EA Cancels It’s Open World Star Wars Game UPDATED

karmakid

RIP Cheems ❤️
Super Mod
Forum Mod
Sep 11, 2013
46,427
18,856
3,529
in front of your screen



https://kotaku.com/ea-cancels-open-world-star-wars-game-1831786371


Electronic Arts has canceled its open-world Star Wars game, according to three people familiar with goings-on at the company. The game, announced alongside the shutdown of Visceral Games back in 2017, had been in development at EA’s large office in Vancouver.

EA Vancouver, a large studio that mostly handles support for a variety of the publisher’s games including FIFA and Battlefront, had been working on this open-world Star Wars game since October 2017, when EA closed Visceral Games. Until then, Visceral—best known for its popular Dead Space horror series—was developing its own Star Wars game. That project, code-named Ragtag, was a linear action-adventure game directed by Uncharted director Amy Hennig. EA Vancouver had been assisting on the project, and when EA closed Visceral Games on October 17, 2017, the Vancouver studio took it over.



In June 2018, EA announced that it had expanded its Motive studio—previously a single office in Montreal led by industry veteran Jade Raymond—to a Vancouver location as well. That one would also be located in the publisher’s large office in Burnaby, British Columbia, as a division of EA Vancouver.


*Edit for Update Below


Since the publication of this article, I’ve talked to several more people familiar with EA Vancouver’s now-cancelled open-world Star Wars game. This project, which was code-named Orca, was very early in development but would involve playing as a scoundrel or bounty hunter who could explore various open-world planets and work with different factions across the Star Wars universe.

When EA’s top decision-makers looked at their road map for the next few years, they decided that they needed something earlier than the planned release date for Orca, according to two people familiar with what happened. So they cancelled Orca in favor of a smaller-scale Star Wars project that’s now aimed for much sooner—likely, late 2020, which also happens to be around the time that I’ve heard next-gen consoles will launch. (Might be a bit earlier; might be a bit later. From what I’ve heard, next-gen plans are definitely still in flux.)

To EA’s credit, those people said, the publisher did not lay anyone off as part of this transition. This news comes at a time of cost-cutting across the industry, at major publishers including both EA and Activision, as we’ve reported. Some at the studio also hope that Orca might be restarted after this new project is finished.
 
Last edited:
They should just hand the rights to the star wars IP back to disney so we don't have to deal with all the EA/ star wars BS at all, they clearly cannot find a way to properly handle it. I'm not even a big star wars fan but if a fun star wars game came out I'd be down to play it, however I certainly don't see that happening with EA at the helm. Fingers crossed that Respawn game at least doesn't totally suck.
 
Still wish Visceral were doing another Dead Space game.

EA, the place where studios go to die.
 
They should just hand the rights to the star wars IP back to disney so we don't have to deal with all the EA/ star wars BS at all, they clearly cannot find a way to properly handle it. I'm not even a big star wars fan but if a fun star wars game came out I'd be down to play it, however I certainly don't see that happening with EA at the helm. Fingers crossed that Respawn game at least doesn't totally suck.
EA have Bioware, should have done a Star Wars RPG.
 
Wasn't this confirmed a little while back? It's why Jade Raymond left EA?
 
They should just hand the rights to the star wars IP back to disney so we don't have to deal with all the EA/ star wars BS at all, they clearly cannot find a way to properly handle it. I'm not even a big star wars fan but if a fun star wars game came out I'd be down to play it, however I certainly don't see that happening with EA at the helm. Fingers crossed that Respawn game at least doesn't totally suck.

Who would take it though? The only publishers capable of taking over Star Wars are Activision, Take Two and Ubisoft and they are all already pretty busy with their own content. Maybe I'm forgetting a large publisher but both Activision and to a lesser degree Take Two are almost as bad as EA when it comes to loot boxes etc. Ubisoft walks a fine line but are still pretty good about content for value overall, the thing is they already have a huge number of employees and they'd have to take on a ton more or do away with a different popular franchise to take it over. Disney should just start making their own games again, then again Disney would probably be as bad as EA.

