At present, the gaming licensing rights to Star Wars belongs solely to EA. Which has been a thorn in the side of gamers, because they either make games like Battlefront 2 that are heavy in loot boxes and forced game progression. Or, they announce that they’re making a game in the universe, show off something impressive, and then cancel it. And they’ve done that multiple times.
Amy Hennig, formerly of Naught Dog, was tasked with making one such Star Wars game at the now closed Visceral Studio, and she states that one of the big reasons for her game’s cancellation was money and the Frostbite engine. Which they were trying to augment to fit their needs:
“But we knew going in that was the goal,” added Hennig to VentureBeat. “We were going to put this functionality into Frostbite. A lot of the team was hired to do Battlefield, and so that was a bit of a cultural shift, to make this different kind of game. Normally you cache for the project you’re making rather than trying to–it’s hard to convert the people you have if that’s not their type of game.”
Then, there’s the EA factor, and Hennig openly admits that EA decided to drop the game because it wasn’t what they were thinking about for the universe:
“I think that where EA is at right now, they’re looking more at games as a service, the live service model,” said Hennig. “More open world stuff, trying to crack that nut, versus this more finite crafted experience. We were trying to make sure that we built in other modes and extensibility and all that stuff. But the fundamental spine of the thing was more like Uncharted than one of these open world, live service games. That’s a big gap to cross.”
Will another Star Wars game get made? We’ll have to wait and see.
