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Visceral's Canceled Star Wars Game Characters May Appear In EA's New Game
EA's highly anticipated linear single-player Star Wars game might have ended up on the chopping block, but there is still some chance that characters from that game will show up elsewhere. This should offer some consolation to players who were really looking forward to a new title set in a galaxy far, far away.
Visceral Games announced the new Star Wars game back in 2013. Since that announcement, it picked up some of the best video game developers in the business, including Uncharted writer and director Amy Hennig and Portal designer Kim Swift. As news began coming out of the studio about the title, players soon learned that it was a story-driven linear game set during the period of the Star Wars movies Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. Publisher EA even released a concept trailer for the game in 2016.
In 2017, though, the publisher shocked players by shutting down Visceral and moving the Star Wars game to EA Vancouver, a development studio known mostly for sports games. EA Vancouver moved in a new direction for the game, going for a more open world environment. And although that studio's focus before was mostly on sports, it brought in more developers for the Star Wars project, understanding that it needed more people experienced in other kinds of games.
In an interview with Game Informer, Motive Studios general manager Jade Raymond spoke about how characters from the original game will probably end up in what that studio is working on.
Quote:
"I don't know how much we're saying about that stuff, but the goal is ... We have three terabytes of Star Wars artwork, which is crazy, and there is a lot of really good work there. When we announced we were moving the game, the idea was pivoting more into player agency but still keeping a lot of the stuff that was great about it. There was a lot of really cool stuff like tons of assets and really cool characters that had been created. So, there's the goal of making sure we use all that."
EA plans on continuing to follow the trend of games moving towards more open world multiplayer experiences. That means that much of the original story of the Visceral game will probably get lost in the new title. EA already has some experience with Star Wars games with multiplayer, thanks to the Battlefront series. Perhaps this new direction is what inspired recent comments by Hennig about single-player games and how the industry needs to change to support them.
Whatever the case, Star Wars is bigger and better than ever. All fans can hope for is that the new game isn't too much like Battlefront or a direct rip-off of BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic. EA sees a lot of money in multiplayer, so that's where the company keeps putting its focus. It's a shame that a more creative game got canceled in favor of yet another multiplayer game, though. Now fans can only wonder what might have been with the game Hennig was once in charge of.
