However, 2024 is a different beast, and on February 29th, it announced 670 layoffs or roughly five percent of its workforce, closed Ridgeline Games (which was working on narrative experiences for Battlefield) and even cancelled the Star Wars single-player shooter.

While Ridgeline’s fate is confusing and sad in its own right, it’s the baffling cancellation of the Star Wars single-player shooter project. Considering the project was helmed by Peter Hirschmann, the executive producer for the original Star Wars: Battlefront series, it’s all the more annoying. However, when you look back on the publisher’s experience with Star Wars titles thus now, it’s been an oddly mixed bag.

First, there was Star Wars Battlefront in 2015, which launched with a lackluster amount of content and received a mixed response, though it grew into something better. Star Wars Battlefront 2 offered more when it launched in 2017 but quickly collapsed due to controversies due to pay-to-win, loot box and monetization issues. Once again, it would recover, but the process took a lot longer (with way more free updates, thus costing EA money, to say nothing of the sales lost due to the controversies). Then there were the rumors surrounding Project Ragtag, ultimately cancelled in 2017 with Visceral Games shut down.

2019 saw a new hope, if you will, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. The action-adventure title launched in November 2019 and quickly garnered acclaim for its combat, exploration and narrative. Though it could have used more polish, fans appreciated a new Jedi-focused title, that too with such a great single-player campaign. It was Electronic Arts’ fastest-selling digital Star Wars title within just two weeks, went on to sell over eight million units by January 2020 and crossed 10 million sales by March 2020 end.

Such was the success of Jedi: Fallen Order internally that it reportedly caused an internal shift in Electronic Arts’ thinking. Instead of games-as-a-service titles for all its studios, it chose to let its single-player developers breathe more. It’s arguably why the Dead Space remake was greenlit and why Mass Effect returned from the brink.

A sequel seemed like the obvious next step, and Electronic Arts revealed the first cinematic teaser for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor in May 2022. Details were sparse, but the darker approach already led to more intrigue. Jedi: Survivor launched in April 2023, facing a five-week delay due to more work needed for polishing. While it suffered from performance issues at launch (with PC players having the worst of it), the sequel received even more acclaim than the original for its larger worlds, more refined combat and deeper story-telling.

Sales numbers weren’t revealed, but its physical sales in the UK were up 30 percent at launch over Fallen Order. Digital sales were also twice as much, with the PlayStation Store confirming it was the most downloaded title in the US and Europe for April and May. Electronic Arts revealed the title was pacing “very strongly” in sales with “millions” of players as of May. The desire to make more titles was there, especially in August when it revealed that it achieved record net bookings in that quarter thanks to Jedi: Survivor, Madden and FIFA.

In September, actor Cameron Monaghan, who plays Cal Kestis, confirmed that the third Star Wars Jedi title was in development. Nothing else was revealed, save for it being a “big undertaking”, but it’s early days yet.

Jedi: Survivor continued to receive updates, and Electronic Arts didn’t say much about about Bit Reactor’s strategy title led by Greg Foerscth. Fast forward to February 2024 and the Star Wars single-player shooter’s cancellation, with Electronic Arts noting that players are “most excited” about the Jedi series and “the rich library of owned brands.”

As a result, it pivoted away from the Star Wars shooter to “focus our efforts on new projects based on our owned brands while providing support for existing games.” While it’s keen to provide fans “the next installments of the iconic franchises they want,” rumors revealed that the new title would feature a Mandalorian protagonist. It was unclear if this was the protagonist from The Mandalorian, but the prospect of pursuing bounties in large open areas while having a linear campaign sounded great.

Even if enthusiasm for The Mandalorian dropped after the third season, it’s still a popular brand. Some would say it’s “iconic” and perhaps the biggest reason for the shift towards new Star Wars media on the small screen. On the bright side, Bit Reactor’s title isn’t cancelled, though it doesn’t seem any closer to an announcement, much less a release.

For now, Electronic Arts’ commitment to the Star Wars series is as unknown as the future of the Battlefield franchise. Perhaps following the end of its exclusive agreement with Lucasarts, it recognized the need to focus on its brands and existing hits to succeed, especially as more companies offer up their triple-A projects.

After all, with Star Wars Outlaws set to feature a massive scope and third-person shooter mechanics, Quantic Dream slowly and hopefully steadily delivering a narrative tour de force with Star Wars Eclipse and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – Remake still floating around, the market for new IPs in the series may be dwindling. Again, how the title with the Mandalorian protagonist wouldn’t have thrived is unclear, and if anything, it casts doubt on whether Bit Reactor’s title can make an impact.

Perhaps if Electronic Arts decides to revive Star Wars Battlefront, its multiplayer could receive a better reception than the recent Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection. Regardless, it’s a safe bet, along with the upcoming Star Wars Jedi 3 and even Star Wars: The Old Republic, which continues to generate revenue.

