Star Wars Outlaws™ Composer On Creating a Grammy Nominated Soundtrack

Star Wars™ Outlaws™ is nominated for Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media at the 2025 Grammy Awards. The open world Star Wars™ game, available on Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC via Ubisoft Connect, Epic Games Store, and Steam, features a memorable score that honors Star Wars' rich musical history while incorporating new elements fitting for the story of an emerging scoundrel taking their first steps into the galactic underworld. The audio team not only created an immersive soundtrack, but also developed a dynamic music system that responds to the player's actions during gameplay. We spoke with composer Wilbert Roget II to learn more about how the music of Star Wars Outlaws was created.

What was it like creating music for a Star Wars open world game?

Wilbert Roget II: It was an incredible experience! I had worked on Star Wars games previously, such as Star Wars: The Old Republic and Vader Immortal: A Star Wars VR Series on Oculus Quest, but I never had the chance to create a fully dynamic music system for a Star Wars game.

Outlaws was a great opportunity not only to create a dynamic music system for the open world gameplay, but also to use instrumentation that I'd learned while working on previous scores like Mortal Kombat 11 and Helldivers 2. In other words, using sounds like synthesizers, world instruments and designed sounds that are outside of the typical Star Wars universe, but still work for the setting and gameplay.

How do you balance staying true to Star Wars with the score while creating something that feels new?

WR: It all started with score study, particularly studying Star Wars Episode IV - A New Hope. I read through the scores and did a few transcriptions so that I could get that sound into my subconscious brain. The goal was for the orchestral Star Wars element to be effortless, so that I could focus my attention on the player's experience, which of course was the open world and stealth gameplay.

And I wanted to make sure that every single piece existed on this kind of continuum between the classic Star Wars sound and the Outlaws sound. Synthesis, world instruments and designed elements made up the Outlaws sound, and orchestral instruments grounded us in the classic Star Wars sound.

And as I'm writing each piece, I regularly take note of where the piece is on this continuum, "Where is the current balance between modern and classic sound? Where should it be?" It's always a very conscious effort to balance the old and the new.

You mentioned that you did a lot of score study of Star Wars Episode IV - A New Hope. What inspirations did you take from that score in particular?

WR: This game takes place during the original trilogy, which was very refreshing to get back to. Outlaws specifically takes place between Episode V and Episode VI, but I chose Episode IV - A New Hope as an inspiration because that's the beginning of Luke Skywalker's journey, and this is the beginning of Kay's journey.

There's just an element of fun action adventure to it. And when you go back and study it, you realize they just wanted to make a fun action movie. Everything about space is exciting. Every time a spaceship takes off, an awe-inspiring fanfare plays. I wanted that kind of innocence and excitement to find its way into the score.

"Kay Vess, The Outlaw," which plays over the title screen, is a fan favorite. Tell us about creating Kay's theme - what was the process?

WR: Actually, that was my demo for getting onto this project.The Ubisoft team wanted to establish a vibe and a sound that's unique to Star Wars Outlaws. If you listen to the piece, you don't hear any traditional orchestra for quite some time for almost a minute into the piece.

First off, I asked, "Who is Kay Vess?" She is a gunslinger. She's motivated by freedom, and in the underworld that means credits, so the first sound that you hear is a sound effect; it's the sound of a gun cocking, but the second half of it is replaced with the sound of two large coins colliding. For the next element, the beat, I wanted to bring up my own musical experiences outside of Star Wars with the use of synthesis, designed instruments, drums and basses and whatnot. And then, of course, it also introduces some of the world instruments that I wanted to play with, because I knew that this was going to be an open world game with multiple planets, so I wanted that kind of globetrotting sound.

Finally, it goes into an electric violin solo, where now we're starting to look at the real Kay Vess. The reality of Kay's character. She has her companion, Nix, who she would die for. She's a very empathetic character. And I wanted this melody to express that, as well as her sense of adventure and desire for freedom. So finally, once the melody is gone, the orchestra gradually ramps in as the piece becomes a more clearly John Williams-inspired Star Wars action-adventure romp for a little while. And then, of course, the piece ends with a return to those modern elements.

It was intentionally a firm statement of what I would bring to the project; if they like it, then great! And if not, there's plenty of other composers who could do a fantastic, more traditional Star Wars soundtrack, but I was only interested in writing a new, more diverse and challenging score.

 

Each location in the game has its own theme as well - How did the team use different instruments to make each location's music unique?

WR: I hired Kazuma Jinnouchi and Jon Everist as my additional composers for the planets Kijimi and Akiva respectively. Kazuma also composed the music for the Ashiga Clan syndicate, which takes place mostly on Kijimi, and Jon did the Crimson Dawn syndicate. I brought them onto the project because I wanted players to feel a sense of adventure, travelling to new planets and encountering different crime factions, all with different sonic signatures.

In terms of instrumentation, Kazuma used a lot of Japanese instruments to describe Kijimi. It's an ice planet, but their dominant faction, the Ashiga clan, is inspired by Japanese culture. So he used shakuhachi, shinobue and other traditionally Japanese sounds and instruments. And then for the planet Akiva, Jon used the bass recorder and several other tropical and South American-inspired sounds. 

