Star Wars Outlaws Planets: 4-5 Minute Speeder Crossings, Ubisoft Says
Star Wars Outlaws' five planets prioritize quality over quantity: speeder traversal across Toshara, Akiva, and Tatooine takes just 4-5 minutes.
I’ll admit it: when I first heard that Star Wars Outlaws would span five planets, I pictured five sprawling open worlds, each one big enough to swallow a weekend. Then Ubisoft explained the scale, and my expectations shifted. According to the publisher, three of the game’s five planets can be crossed in just four or five minutes while riding a speeder. That’s not a typo, and it’s not a loading-screen estimate. It’s the actual traversal time from one end to the other.
Creative director Julian Gerighty told IGN that the planets — Tatooine, Toshara, Akiva, Kijimi, and Cantonica — are around the size of two or three zones in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. He also confirmed that "Toshara is very close in size to Akiva and Tatooine; I think Tatooine may be a little bit larger." When asked how long protagonist Kay Vess would need to ride from one end of Toshara to the other on her speeder, Gerighty gave the four-or-five-minute answer. Since Akiva and Tatooine are around the same size, that timeframe likely applies to them too.
That’s three planets: Toshara, Akiva, and Tatooine. The remaining two, Kijimi and Cantonica, haven’t had their sizes confirmed. Gerighty added: "Four or five minutes nonstop, which doesn't sound like a lot, but once you're committed it's a fairly large amount, and you are always going to be distracted." That line sticks with me. It reframes the number. Four minutes at full speed is a long time when every ridge, canyon, and outpost is pulling you off course. 🏜️
Ubisoft has said it is going for quality over quantity with Star Wars Outlaws. "When we started thinking about how big we should make them, it was less about how big, but more about how long, in terms of traversal with the speeder, it would be," Gerighty said. "So we don't want things to be just big for big sake. We need it to be contained, always fun, always proposing different activities. So the traversal of the whole thing had to feel like a journey, a commitment when you get on your speeder and you want it to go from one end to the next."
That philosophy makes sense to me. I’ve played open-world games where the map is enormous but the space between points of interest is empty. Outlaws seems to be aiming for the opposite: tighter planets where the speeder ride is part of the adventure, not a chore. 🛸
| Planet | Approx. speeder crossing time | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Toshara | 4–5 minutes | Close in size to Akiva and Tatooine |
| Akiva | 4–5 minutes (likely) | Similar size to Toshara |
| Tatooine | 4–5 minutes (likely) | May be slightly larger than Toshara |
| Kijimi | Unclear | Size not specified |
| Cantonica | Unclear | Size not specified |
For context, Star Wars Outlaws was revealed in 2023 as a scoundrel adventure set between Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi. It stars Kay Vess, her droid partner ND-5, and her beastie friend Nix as they try to carve out their own success during Star Wars’ golden era of criminal activity. The game launched on August 27, 2024, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC.
At launch, the Standard Edition cost $70. The $110 Gold Edition included three days of early access and the Season Pass. An even more expensive, digital-only Ultimate Edition bundled those perks with cosmetics — the Rogue Infiltrator Bundle and the Sebacc Shark bundle — plus a digital art book. Now, in 2026, the game has been out for a while, but the original design choice still defines the experience. If you pick it up today, those speeder rides are still measured in minutes, not hours.
I think that’s a smart approach. Not every Star Wars story needs to be a galaxy-sized sandbox. Sometimes a smaller, denser planet is more memorable. And if I’m going to spend four or five minutes crossing a desert, I want it to feel like a journey. 🚀
Recent analysis comes from Rock Paper Shotgun, and it helps frame why Star Wars Outlaws’ “four-to-five-minute” speeder crossings can be a feature rather than a flaw: tighter, more curated spaces tend to keep momentum high, reduce dead travel time, and make detours to side contracts, outposts, and environmental storytelling feel like intentional pacing instead of padding across empty terrain.