Summary

• Star Wars Outlaws explores the criminal underworld between films with authentic locations and characters like Jabba and Lando.
• The game introduces new planets, syndicates, and the hive-like Ashiga Clan, requiring players to navigate complex alliances.
• Ashiga Clan's design draws heavily from Asian culture, reflecting George Lucas' inspirations and commitment to Star Wars authenticity.

Star Wars Outlaws is revisiting the year between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and with that comes the opportunity to explore faithfully recreated locations such as Tatooine, and interact with established characters from that era, such as Jabba the Hutt or Lando Calrissian, the latter of whom was revealed briefly in a trailer at Summer Game Fest 2024. A huge part of Star Wars Outlaws' story centers around expanding the Star Wars universe, however, as its protagonist, Kay Vess isn't involved in the main conflict of the Galactic Civil War that has been the focus of most stories told about that time, and is navigating the criminal underworld instead.

With this, the team at Massive Entertainment worked with Lucasfilm to create completely new planets and moons for Kay to visit on her adventure, such as the new moon Toshara, which has a biome inspired by East African savannas, or Akiva, which has a more humid jungle environment. Aside from creating new worlds, Star Wars Outlaws introduces completely new syndicates, with the most notable addition being the Ashiga Clan.

What Is The Ashiga Clan?

The New Criminal Syndicate Has Set Up A Base On Kijimi

The Ashiga Clan has a large presence on Kijimi, the frozen planet first introduced in The Rise of Skywalker, and has previously been described as operating like an anthill due to being a hive of the insectoid Melitto species with a strong hierarchy and tradition of putting the hive above themselves - which makes them unique when compared to other syndicates where people have their own personal agendas - with a queen called Ashiga at the helm.

The Militto species first appeared in The Force Awakens with the introduction of the character Sarco Plank.

As part of Kay's navigation of the criminal underworld, she has to interact with various criminal syndicates and take on jobs for them, but sometimes assisting one group will result in Kay's reputation taking a hit with another. Players have to choose wisely which syndicate they side with, as higher levels of reputation can grant access to different rewards exclusive to each faction, and in the case of the Ashiga clan, Kay siding with any other syndicate seems likely to cause a rift due to the group's hive-type mentality.

The Ashiga Clan's Aesthetic Is Steeped In Asian Culture

Which Feeds Back Into Some Of George Lucas' Inspirations For The Star Wars Series

Screen Rant's Deven McClure spoke with Star Wars Outlaws' World Director, Cloé Hammoud, and Art Director, Marthe Jonkers at Summer Game Fest 2024 about the design process for the Ashiga Clan and what inspirations the team drew from when creating a completely new organization. A huge part of the Ashiga Clan's look seems to be steeped in Asian culture, particularly from Japan's Edo era.

So deg the Ashiga clan was super fun. It was very exciting, because they are based in Kijimi. So we had that, we had that base in Kijimi, which was featured in the Star Wars movies. So we know what it looks like, and of course, we expanded on it in Star Wars Outlaws. But we tried to create this, this syndicate that would feel like they have been there for a long time, and they've kind of assimilated with the culture of Kijimi. A lot of influences on Kijimi's architecture, for example, are very much Asian or Japanese-inspired, so this is also something that we pulled through into the design of the Ashiga Clan. So, for a lot of their clothing, we looked at kimonos, for example, and we looked at Ukiyo-era woodblock prints for the color palettes, just to really ground that idea that they have been there for a long time, they're part of this place now.

Ukiyo - which can be translated to “floating world” - was a genre of art intended to capture the flourishing pleasure-seeking culture in Edo Japan. The Edo era lasted between the early 1600s to 1868, when the Meiji Restoration and the Boshin War restored imperial rule to Japan.

The duo also discussed going back to George Lucas' original inspirations for the Star Wars movies when expanding its universe for Star Wars Outlaws, mentioning that the team looked at Western movies of the 60s and 70s when building out its version of Tatooine. Therefore, it also seems fitting that the Ashiga Clan is steeped in Japanese culture, as Lucas has openly cited the works of legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa as some of his inspiration for Star Wars, most notably the 1958 movie The Hidden Fortress, which took place in a war-torn feudal Japan and featured some story elements, such as a princess being hunted down by an evil empire that Star Wars fans should find very familiar.

George Lucas acted as an executive producer for the international release of Kurosawa’s 1980 movie Kagemusha.

One of the main takeaways from Screen Rant's time with Star Wars Outlaws' creators has been how Massive Entertainment wants to make the game feel extremely authentic to the Star Wars universe, particularly the original trilogy, even going as far as to digitally recreate the kind of camera lenses the earlier films were shot on to further create the same kind of visuals in the game's Snowdrop engine. Even though Kijimi as a planet was introduced to Star Wars canon long after Disney bought the rights to the series from Lucas, by revisiting Japanese history with its creation of the Ashiga Clan, Massive Entertainment has further built upon the notion of having George Lucas' inspirations at its core to establish this authenticity in its newer creations, rather than just copying what came before in past Star Wars media.