Electronic Arts had been developing a major “Star Wars” game for a long time, initially in California, then in Vancouver. It was supposed to be an action-adventure like Uncharted in the world of Star Wars – later an open-world game. But that now seems to be over.
Here’s the game in question: The game was codenamed “Project Ragtag.” It was originally developed for EA by Visceral Games in California. At that time, Amy Hennig, the creative head of Uncharted, was behind it.
The EA “Star Wars” game was also initially intended to be a kind of “Uncharted” in the Star Wars universe.
What went wrong with “Uncharted-Star-Wars”: However, reports suggest that the studio got hopelessly tangled up with the Star Wars game.
There was a significant insider report (via Kotaku) detailing how the studio was overworked. Allegedly, they spent an insane amount of time on a tiny clip of the protagonist stepping out of a door.
For the efficiency-focused people at EA, it was a nightmare. Moreover, they were reportedly not particularly excited about “Ragtag”. After all, it was a single-player game.
The game had been in jeopardy for a long time.
Electronic Arts ultimately closed Visceral Games, the company behind Dead Space. The studio simply wasn’t profitable because costs in California are so high and little came out of the studio. Visceral Games was known for its “Dead Space” series.
Ultimately, EA Vancouver took over “Project Ragtag”, having previously worked on the game.
As Kotaku reports, they rebooted the entire Star Wars game, wanting to keep the assets and make it into an “open world” game.
But that too seems to be dead now.
EA wants “earlier” Star Wars games
This is what the game was supposed to become: As Kotaku learned from anonymous sources, the new version of the “Star Wars” project was called “Orca.”
Players took on the role of a rogue or bounty hunter. They explored planets and collaborated with factions.
However, the release date was apparently too late for EA, as the game was still in an early stage of development. Therefore, EA has now closed the project and wants to focus on games that will be released much earlier. EA set a target for the end of 2020.
According to Kotaku, the end of the project this time did not cost any jobs.
