We got to go hands-on with the game during the Star Wars: Outlaws media preview. We traveled across multiple planets, immersed ourselves in the wide world of Star Wars, and began exploring the galaxy far, far away, and we did it all through Kay Vess. During the preview, we saw a glimpse of the story, had the chance to see how much Nix means to Kay, and explored the game’s Expert system, which allows Kay to learn new skills after meeting new icons in the galaxy. But that’s just the beginning of the character.
Beyond the combat mechanics and exploration, Kay Vess is on a journey to discover herself as she explores the underworld and its syndicates. We spoke with Humberly González, the voice actress behind this new Star Wars protagonist—who also provided motion capture.
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González spoke about the importance that Kay Vess brings to the Star Wars universe through her resiliency, and how players can find themselves in this new scoundrel. González was joined by Star Wars Outlaws Narrative Director Navid Khavari, who added context to writing Star Wars Outlaws, expanding Star Wars, and highlighting what makes the franchise stand out decades after it began.
To start, we asked González about the legacy of Latinos in Space that she joins through Kay Vess. From Bail Organa to the most recent Cassian Andor and Poe Dameron, Latinos are centerstage in the Star Wars universe. That said, Latinas at the front haven’t shared the spotlight outside of Rosario Dawson’s portrayal of Ahsoka. Now, we have Kay Vess, and she’s representing a different side of the galaxy as well. We asked González what it meant to her to be representing Latinos in Star Wars, this time in a video game—but more importantly, telling a universal story through her character.
“It’s huge,” Humerly González began, “It’s something that I would have loved to experience if I was my young self playing a video game. I love that young people will get to see this, especially females in the video game industry and players themselves. There’s a lot of relatability there [between] me and Kay [Vess]. Kay had a limited worldview, and she felt like the world was rigged against her. She [doesn’t] come from much, and she has this dream where she wants more out of life. I can definitely relate to that growing up in Venezuela.”
González continued as she leaned forward in her seat, “I always felt like I did have a dream, but I either was not allowed to dream, or there just weren’t a lot of opportunities to reach it. I knew that it was somewhere out there. [Then, in Canada], living so far away from my family, I often felt the solitude of what that means. I don’t have any of my family in Canada. But I truly pursued this career out of pure passion and belief in myself. That resilience, that belief, that’s what Kay has in herself. I definitely relate to and brought that to the character in an organic way. I understood her.”
As we talked, I could see myself in González. As she continued to speak about Kay Vess and her temperament, I found myself reflected in her, too. While Kay Vess has Nix, she doesn’t have anyone else, and she doesn’t really want anyone else. She wants to fend for herself and take care of herself. But as González explains, she begins to open up. That’s her journey.
González added, “I understood why Kay had her armor up. I know why it’s so difficult to trust people. I also think a lot of immigrants can relate to a lot of those themes. That’s something a lot of people of color and women in the industry—women in general, in society—can identify with. I feel like we very seldom see female protagonists be so strong, but also show their heart and show their vulnerability. You know, the kinks in the armor? For me, it’s definitely a full circle moment where I get to represent not just myself and my roots for Latinos, but Kay is universal.”
She pauses for a second, and then she adds, emotion coming through her voice, “I’m so grateful that this production was so open to having me lead this project because I always saw myself as a leading woman. I didn’t often hear it that I would be. It’s an honor.”
The archetype of strong female characters may have been a starting point for showcasing women in video game stories, but it’s hardly the only way for women to be shown. Women can be vulnerable and they can be messy. They don’t have to constantly move forward or have it all together. Strength, sometimes, can mean understanding when you cry and open yourself to more. Kay, as González describes her, is just that. She’s a strong female character with depth.
To expand on Kay Vess, we asked Navid Khavari to share his perspective on crafting Kay’s journey and understanding that vulnerability is just as important for characters as strength. Khavari explained, “Early on, we knew that we wanted this to be Kay’s journey—Kay’s story. But we also wanted Kay to have Nix. When you look at the [spectrum] of scoundrels and Star Wars, they’re often confident. They have the charm and it feels like they’ve sort of figured the underworld out. And regardless of that, they’re very sure of themselves. One thing that was really important to me and important to the team was that we wanted folks to relate to this character. [Kay] is a character that needs to feel a bit of vulnerability, and you need to be able to notice that. So with Kay, Nix represents that crack in her armor a little bit.”
