Respawn Entertainment unveiled Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order during its panel at the recent Star Wars Celebration. Though no gameplay was showcased, we did receive details about its story and combat, along with how the developer was leveraging the brand. However, it’s worth noting that director Stig Asmussen’s team actually stopped developing another title to work on Star Wars.
As Asmussen revealed to Press Start, the journey of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order started with publisher EA approaching the team. “I think it started with EA approaching us at Respawn, and asking. I had a team, we were working on a game, and they said, ‘What do you guys think about Star Wars?’
“And unanimously, my team hands down, everybody was interested in working on Star Wars, even though we were really interested in the other game that we were working on, we saw this as an opportunity. It’s like, ‘Hey, when are you ever going to get a chance to work on a Star Wars game?'”
Development didn’t start in earnest though, as Asmussen and his team still had to meet with Lucasfilm. “It was several months before we even met with Lucasfilm. I’m assuming that you guys knew that we were signed on, but it was probably four months or something, at least, where that we knew that we were going to be working on it, and we started coming up with what our own ideas. What we could bring to the table at least from a gameplay standpoint.”
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is out on November 15th for Xbox One, PS4, and PC. Bucking the trend of EA’s titles running on Frostbite, it’s being developed on Unreal Engine 4. It’s also purely story-focused single-player title – producer Blair Brown already confirmed that there would be no microtransactions or multiplayer. Stay tuned for more details on the game, including the inevitable gameplay reveal.