According to Star Wars Outlaws lead actress Humberly González, Ubisoft’s decision to center the game exclusively on a female protagonist proves a stark contrast to the “limitations and misogyny” regularly seen throughout the video game industry.
González, who appears in the recently released title as protagonist Kay Vess, offered her take on this subject during a recent post-launch interview given to Comics Gaming Magazine’s (CGM) Dayna Eileen.
Amidst a general discussion of her time working on the game, the actress was eventually pressed by her host as to how she felt not only serving as “the voice and the body of Star Wars Outlaws”, but also “lead[ing] this male-dominated universe and hav[ing] it be women-first right now.”
In turn, González asserted, “Yes, to be a leading woman not just in a Star Wars story but in the video game industry, which also tends to have a lot of limitations and misogyny and kind of in-and-out politics of who can be a part of it and who you want to play as.”
“I am incredibly proud of the team having chosen someone like me, but also only me, that there isn’t a male counterpart to the story of Star Wars Outlaws that we are focusing on a female point of view of a scoundrel story because we’ve only really ever seen males in a scoundrel position,” she continued. “So the representation is incredible for me as an immigrant Latina in Canada to bring, to even get to speak about my country, about Venezuela, about what it means to me as an artist that I followed this dream not having any of my family here, not having a lot of mentors in my family or anyone to look up to or content to look up to.”
“Even in Star Wars, you know, there aren’t a lot of Latinas in this space,” the actress added. “And so, for me, I knew that this was going to mean a lot, not just to me and my community and my family, but to everybody else who’s watching it too and playing it.”
Further elaborating on her thoughts, González then explained, ‘When they go, “Oh, this is a cool character, I wonder where they’re from?’ and then they do the research, I just want people to feel seen and if I can be in any of those categories as a woman, a woman of colour, as an immigrant, as a Latina, any of those are so meaningful for someone who enters a franchise as big as Star Wars.”
“So for the next generation, for those little girls in Galaxy’s Edge, for the little girls watching, for anyone back home, for me, if they just simply get to see someone like them on screen, it means something to them,” she concluded. “Feel inspired, feel strong, feel seen, feel represented. That, to me, is the goal. It’s incredible because it really is beyond just me.”
For those willing to endure bug after messy, messy bug, Star Wars Outlaws is now available for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC platforms.