At the end of the day, as the unsustainability of triple-A development becomes more apparent, some publishers may be less willing to commit to risk on popular media properties, regardless of how appealing the projects looked a few years back. Where Electronic Arts goes from here remains to be seen, but it’s arguably in a much safer position than its competitors when delivering new Star Wars titles. Still, it kind of stings to know what could have been and how cursed the Star Wars bounty hunter game concept continues to be.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Hennig was leading development on a third person action-adventure Star Wars title at Visceral Games for several years. Codenamed Project Ragtag, the project was cancelled in 2017 after several years of development, and Visceral Games was shut down. It seems, however, that Ragtag might have found a way to live on.

As per prominent leaker @accngt (via DualShockers), Skydance New Media’s Star Wars game, which is reportedly codenamed Project Walton, is a revival of “some sort” of Project Ragtag. Allegedly, the game will be set in the Rebel Alliance era (the era that the original Star Wars trilogy is set in), similar to Ragtag, though the leaker doesn’t go into further detail on what other similarities the two projects could have.

Interestingly, Hennig’s team at Skydance New Media has another major licensed AAA game in the works, with a Marvel game having been announced last October. Reportedly, the project is either based on Fantastic Four or Ant-Man– read more on that through here.

https://twitter.com/accngt/status/1516565144943349764

Though Respawn Entertainment’s upcoming Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order has been the centre of attention recently, EA’s spotty track record with the Star Wars license is still a sore subject for many. Of the many Star Wars games they have cancelled, the one most highly publicized was the game tentatively called Project Ragtag, being developed by Visceral Games under Uncharted creator Amy Hennig, only for the project to be cancelled, and the studio to be shuttered.

Recently, while speaking with Eurogamer, Hennig spoke about the recent reveal of Fallen Order, a game that has many elements uncharacteristic for a project being made under EA’s care- not only is it a title focused on story, it’s also a game that is completely single player, devoid of any multiplayer elements and microtransactions.

“[It’s] odd!” said Hennig when speaking of the aforementioned announcements. “I have to be candid with you. I mean, it’s coming from the EA Star Wars Twitter handle, so it’s certainly part of the plan, but I don’t know whether it’s implicitly referencing previous comments they made after our project was killed?”

Hennig went on to speak about how such ideas had been strictly against EA’s philosophies when she had been at Visceral, with her saying that there have probably been some internal changes over the last couple of years that have led to a change in outlook for the company, with Fallen Order being representative of the change. Of course, given the fact that Respawn CEO Vince Zampella has a seat in the EA executives board might also have helped the studio do what it wants to do.

“There is so much change in this industry all the time,” she said. “Over the course of my time at EA, we were back and forth on what the overall publishing corporation wanted. Everybody’s trying to figure out what the right path is. I also think Respawn’s game has the benefit of being largely developed before they were acquired. It is a protected entity, and Vince [Zampella] makes very sure – because he’s part of the executive team at EA, he can protect the interests of Respawn.

“This is all speculation on my part, I don’t know why the change of heart happened, because that was very clearly not an acceptable plan when we were working on Ragtag! But you know, things change. [The decision to cancel Ragtag] was made in summer 2017. We found out in October 2017. So that’s almost two years ago, and a lot has changed in that time, and there’s been a pretty public and vocal backlash against the idea gamers don’t want single-player finite games without all these extra modes. Of course they do, of course we do. So maybe this is just a demonstration of a change of strategy for EA.

“And you’ve got to understand there’s been huge changes in management there since all of this happened as well. Both Patrick Soderlund and Jade Raymond have left in the meantime, and Laura Miele, who was the franchise general manager for Star Wars when I joined, is now in Patrick’s role. So I don’t have any insider knowledge, but there’s a lot of reasons they could have adopted a new attitude for this. And I’m glad for Respawn’s sake, because I’m excited about their game, and I’ve heard great things about it.”

Hennig also spoke of her own cancelled Star Wars project, and how it differed from what Respawn are doing with Fallen Order. The veteran developer had decided to approach Star Wars with a tone similar to Uncharted, but expand it greatly, with a focus on multiple major characters – playable or otherwise – rather than sticking with a single point of view for the entirety of the story- the way Uncharted does, and the way Fallen Order seems to be doing.

“I had to take what I’d figured out [for Uncharted] in terms of deconstructing pulp adventure, and say alright, Star Wars is also in that category, but it has certain things that are distinct, or at least distinct from our core inspiration, which was of course Indiana Jones,” said Hennig. “And one of those things, and I’ve talked about this before, is you stay with Indiana Jones the whole time, the other characters are side characters – they’re companions, they’re important to the story, but they’re not co-protagonists, it’s not really an ensemble in the classic sense. When we think about ensembles, we think about heist films, caper films, Where Eagle’s Dare, Dirty Dozen, Von Ryan’s Express. All of these films are about this ragtag – hence the codename! – group of individuals who have to come together.”

