The ‘Star Wars: Outlaws’ soundtrack is not just another John Williams retread

Wilbert Roget II is no stranger to a galaxy far, far away. The composer behind thundering scores for Call Of Duty: WWII, Mortal Kombat 1, and Helldivers 2 was first employed by LucasArts back in 2008, working on Star Wars: The Old Republic before going freelance.

• READ MORE: ‘Star Wars Outlaws’ could be the dream ‘Star Wars’ game you’re looking for

Now, after a minor return to George Lucas’s universe for Vader Immortal, Roget’s back as the lead composer of Star Wars: Outlaws, a huge open-world game that follows Kay Vess, a Han Solo-type rogue in debt to a conglomerate of crime lords.

This is a new era of Star Wars score

Outlaws – set between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back – doesn’t focus on Skywalkers or Kenobis, instead telling the story of a scoundrel fighting for freedom. It marks a distinct take on Star Wars, which is exactly why Roget wanted to work on the project.

“After I finished Vader Immortal, I wanted my career to take a different path,” he tells NME. “I was satisfied and happy to move on from doing that John Williams sound. But when Outlaws showed up, the team said, ‘No, we don’t necessarily want that. There are no Jedi or Sith. It’s all about the scoundrel experience. This is something different from what we’ve had in Star Wars in the past, and we don’t want that same sound from the movies, we want something new.’ So I decided to test that…”

There’s Spanish guitars and trap beats

With only a minor amount of gameplay footage and the plot synopses to pull from, Roget set about scoring a demo version of the main character’s theme.

“I was like, ‘Okay, let’s not have any Star Wars sound at all for quite some time,’” he says. “It starts with a gun cocking, then I layered in the sound of coins hitting each other in midair, then it goes into trap beat – this aggressive, 808 distorted bass. And there’s some Spanish influence guitar because she’s an outlaw and I wanted that Western vibe, and the melody comes from an electric violin, not exactly the most Star Wars-sounding thing ever.

“Eventually, there’s an orchestra playing the heroic, space opera – sounding a little bit like John Williams, but the core of it is unique to the character and the game. Star Wars is just suggested by that orchestral connection. So the gambit really was. ‘Hey, if you hire me, I’m going to do something different.’ And the team were 1000 per cent on board. They encouraged me to take this extra step away from what you might expect, to make it our own, because ultimately, they wanted to put their own stamp on the universe.”

Fans will still love it though

Despite freeing himself from the expectations of what Star Wars should sound like, there was still a huge hurdle to jump – making sure Outlaws still sounded like Star Wars.

“I’ve noticed that listeners will accept something being Star Wars if you just have a little spice of Star Wars, maybe a certain orchestration style or something with harmony” he explains. “People don’t realise the film scores are so diverse. There’s almost nothing you can do with an orchestra that John Williams hasn’t already done over nine films, but he doesn’t restrict himself to just the orchestra. Even in the Original Trilogy, there’s some overt synthesiser.”

Outlaws called for finding a new sound for Kay, who Roget describes as a “street rat” who will grab anything she can and use it. “I played instruments intentionally the wrong way, like taking a guitar but playing it with a bow,” he says. “I have a ‘Wine-aphone’, where every time I have a wine bottle and it has a different pitch to the previous ones, I would save it. Now I have like an entire scale of wine bottles to play melodies.”

Like the Original Trilogy? You’ll love this

Outlaws also marks the beginning of Kay’s journey, which led to Roget looking back at how John Williams introduced other characters to the franchise. “She’s not on a religious journey, like Luke Skywalker and Anakin Skywalker, this is more personal, more real,” he says. “But the reason why I chose Episode IV as my guideline, rather than Empire and Jedi, which this takes place between on the timeline, was because that’s the start of Luke’s journey.

“That did something to the way that John Williams scored that particular movie. It has a more of a stripped-down quality. It’s very melodic. The orchestration isn’t quite as elaborate as later episodes. I think that separates Outlaws from other Star Wars games that usually, for whatever reason, go for a more Prequel-type sound. This one is so aggressively Original Trilogy and, going further than that, it’s the Episode IV sound.”

The music remixes itself based on your in-game actions

Outlaws features five distinct planets, each with its own soundscape and distinctive cantina music, Meanwhile, numerous criminal factions, including the Crimson Dawn, Hutt Cartel, and Pyke Syndicate, all previously seen in the Star Wars movies and shows, rule the cities. Just don’t expect any familiar themes: “I don’t think I used any of the themes from the film, the closest is that there’s a motif in Episode IV that’s used for the Stormtroopers,” Roget says.

The composer worked with co-composers Jon Everist (Overwatch 2) and Kazuma Jinnouchi (Metal Gear Solid 4) to create dozens of new pieces, which Roget calls his most challenging soundtrack yet. “We developed a dynamic combat music system, I believe this is the first time that we’ve ever done this with Star Wars,” he says. During combat or doing a stealth sequence, the score will adapt and remix itself depending on the level of combat and what the player is doing. “We wanted it to be seamless – so that it feels like a hidden orchestra’s somewhere custom scoring your experience.”

So, while Roget may be familiar with that galaxy far, far away, the Outlaws score is taking gamers to uncharted territory.

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