show was its last dying gasp for me. I see the same pattern in most industries: something is profitable, so lean hard into it until the bubble bursts. It's great for short-term profits but bad for long term and worse overall. I'm not particularly intelligent or educated in business but even I can see this is a terrible strategy.
Star by Star, Traitor, and Destiny's Way are pretty good. I want some Alpha Red.
Unpopular Opinion: The Yuuzhan Vong Invasion would've been better than the Sequel Trilogy.
Seeing that business with Ithor on the big screen would've been great.
Anything with a cohesive narrative would have been better than the sequel trilogy, including Dark Empire. Hell, Abrams did Dark Empire anyway, he just compressed it into a single film along with ESB and ROTJ because he's never had a single original idea about Star Wars.
IMHO, J.J. Abrams should not be allowed to touch any scriptwriting duties ever. He is not a bad director, but he doesn't seem to give a shit about the internal logic of the script if it comes in conflict with the "cool ideas" he has.
His two Star Trek films were perfect examples of this fallacy, as was the last and worst Star Wars film. With Star Trek he kinda butchered the heart of the franchise - the point of using starships to explore - with "Oh, the transporter can now beam stuff over interplanetary and interstellar distances, because it will be so awesome and less time consuming!"
Yes, it's science fiction and suspension of disbelief is required to fully enjoy it, but it is possible to obey the decades old in-universe rules and still write an enticing storyline if you put a little effort in it. Sad model example of lazy writing.
Of course the fault is not all his, the other producers should have stopped his stupid ideas but chose not to. Still, ROS was so bad that the guy should have been blacklisted for life.
Don't give him credit for TFA. That film set the entire trilogy up for failure with its opening crawl. There was no future for the sequels as soon as he decided to make a shitty ANH remake.
Honestly, I view ROS as the "Fuck it" movie. All the direction of where the story should go was pretty much dead after TLJ.
They just need to focus on a planet hopping mmo that runs a real world 9 year cycle through the movie eras. No character selection, full randomized setup where you find out what you're capable of as go. You may not end up a Jedi but you might end up the most notorious bounty hunter in the galaxy or you build end up born a clone dying minutes into first combat.
Star Wars roguelike? I'd play it