We’ve got a packed year ahead of us, but few games have me quite as excited as Star Wars: Galactic Racer. Former Burnout developers – including many names behind my favorite racing games of all time – making a spiritual successor to the best Star Wars game, Episode I: Racer. It’s so far up my alley that I have to pinch myself every time I see it to make sure I’m not dreaming. At Summer Game Fest, we sat down with Kieran Crimmins, Creative Director at Fuse Games, to discuss why Galactic Racer is such a perfect fit for the studio, and how important it was to get the feel of podracing right.
Star Wars: Galactic Racer spreads its action across four different styles of vehicle. To start with, you’ve got landspeeders, skim speeders, and speeder bikes, each bringing a different speciality to the table. Landspeeders are more sturdy and excel at drifting, speeder bikes can employ a ‘kinetic burst’ to overcome awkward terrain, and skim speeders give you the most maneuverability. Crimmins admits it was tough balancing these against one another, but was eager to represent the way you see them flying around one another in the movies.
“We wanted to balance them all together – so being in a tiny little speeder bike and going for a shortcut, but then having a skim speeder fly around you.” Then, there are the podracers. “Balancing pods against the skimmers is so hard,” Crimmins laughs, “so the pods are kind of in a slightly different league of their own.” That’s to be expected: they might as well be the Star Wars equivalent of F1 cars, after all. Despite this, there was never any question whether they would be anything other than an integral part of the Galactic Racer experience.
“You cannot have a Star Wars racing game without podracing in it,” Crimmins emphasizes. “Podracing has got to embody the fantasy that is displayed in the movies: it’s the pinnacle of racing in Star Wars.” He says the team at Fuse loves the old Episode I: Racer and Racer Revenge games; “We play them all the time. Not only the games, but also the movie sequences – I just can’t imagine a game where we didn’t get the podracing in.”
Fuse Games certainly has the chops to deliver – it’s a big part of why I’m so excited to get my own hands on Galactic Racer. A studio built from former Criterion devs, it boasts arguably the most impressive history in the genre (at least for my money), from the still-unmatched Burnout series through to its work on peak Need For Speed entries such as Hot Pursuit and Most Wanted. You can see that heritage shining through in everything here, from the sheer pace to the glorious racer-on-racer impacts and the tumbling crashes.
“Yeah, I mean, we made all of those [games],” Crimmins responds with a chuckle. “It’s kind of part of the DNA of the studio – we love arcade racers, we live and breathe them. That kind of ‘elbows-out, smash people into the wall, have these kinds of amazing cinematic moments,’ it’s something that’s baked into our DNA.”
He points to the original, defining podracing scene in Episode I and how much aggression is shown between the racers, implying that it was likely an important influence back when the team was first building Burnout. “If anything, it’s a marriage made in heaven, where this is what Star Wars are doing, and it’s right up our street – and also we’ve got this DNA in this style of racing, so we know the intricacies of those mechanics.”
Another very important thing to capture, Crimmins adds, is the value of building rivalries. “I think when you race in any racing game, and particularly this one, you want to know who you’re racing against. You want that wonderful satisfaction of beating someone – and if those people don’t have personalities and you don’t know who they are, I think the satisfaction of beating them is lost.”
You can certainly expect some familiar fan favorites – we couldn’t have a podracing tale without Sebulba showing his ugly mug, of course – but Crimmins promises a “rich cast of new characters” as well. You can expect both the fresh and returning faces to display both their personalities and unique racing styles as you encounter them through the campaign, but then in multiplayer, you’ll have the ability to step into their shoes for yourself.
To close, we ask Crimmins what Fuse Games plans for Galactic Racer after launch. “I wish I had a good answer,” he says. “We’ve thought of many places we can be, but we’re focused on making the game.” He stresses the importance of ensuring the launch game feels complete and satisfying first. Beyond that, “watch this space – we’ll definitely do something, but I honestly don’t know what it’s going to be, and I think some of it will be reactive to how fans react.”
Star Wars: Galactic Racer is set to be released on Tuesday October 6. You can wishlist it now to be kept up to date. I’m already checking my oil and polishing my goggles so I can secure my spot on the starting grid.
Additional Reporting by Tom Hopkins for PCGamesN at Summer Game Fest.
