It’s a recipe for tears when Han Solo and Chewie are torn apart. C-3PO is lost without R2-D2 beeping and booping close behind him. And The Mandalorian is half the man he can be without Grogu floating by his side. Star Wars has a long lineage of companions, and in Outlaws it’s no different. Say hello to Nix, the centre of Kay’s world, and her partner in crime (literally).
“He’s Kay's family,” states game director Mathias Karlson. “He's not a person, but the only creature, the only thing in the galaxy that she truly trusts and cares for.”
Nix grew up with Kay on the streets of Canto Bight from a very young age. Little is known about how they met just yet, but ever since their younger years, they’ve been a dynamic duo willing to make their way in the world through whatever legal or illegal means present themselves. Belonging to a brand-new Star Wars species, Massive Entertainment knew that Nix would be a crucial ingredient to telling Outlaws’ story. Not only that, he would be a key cog in its stealth-action gameplay systems.
“I think the opportunity to create a new creature and add them to the Star Wars galaxy, and also have them be a companion to Kay, it came really from both a narrative and a gameplay lens,” says narrative director Navid Khavari. “We never really talked about Kay without talking about Nix. They're sort of one unit. And in the gameplay sense, Nix was almost like an extension of Kay.”
“We want him to be your long finger,” adds Karlson. “If your right hand is your blaster, Nix is almost like your long rubbery left hand that can fetch things, distract, attack, disable alarms, et cetera.”
While you don’t directly control Nix, he is a key tool in your arsenal. Think of him as Outlaws’s alternative to Watch Dogs’ suite of hacking tools and you won’t be far off the mark. With a quick tap of a button you can send him down a corridor to distract a guard, who you can then sneak up on to perform a melee takedown. Prefer a more explosive style? Have Nix quietly activate an enemy’s grenade in their pocket and watch it detonate from a safe distance.
From the limited amount I’ve played and seen, Nix has a fun and useful variety of actions available up his furry sleeves, and that range will only grow as you uncover more abilities. Crucially, they all feel appropriate for an ‘innocent’ small creature to carry out – you won’t see Nix manning a heavy laser turret, but you can ask him to surreptitiously sneak a look at an opponent’s card hand in sabacc (just don’t get caught cheating).
“Tying [Nix] in with gameplay was extremely important. It had to feel right,” says animation director Matt Karpinski. “We treated Nix very similar to the player because we feel they're part of the same thing.”
“But then on the narrative side, it was also an opportunity to have this creature that was a crack in Kay's armor, that was fiercely loyal to her and will do anything for Kay,” Khavari explains. “And so in a lot of ways they were always this complete package, and seeing what the team was able to come up with, seeing the sort of iterations of Nix was amazing.”
Those iterations were many. At one point during development he resembled a monkey, with Abu from Aladdin being a particular touchstone. Later he transformed into something more akin to a lizard as the team sought to find a balance between a creature that was very physically capable, but one you could also see as a friendly companion. How, exactly, do you find such a look? Luckily for Massive, the team had the help of Lucasfilm and its wealth of Star Wars knowledge to help crack the code.
“It really started from a story necessity perspective,” explains Steve Blank, director of franchise content and strategy at Lucasfilm. “As we were defining Kay and who she was, we knew she was growing up as a bit of a loner, a bit of an outcast and a burgeoning thief on her own. And we started thinking through, okay, in the Star Wars vernacular, what types of companions have we seen before? We've seen Wookies, we've seen droids, we've seen a mix of eclectic other types of characters and species. And we really then were like, okay, what's a real world parallel for that? And the pet came up.”
The pet-and-owner dynamic was just the start, though. The door was still open for a variety of different looks. And while Star Wars certainly has a selection of established dog-like species that Massive could have chosen from, the team decided to try for something original.
“Nix is a Merqaal, a new species that we created here at Massive,” explains Marthe Jonkers, Outlaws’ associate art director. “So he needed to have a very soft side that you could really think like, ‘okay, this is her buddy.’ And for that, we looked at a lot of more softer creatures, but also our pets for sure. But on the other hand, he's from a jungle planet. He needs to survive. He's still a wild animal in a sense. And so he has very sharp teeth, for example. He has the scales, [which for inspiration] we looked at a pangolin.”
The team took many different animals from our natural world and borrowed bits and pieces to Frankenstein together for their new species. This ranged from the very basics, such as the body shape and cheeky characteristics of racoons, to the more exotic, tentacle-like ear shape of an axolotl. These body parts were combined to form a recognisable silhouette for Nix. But just as important as his practicality was his ability to convey emotion and communicate with Kay without the power of speech.
“When you look at some reference from dogs, let's say, or even cats, you can tell when they're sad. [You] can tell when they're happy,” says Karpinski. “There's a lot in their ears, in their eyes and expressions in their movement where you just know they can't talk, but they're happy. So we really leaned into that kind of body language and expression to really highlight what Nix was feeling and what kind of mode he was in.
“So posture-wise, his silhouette goes smaller as he's sneaking slowly towards an NPC to take them down. And happy, he's a lot more animated. He's running around, you can hear him chirping. So I think people are really going to recognize and feel what Nix is feeling in the moment.”
“We also wanted Nix to be able to show his emotions in a way that's easy to understand, but you really believe that this is a creature and he would do it this way,” adds Jonkers. “So when he's very scared, he will put his tentacles all down, or when he's scanning the environment, he will put them up.”
Nix was ultimately brought to life through a mixture of cutting-edge animation and motion capture technology, but also blended with classic creature creation techniques such as hand puppetry. And then there’s the sounds he makes, provided by the unique vocal talents of the legendary Dee Bradley Baker, who’s appeared as everything from Daffy Duck in Space Jam to Appa in Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Creating a brand new Star Wars species is no small task. But for Jonkers and the team, it already feels worth it thanks to having seen just how much fans are already connecting with Nix.
“People are actually drawing the character we created and he resonates with people,” says Jonkers, talking about fan art that has already been posted before Outlaws has even released. “I mean, so much love went into this character, and I think people feel that.”
One question remains, then. Being a stealthy outlaw companion willing to get into a scrap, that territory naturally comes with danger attached. So, can Nix get hurt? Or worse, even…
“No,” Jonkers assures us. “But he's very capable. He gets out of the way. He knows how to sneak away when there's danger, so he can definitely take care of himself.”
Good. We just can’t be having that kind of emotional turmoil between our smuggling escapades, can we?
Simon Cardy once got kicked out of a school assembly for calling somebody Salacious Crumb. Follow him on Twitter at @CardySimon.
