EA has revealed Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order recently, developed by Respawn Entertainment. Amy Henning was developing another Star Wars project at EA that was reportedly canceled so she shared some new information on what it was going to be in a new interview.
Eurogamer had the chance to talk with Amy Hennig over her new project and she dropped the following information on Ragtag, which was the codename for this Star Wars game that was later canceled by EA.
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. 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. 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.
The game was reportedly canceled in the Summer of 2017 thus putting a stop to its development. EA is now releasing a Star Wars game with no multiplayer with Jedi: Fallen Order which is a big change of heart for them since they were all in on multiplayer and loot boxes early this generation.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order will be out on November 15, 2019, for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
