It May Be Set Between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope
While there’s no way of knowing the degree of change that EA’s mysterious Star Wars title will undergo now that Visceral Games has closed, the game was supposedly meant to be set between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, bridging the gap between the prequel trilogy and its successor. Making Star Wars reported back in June that Todd Stashwick, who is co-writing the game alongside Amy Hennig, will be playing a character called “Dodger” who’s on the run from the Empire after dodging their mandatory draft.
Dodger reportedly works with the franchise’s recurring villain Jabba the Hutt in an effort to make enough money to remove his name from an Imperial hit list. As players adventure further along in the story, the character uncovers a plot meant to destroy his home planet of Alderaan and is tasked with stopping it. Of course, this premise has not been confirmed by EA and remains mere speculation.
Another rumor suggests that the title could instead revolve around Han Solo, seeing as how Visceral Games may have dropped hints about this on social media. Evidenced in an article by Game Informer, images of the Millennium Falcon, Han Solo action figures, and cryptic tweets mentioning scoundrels were shared for fans to mull over about two years ago. It’s also noteworthy to bring up the fact that Disney and Lucasfilm are making a Han Solo movie in the near future, meaning this game could tie in to that.
It’s very possible that the “reimagining of the central elements of the game” may have fundamentally altered a lot of these supposed plans, so it’s best for fans to not get their hopes up just yet lest they be severely disappointed when official details do surface.
There’s a Lot of Top Tier Talent Behind It
EA’s mysterious Star Wars game has a lot of talent behind it, as Jade Raymond’s recently founded Motive Studios is still involved despite Visceral Games’ closure. Raymond played a crucial role as the executive producer behind high profile franchises like Assassin’s Creed and the Splinter Cell series, so it will certainly be interesting to see what effect she will have on the title.
Portal and Left 4 Dead designer Kim Swift joined Motive Studios back in March and is working on the game, too. Having worked at Valve for more than 4 years, Gabe Newell himself personally invited Swift to join his company so that she can later on create the critically acclaimed game Portal. She went on to work for Square Enix in order to help develop indie title Quantum Conundrum for seventh generation consoles and today remains one of the most influential designers in the video game industry.
Todd Stashwick is supposedly co-writing beside Amy Hennig and voices the game’s protagonist, according to those aforementioned rumors. Stashwick is best known as a television actor in Batman prequel series Gotham and sci-fi hit 12 Monkeys, so he’s definitely at home with a Star Wars video game. The man was also involved in development on Uncharted 4 with Naughty Dog (and even voiced the game’s first teaser trailer), but made the transition to EA once Hennig did.
Speaking of Hennig, there’s no telling what her involvement is at the moment or if she has been moved from the project altogether. In a statement to IGN, EA stated that it is “in discussions with Amy about her next move” and that EA Vancouver will use assets made for the Visceral game in the newest iteration of the project. At least it’s good to know that Hennig may have influenced the project in its early stages should she no longer be involved.
It May Be an Open-World Game
Star Wars 1313 promised players free rein on a single planet back when it was officially unveiled. Upon its cancellation, fans were disappointed to have their dreams of exploring a world set in the Star Wars universe crushed, and Disney has acknowledged this. The newest head of Lucasfilm under the media conglomerate, Kathleen Kennedy, said in a 2015 interview that the company loves the concept art and work done on Star Wars 1313 and that none of that production work was ever thrown away. This implies that the open-world freedom could very much live on in EA’s mysterious new project.
Job postings by EA from all the way back in 2013 also indicate that the title could be an open-world game, as the ads seek individuals who are passionate about the Star Wars franchise and want to get involved in developing “a major new next gen open-world action game.” Given how the game is being refocused now to better reflect modern gaming sensibilities, it remains to be seen what exactly this new title will entail and if it will preserve any of these open-world aspects at all.
It Won’t Be Coming Soon
If one thing’s for certain given this week’s announcement, this Star Wars game won’t be coming anytime soon – especially not during its original window of 2018. In fact, seeing as how the project will be moved to EA Vancouver, it’s now even further off than fans were expecting, with a possible release to come sometime towards the end of this console generation’s life cycle. In the official blog post, executive vice president of EA Patrick Soderlund said a new launch window will be provided “in the future”, though when exactly that is was not disclosed.
Though that may be unfortunate news for fans of the franchise, a rushed game is never usually a good one. Here’s hoping that despite rumors of the project having severe development problems, EA’s Star Wars will release to positive acclaim and quell many fans’ fears of it playing terribly. For now it’s best to just hope that it doesn’t turn out as generic as recent news may suggest it will be.
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