Star Wars: Tales From the Galaxy’s Edge – Last Call is released today for $9.99 on the Oculus Quest platform, and the folks at io9 got to check it out early and spoke with the creators at ILMxLAB. Beware of spoilers ahead!
Last Call—out today and which we played on an Oculus Quest 2 provided to us by Oculus—picks up where part one left off, continuing the story of a droid repair tech (you) on the fictional planet of Batuu. (You recently became a hero after rescuing some recognizable Resistance droids named C-3PO and R2-D2.) This time your adventures begin thanks to Dok-Ondar, the Ithorian collector who owns the Den of Antiquities shop in the physical theme park, and eventually, you find yourself in a showdown with the First Order.
The entire main story plus two additional side tales (“The Sacred Garden,” set during The High Republic, and “The Bounty of Boggs Triff,” starring bounty hunter IG-88) were always part of the creators’ plan for the game. “We started the story kind of weird,” Perez said. “Star Wars is always weird, but we start even a little weird for Star Wars … We knew that from the beginning we were going to start in the strange place and slowly bring it back into more of an authentic Star Wars [story], which we were really excited about.”
The two side quests are authentic Star Wars experiences on their own, but each in unique ways. “The Sacred Garden” picks up where the first part’s High Republic tale, “Temple of Darkness,” left off. Now, Jedi Ady’Sun Zee has become a Master and has her own Padawan, Nooa. But instead of fighting an ancient evil like in the first part, players will now have to exhibit patience and skill, like a true Padawan. “Trying to play with the character dynamic between Ady and Nooa, it didn’t really make sense to have a heavy combat type tale,” Raymond Chou, lead designer of “The Sacred Garden,” told io9. “So we were like, ‘What if we did more of an introspective piece [and] play with teaching the more meditative side of the Force?” The result is an often frustrating, but truly eye-opening, exercise as the user has to be deliberate and pensive to complete the tasks. It’s as if the game mechanics are the Master, and you’re the Padawan.
On the other side of the spectrum is “The Bounty of Boggs Triff,” where you’re Empire Strikes Back–era IG-88 and on a mission to blow away everyone in a building—it almost feels like a Star Wars version of The Raid. The gameplay mimics the wild, fluid movements of the similar deadly bounty hunter IG-11 on The Mandalorian as both Oculus remotes become guns that get swung around simultaneously, locking on and targeting multiple enemies on screen before firing at them all at once. The whole section is a complete blast. Just a non-stop raucous romp.
“We wanted to experiment with the idea of what it would be like to be a droid,” Ian Bowie, the game’s Lead Adventure Experience Designer, told io9. “And there’s a lot of unique challenges that come with it in VR because you’re so used to your hands being one to one. But if we did it that way, it would lose so much of that IG personality. But because we’re a droid, it opens up opportunities for us to be able to control his targeting modules with our hands and then let the arms do that kind of action we’ve come to love inside of The Mandalorian, but yet it’s emanating from you in this cool way.”
Again, all of that isn’t even the main story of the game. That story mode is very similar to the first part, where you, a droid repair tech, must traverse the wilds of Batuu, with lots of shooting, puzzle-solving, relic collecting, and more. Last Call ups that ante though with some very exciting new locations steeped in Jedi and Sith lore that give certain missions the feel of another Lucasfilm franchise: Indiana Jones. However, one big change to this mode came through player feedback. When you originally acquired the jetpack, you could only go up and down. Apparently, many players didn’t like that, and as you can probably imagine, they let Lucasfilm and ILMxLAB know. So in Last Call you now have increased mobility. “The way we like to say it is it’s [the game’s shop owner] Mubo’s mobility pack,” Perez jokes. “So he’s the one that really decided to do this based on a bunch of droid repair people kind of complaining about things. And really what it came down to is just giving a bit more freedom when you get up into the air and you can move around.”
Read more here — and look out for our review soon.