That said, early on doesn’t mean right from the beginning. Khavari begins to explain the first time he and the team saw González perform as Kay. “When we started working on the character, very early on, there was a harder edge. There was a little bit of, maybe we had [Kay] being quippy and, you know, you’re finding, you’re finding the character. But it was not really until the actors say the words, that it comes together. Immediately, what we saw with Humberly as Kay, was her heart. The heart is there, and yes, there’s some determination, there’s grit, there’s all that, but there’s the heart that we need to layer into, into Kay.”
By letting González’s performance inform Kay’s trajectory, Khavari explains what that meant in the narrative development process. “[This] meant us going back into the character, back into the scripts, and making sure that Humberly felt represented; we wanted the full spectrum of Kay and also Nix.”
Crafting the heart of Star Wars Outlaws through Kay and Nix’s connection was central to the game development process, and that involved González’s real reactions to a puppet of Nix. Khavari explained, “There was an amazing puppeteer, and [Humberly] and Nix were a unit. [Humberly] latched on immediately to the point where we wouldn’t even be shooting, and [they] are still playing off each other. It was amazing. I think that heart and vulnerability come through them. I’m hoping for players to feel that the choices that they make feel organic and natural because they’re the choices that Kay would make.”
Kay Vess is the heart of Star Wars Outlaws, but as the character grows throughout the story, both emotionally and mechanically, it’s all because of other people. Instead of having a traditional skill tree of slots you can pick as you accumulate points, the skill system in Star Wars Outlaws grounds itself in Kay’s connections to new people she meets on her journey. Called the Expert System, Kay learns new things by meeting new Experts and learning from them, allowing you to grow your scoundrel tricks and savvy.
Learning from others is key to Star Wars. Whether it Jedi and Padawan, Sith and Apprentice, pupil or acolyte, or even the number of connections you make across the galaxy on bounty hunts or smuggling runs, you don’t do it alone. That core piece of the Star Wars franchise is alive and well in Star Wars Outlaws. We asked Khavari about the system and what it means to the world of the game.
“[Learning from others] is why it was very organic to create an open-world Star Wars game. [Building the Expert System] was probably the most organic relationship I’ve experienced working on a game, and it’s because [learning from others] is ingrained in Star Wars itself. There is that higher-level goal. There is this heist journey that Kay Vess is on, that she’s pursuing, and that’s going to set her up for life. But it’s the people she meets along the way that matter, and the fact that they’re not just NPCs in the world that will say a few lines and leave. The fact that you learn skills from them and that you meet someone like Selo Rovak who says, ‘Hey, you want to juice the speeder up a little bit? I’m going to show you how to do that’ and then for Kay to react naturally to that. I think it’s been a joy to create this world.”
González jumps in without missing a beat, a smile on her face, “And you do get to see Kay change right in front of your eyes! Depending on the choices that you make, she’s truly learning the hard way. She’s learning to trust and what that means for her. Ultimately, she may want freedom and to be alone through this journey—it’s just for her, and Nix, like her mission is truly so personal and almost selfish. Kay realizes that maybe it doesn’t have to be that way.”
What’s recognizable, as González explains, is Kay Vess’s story is one about growing as a person by leaning on others. And that’s what we follow. González continues, “What does that look like for someone who’s never had the ability to trust and to achieve those dreams, to allow other people in, and you do get to see a lot of those connections and relationships form. It’s just like the spaces she finds herself in that tests her and her knowledge of herself. It also allows her to consider other options, and you see it in the dialogue choices. You see it in the way that she responds and how it affects her moving forward.”
González continued, “I love that she isn’t just set in her ways. She may have little snarky comments and she might be sassy about her. I mean, Kay may want to know everything and want to be right, but you do see her have this softness where it’s like, ‘Okay, I don’t know everything’ and ‘Maybe I should try it their way.’ It’s kind of fun that you get to see this young girl with a dream find a different way of achieving that than what she thought initially.”