I almost forgot about WB games, I guess they could take it over, I mean Disney does let them do those LEGO Star Wars games but I don't know if WB has a development studio that could do a large scale Star Wars game.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Dtwice
Who would take it though? The only publishers capable of taking over Star Wars are Activision, Take Two and Ubisoft and they are all already pretty busy with their own content. Maybe I'm forgetting a large publisher but both Activision and to a lesser degree Take Two are almost as bad as EA when it comes to loot boxes etc. Ubisoft walks a fine line but are still pretty good about content for value overall, the thing is they already have a huge number of employees and they'd have to take on a ton more or do away with a different popular franchise to take it over. Disney should just start making their own games again, then again Disney would probably be as bad as EA.

I almost forgot about WB games, I guess they could take it over, I mean Disney does let them do those LEGO Star Wars games but I don't know if WB has a development studio that could do a large scale Star Wars game.

You are probably right about any other publisher but that's a good reason to not sign an exclusive deal. Just do what Marvel is doing.
 
If Disney took the license back, they should just keep it and charge the license fee to third party studios that want it. Just want another Jedi Knight game to play on multiplayer damnit!
 
Battlefront 2 is actually a good game. The problem is the mistakes EA made with pay to win and other microtransactions.

The problem is that the player base just never recovered. You can't have all that negative drama around a game and still have people buy it.

There's still a small but decent population playing.
 
The prequels weren't any good and that didn't stop anyone from wanting Star Wars games so its not like it matters
 
As much as I liked SW BF2, EA has been a joke with the Star Wars license. I’m surprised Disney has put up with this s*** they could have been banking this whole time on SW games.
 
EA have Bioware, should have done a Star Wars RPG.

But but The Old Republic is KotoR 3 through 9 and... uh, yeah. I can tolerate it for the class stories for a while but its not a real game, just MMO dreck.
 
Who would take it though? The only publishers capable of taking over Star Wars are Activision, Take Two and Ubisoft and they are all already pretty busy with their own content. Maybe I'm forgetting a large publisher but both Activision and to a lesser degree Take Two are almost as bad as EA when it comes to loot boxes etc. Ubisoft walks a fine line but are still pretty good about content for value overall, the thing is they already have a huge number of employees and they'd have to take on a ton more or do away with a different popular franchise to take it over. Disney should just start making their own games again, then again Disney would probably be as bad as EA.

I almost forgot about WB games, I guess they could take it over, I mean Disney does let them do those LEGO Star Wars games but I don't know if WB has a development studio that could do a large scale Star Wars game.

Well WB & Disney will probably never work together in that way. The IP does not need to be given to a single publisher, they just need to find the right developer for a game, and a publisher would be chomping at the bit for it because of the Star Wars name. They should just do like yankee said and deal with various developers who are right for the projects on a game by game basis...
 
But but The Old Republic is KotoR 3 through 9 and... uh, yeah. I can tolerate it for the class stories for a while but its not a real game, just MMO dreck.
The old republic was pretty good before it went F2P.
 
The prequels are Shakespeare compare to the last Jedi though.

Well episode 1 and 2 at least have a so bad they kinda fun thing going for them while TLJ is just frustrating to watch. I'd still have trouble saying TLJ is a legitimately worse movie even though I'd probably rather watch the prequels.

Either way the other 3 Disney SW movies are substantially better than 1 and 2.
 
Well WB & Disney will probably never work together in that way. The IP does not need to be given to a single publisher, they just need to find the right developer for a game, and a publisher would be chomping at the bit for it because of the Star Wars name. They should just do like yankee said and deal with various developers who are right for the projects on a game by game basis...

It doesn't need to be but I wonder if Disney is like the NFL and just wants to deal with one company or not. It made no sense to go with one company from the start but I would be interested to see who initiated those talks. Everyone blames EA for the NFL exclusivity but the NFL are the ones who wanted that to happen.
 
I feel Disney shoulda kept Lucas to curate what goes on and make sure stuff like continuity makes sense, kinda like how 343 has other companies work on other halo games/books/anime and such.