One of EA’s Star Wars projects has been known by many names over the years, and has been handled by a number of different developers. It started off, at least in spirit, with LucasArts as Star Wars 1313, and then morphed into Visceral’s project when EA acquired the rights to the property, led by Amy Hennig of Uncharted fame, under the codename Ragtag. After Visceral was shut down and Amy Hennig moved on from EA to form her own development team, the future of the project seemed uncertain at best.
However, we now have new information to suggest that the game is still very much alive, though in a very different form. Production of the game is now being led up by EA Vancouver, and in an interview with Game Informer, Motive Studios’ Jade Raymond spoke quite a bit about what direction they’re taking the project in. Apparently, it’s no longer going to be a linear story-focused title in vein of Uncharted, but is instead going to be an open world game with focus on player agency.
Raymond also spent some time to talk about how the development team, which has till now mostly been known for work on sports titles, is gearing up to make a completely different kind of game. “Ragtag was being co-developed already with the team in Vancouver, so there was already a group of people who had been collaborating on it,” Raymond said. “The core team there is super, super strong. There are people who had worked on Skate, SSX, and bunch of Need For Speeds back in the day, so there is a core group that was part of EA Black Box when that was a thing. It’s people who worked on a lot of non-sports stuff out of Vancouver over the years. There are people who worked on Sleeping Dogs, a bunch of people who worked on Prototype, some who worked on a new IP that was kind of open world. So, there is a mix of people from the original team and people who we supplemented.”
When asked about how much of the work Visceral did on the game will carry into the new form the Star Wars game is taking, Raymond said that they have access to a lot of great work by the team, but whether or not they would be using any of it, she didn’t really commit to. “I don’t know how much we’re saying about that stuff,” she said, “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.”
It should be interesting to see how this project evolves, but more than anything, I’d just really love it if it would stop getting cancelled or shelved all the fricking time. I’m not asking for much here, am I?
