Ubisoft recently revealed Star Wars Outlaws, featuring its new protagonist Kay Vess who could just solve a problem that has been plaguing Star Wars games for some time. While Star Wars has long been a franchise with compelling female characters at its core, that has not been the case for its games. While there have been games that allowed players to customize their character’s gender, almost all the Star Wars games with a fixed protagonist have featured men.
Taking place between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Star Wars Outlaws will follow cunning young scoundrel Kay Vess as she seeks to pull off jobs within the criminal underworld. Aiming for a 2024 release date, Star Wars Outlaws will see Kay joined by a cute Merqaal companion called Nix and a former Separatist commando droid ND-5. Steering the action away from Jedi and the Force feels like a breath of fresh air for a Star Wars game, and with a female protagonist, something truly new for many fans.
Kay Vess is set to become the first female to lead a full Star Wars game, which is long overdue for a franchise almost 50 years old. Previous women in Star Wars games have been companions and the few that have been player characters have been in diminished roles or part of a larger roster of characters. Throughout other areas of Star Wars, there is no shortage of female leads, with Ahsoka Tano, Hera Syndulla, and Jyn Erso all helming their own shows and movies, so it’s odd that Star Wars games are so far behind the rest of the franchise.
While there have been over 100 Star Wars games made since 1979, only three have featured women as their fixed protagonists. To clarify, a fixed protagonist is the player character whose characteristics cannot be changed, such as with RPGs like Knights of the Old Republic or chosen from multiple characters. Most Star Wars games with these types of protagonists have the player take on the role of a male character.
Kyle Katarn, Starkiller, and more recently, Cal Kestis are just the more well-known male protagonists that fill the Star Wars gaming roster. But they aren’t alone, joined by original and classic characters as Star Wars game after Star Wars game reverts to the “norm” of having a male lead. Even Revan, who players could choose to be male or female, is now canonically a man thanks to Star Wars: The Old Republic using a male version of the character in its storylines and Drew Karpyshyn’s Revan novel.
2023-06-17 18:30:04
Post from screenrant.com
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