As part of its ongoing effort to turn Star Wars Outlaws into a game that more people might actually want to buy, Ubisoft has rolled out its first developer update, revealing that creative director Julian Gerighty has been replaced as creative director by The Division and Avatar veteran Drew Rechner.
"I'm very excited to be stepping into the role of creative director on Star Wars Outlaws and to be working with the incredibly passionate team here at Massive Entertainment along with our talented co-development studios around the world and Lucasfilm Games," Rechner wrote.
"I would like to personally thank you, our community, for your positive response to the game. We see and love all the fan arts, comments, and videos you've created around the game, and it continues to provide joy and inspiration to the team. We truly hope you're enjoying your journey across the Outer Rim with Kay and Nix thus far."
Prior to taking over as creative director on Star Wars Outlaws, Rechner served as associate game director on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and The Division 2: Warlords of New York; he also worked under Gerighty as lead AI designer on The Division 2 and a game designer on The Division.
Rechner has big plans for the game, which has already received multiple updates and an acceleration of Outlaws' planned launch on Steam.There are three "key areas" on which developers are focusing: Combat, stealth, and controls, which he said will "[embrace] player choice more than ever before, whether it's sneaking through encounters, going in blasters-blazing, or everything in-between." Details on upcoming changes will be shared in future updates leading to the 1.4 patch on November 21, which is when Star Wars Outlaws will go live on Steam.
While swapping creative directors on a game that's only been out for a couple months might seem a little odd at first, particularly given Star Wars Outlaws' "soft" performance, in this case there's nothing untoward going on. With Star Wars Outlaws released, Gerighty is shifting his focus back to The Division: He was tapped as the new executive producer of the series in 2023 when Ubisoft announced The Division 3; as part of that announcement, Ubisoft said Gerighty would remain in his then-current position as creative director of Star Wars Outlaws until the game was launched.