One of my own favorite compositions was the Mos Eisley city theme. I used an electric bass guitar, but instead of playing it normally with fingers or a pick, I used a double bass bow, which gave a very gnarly and aggressive sound. This helped to convey the sense of a dangerous alien city that's bustling with criminal activity. There's lots of North African and Greek percussion as well, giving the piece a very cosmopolitan sound as well.

You scored a lot of cinematics in the game - how was that process different? How do you make the cinematic music stand out from the regular gameplay?

WR: I try not to write too differently from the in-game music because I wanted cinematics and gameplay to flow together seamlessly. Usually, we'll get cinematics that are timing locked. I'll review them, and putting in markers where I want certain beats to hit. So maybe if in the middle of a conversation something significant happens, or maybe if there's a moment where I've detected the character has changed their emotion, I'll put markers down. That way once I import everything into my music program, I can easily see these moments, and  write music that eventually makes its way from marker to marker.

Of course, there's always an internal composer debate when scoring dramatic scenes: should I preview major events, or should I have them be a surprise? And of course, prioritization of events: What are the more important moments for music to hit, versus what can music cover with its existing momentum? But that's really the only difference between gameplay and cinematic scoring, everything else is fairly similar to how we write gameplay music, just without the implementation considerations that we need for interactivity. It's still the same compositional style.

What role do you think music has in building a scene, showing character, and building immersion?

WR: I think of myself almost like a second director when I'm working on these cutscenes. I'm looking at the characters and I'm asking, what's their motivation and what are they thinking?What are their emotions, and how do I decide whose emotions to follow during the course of this scene?

When you first boot up Outlaws, we have a cold open that introduces Sliro's character, as well as most of the criminal syndicates in the game. And for me it was such a joy to score this cutscene because by the time that it came to my desk, I had already written so much other music, and both Kazuma and Jon had already written their syndicate themes. So as the camera is panning and we see representatives for the Crimson Dawn, the Pykes and the Hutt Cartel, I could reference each of their themes to give a nice little preview of what players would hear later in the game. It was a great opportunity to use this cutscene as a blueprint for the rest of the game.

Can you tell us more about how you and the team developed a music system that supported player action?

WR: Essentially, we have three levels of combat intensity. And then we have a hiding layer, and lastly we have the stealth layer (which we call "Combat-Ready"). When you're in combat, the game looks at all of the active enemies and their power levels, adding them up to calculate the intensity of the combat. This is how the game decides which of the combat layers to play.

Each combat layer is a full composition, written modularly such that, for example, the brass and woodwinds might be shared between the medium intensity and high intensity, but the strings and the percussion are different. This way, we can dynamically crossfade up and down when a new enemy joins the fray, or when enough enemies are defeated that the combat intensity decreases.

We also have the Hiding layer underneath the combat, triggering when enemies have previously engaged Kay in combat, but have lost track of her. This layer doesn't have any orchestral elements; it exclusively uses percussion and synthesis, with influences from Splinter Cell to convey the enemies hunting down the player. And finally beneath that, we have what we call the "Combat-Ready" layers: three different intensities with sub-layers for alerts and takedowns, for when  enemies are nearby but unaware of Kay's presence.

We had so much fun building this interactive music system, which ultimately helped the score sound like it's being custom-performed in real time to each player's experience.

Tell us more about the orchestral recording sessions - how many teams or people were involved? Where did you record?

WR: We recorded in Glasgow with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and in Nashville with the Nashville Scoring Orchestra at Ocean Way Studios. At the Nashville sessions, we tracked all the city themes, most of the character themes, and basically all of the interactive music. It's a smaller stage, and we recorded in sections so that we could mix the strings separately from the brass and woodwinds; this helped us to implement all of the aforementioned music interactivity.

The Glasgow stage was much larger and more traditional. We tracked all of the Imperial music there, as well as the space combat, some of the high-priority cinematics, and the open world music. I wanted the score to sound panoramic when you're out in the open world, but then have a more claustrophobic urban sound when you're walking through the cities.

Star Wars Outlaws is nominated for Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media at the 2025 Grammy Awards. How does that feel, and what does that mean to you and the team?

WR: First off, I'm so grateful to the Grammys for recognizing video games and interactive scoring now and giving our field this level of attention. I know it wasn't easy to add this new category, and many different parties were involved in making this possible, so I'm very grateful to the Academy for that.

Looking at the other nominees, it's clear that there were such brilliant scores this year, and it's an incredible honor to be counted among them. Again, I'm very grateful to everyone on our team, from our co-composers to our additional composers and all of the musicians. And of course, the team at Massive Entertainment for doing such an incredible job on the mixing, the interactivity, the sound design and voice over. All the audio came together in such a beautiful way. It was such a privilege to work on this project. And to be recognized with a Grammy nomination, which wasn't even possible when I started in this industry, is such a great honor.

Star Wars Outlaws is available now on Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC via Ubisoft Connect, Epic Games Store, and Steam. You can also access the Ultimate Edition with a Ubisoft+ Premium subscription. For more on Star Wars Outlaws, check out thepost-launch roadmap, our accessibility spotlight, and visit starwarsoutlaws.com.