Kay Vess’s story is grounded in two of the core tenets of Star Wars: hope and resiliency. However, those values look different across each of the protagonists we have encountered throughout this decades-spanning mythology. But no matter how long Star Wars has been going on, every fan has a moment to hold close. They have a Star Wars memory or a time when the franchise became more than just a movie, TV series, comic, or book. I asked Khavari and González if they had ever thought about the possibility that Kay and Star Wars Outlaws, more generally, may become that moment of falling in love with Star Wars for someone new.
While both Khavari and González shared that they hadn’t thought about being a part of someone’s Star Wars memory, working on Star Wars Outlaws did make them think about their own. For Khavari, Star Wars was a way to communicate with his father.
“Early on, as an immigrant, growing up, Star Wars was, in a lot of ways, the way my family could talk to each other. My father loved Western films. He loved those stories, and it was a way to connect to him. The movies were a way for us to talk to each other and speak the same language. As a six-year-old playing with the toys while watching The Empire Strikes Back and crafting my own little stories.” Khavari paused, clearly emotional, “To think that fast forward all these years later, you’re actually crafting stories with a beautiful team that is contributing to the fabric of Star Wars… It’s a beautiful thing, and I don’t take that lightly.”
He continued, “I remember sitting there finding out I was going to work on [Star Wars Outlaws] and just blasting the soundtrack as loud as I could. I didn’t even know what to do with my body. I wasn’t even hungry, so I went and got shawarma because I needed a goal at that moment. I gave myself a week to freak out, and then when I sat back down, I think what was super important to me was how we bring something that’s new.”
And that newness is important to what players can expect to experience, despite the game’s time period spot in the Original Trilogy. Khavari continued, “As a kid going into Star Wars, having maybe seen all the films or seen all the shows, I’d be hungry for something brand new. And so what that was, what that ended up being the goal. We are going to create characters that don’t exist in that higher galactic battle. Especially in the day and age that we live in, a character like Kay Vess sees syndicates, rebels, and the Empire; these people are pulling strings that she has to deal with to survive. I love Kay’s softness and her relationship with Nix because I think so many people relate to that with their pets and their own families. Thinking, okay, with Nix, I can let my guard down, and you don’t really see that with other Star Wars arcs in the same way. I think for me, it’s a full circle moment to to be able to provide that to others.”
For Humberly González, being a part of Star Wars, becoming Kay Vess, “Once we revealed that we were doing this, which was about a year ago, it was revealed that it’s just one storyline that follows this one female protagonist—and there’s no option for it to be a male or female [character],” she pauses, “It’s like they’re really going full-on on this story. [Audiences] learned that she is played by someone who’s a person of color, who’s Latina, who is an immigrant who had to learn English, and had her own set of struggles to get to this leading role. Then you see Kay Vess in these moments, and we get to show gameplay, her dialogue, and who she’s going to be interacting with. You get to see her interact with the Trilogy that we all started to fall in love with in Star Wars.”
At this point in the interview, González has tears starting to brim in her eyes, and I do, too. She continues her voice slightly beginning to crack as her answer continues, “I get emotional thinking about it because I’ve interacted with so many fans who already think ‘This is what I need’ and ‘I see myself represented.’ I met someone yesterday who cosplayed as Kay Vess. We had a little cry together because she said, ‘You have no idea what this means to me. What it means to be a female in a male-led industry—in a place where there can be a lot of negativity and bullying, to not paying attention to that, and still play this character that despite it all, she still goes for it.’ Kay is so resilient, and I’ve learned a lot from her. So the fact that it affects me this much, absolutely, it’s going to change people’s lives. This could be my Star Wars story.”
We took a moment to regroup, and González ended the interview with this, “Thank you for that question. I think it was a moment in which I had not thought about it, not fully. But it’s so impactful. It’s really beautiful.”
There is a lot to say about Star Wars Outlaws and Kay Vess. But what I walked away from as a Latina critic getting to talk to Humberly González will stick with me. In fact, the absolutely clear thing from this interview that I hope you, readers, take away is how deeply Navid Kavari and Humberly González love Star Wars. They know the cultural impact of the franchise and the importance that the world has for many people, and they don’t take any of that lightly.
Star Wars Outlaws releases on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