“So I realised a couple of things: if we were going to make a Star Wars story, a lot of it would look and feel like Uncharted, because it’s in the same genre,” Hennig continued. “But we needed to cut away to the villains, for one thing, which was something I never allowed us to do on Uncharted. If you look at those films, you don’t really cut away from what Indy knows. There’s a few exceptions but you’re more or less with him the whole time. Star Wars, not only do we cut between villains but we also cut between multiple protagonists. So you still go OK, Luke is the hero of the story, but when you look at Han and Leia they’re co-protagonists. And then you look at Rogue One, the animated show Rebels, those are ensemble stories. That’s the Star Wars DNA, right?

“So I thought OK, not only does that mean that we need really compelling AI for these characters, so that you can work like a well-oiled team, particularly if it’s a caper crew. But we were going to need playable characters in parallel sequences, because that’s how Star Wars works. You only accomplish your goals by working together or working in parallel or both. We would always point to the Death Star escape as the prime example of that.”

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order releases on November 15 for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

In a recent report by Kotaku’s Jason Schreier, it was revealed that Electronic Arts had cancelled development on its upcoming open world Star Wars title. The project was originally in the hands of Visceral Games and former Uncharted writer/director Amy Hennig as “Ragtag“. Unfortunately, it was cancelled, Visceral was shut down, and Hennig would leave the company.

The project was subsequently transferred over to EA Vancouver, and went from being a linear experience to an open world game. After speaking to sources close to the project, who revealed its cancellation, Schreier updated his report to include more details on why this happened. Apparently, the project was code-named “Orca“, and had players exploring numerous open world planets as a bounty hunter or scoundrel. They would also encounter different Star Wars factions and work with them. Needless to say, the project was still pretty early in development, and thus a long way off.

Because EA required something to ship earlier than Orca would, it cancelled the project in favour of a “smaller-scale” title, according to two sources. This project is slated for late 2020 right now, which could be just in time for the next generation of consoles to arrive (though Schreier admits that it could a bit sooner or a bit later). No one has been laid off following Orca’s cancellation, and some studio members are hopeful that it will be restarted once the new title is complete.

It’s not all completely dismal for Star Wars fans – Respawn Entertainment’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is still coming this year – but it does create concern for EA’s handling of some projects. Time will tell if this new project actually becomes something or whether Orca comes back. In the meantime, Electronic Arts will probably make an official announcement about the cancellation soon, so stay tuned.

When Electronic Arts announced that the former Visceral Studios’ untitled Star Wars game had shifted to EA Worldwide Studios, which EA Vancouver would lead, the obvious question was: What about Amy Hennig? The Uncharted creator was at the helm of the rumoured Project Ragtag and constantly discussed whenever news of it emerged. Since the closure of Visceral Studios, where has she been?

As it turns out, Hennig is no longer with Electronic Arts. Speaking to Eurogamer during the Gamelab conference in Barcelona, Hennig actually parted ways with the publisher in January and is currently looking to start her own independent studio.

“I have not worked at EA since January, technically, legally. Yes. This is the problem, it was hard enough for them, but people were immediately asking them ‘Is Amy working with you?’ and the answer was ‘Well, we’re in negotiations…’ like, hmm. It was, sort of the soft pedal answer.

“I haven’t been in, but look – I get along with all those people, I consider even the guys on the exec team friends. But it made it awkward because it was like, ‘I never got the chance to announce that I’m not at EA so I need to just pull off that band-aid at some point’ – but also had nothing to announce. It makes it sound like I just went home! But I’m doing all this stuff, working on all kinds of things.”

Hennig is currently “consulting with some people” to set up her indie studio and could dabble in VR gaming. “I’m hoping to bring some people on board, I would love to have a little company of about six to eight people, 15 at the most, and do some more projects, do some VR stuff – I’m consulting with some VR companies and doing a ton of research because I haven’t played a lot to immerse myself in it.”

As for her Star Wars project, the original concept that she had in mind seems to be retired. “I’m not doing anything Star Wars. And, who knows what the future may hold, but that project is on the shelf now. The Vancouver studio is working on something pretty different. It’s really not… Y’know, once you go more open world it’s such a different game to the one we were making. Everybody loved what we were doing and I’d love to see us resurrect that somehow, but it’s complicated.”

At the very least, it seems that Hennig left Electronic Arts on amicable terms. The situation as a whole doesn’t seem to be a simple matter of EA having nothing for Hennig to work on but honestly, we don’t have all the facts. Time will tell what the real deal is so stay tuned for more information.

Visceral Games’ untitled Star Wars project wasn’t at E3 2017 and seems to be a ways off from actually being revealed. All we know is that Uncharted series writer Amy Hennig is at the helm and that it’s not an action RPG.

However, as per Making Star Wars, details about the project have been leaked. Take these with a grain of salt of course but it’s currently codenamed Project Ragtag and set between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back.

The main focus is on Dodger, an Alderaan citizen who avoided the Imperial service and is wanted by the Empire for surviving the destruction of his planet. Dodger delves into the underworld, does some work for Jabba the Hutt and deals with the destruction of the Death Star. Along with a whip used for grappling, Dodger also has a blaster to fight enemies with. Apparently there are different variations on these weapons, some slated as DLC.

What are your thoughts on all of this, especially with regards to its legitimacy? Let us know in the comments below.