The future of EA Star Wars games: What we know
EA has a full stable of future Star Wars games.
From the next edition of Battlefront to Respawn’s untitled project, at least three Star Wars games will make their way onto gaming systems in the coming years. Here’s a breakdown of what we currently know about each one.
(Note: to find out what the future holds for the current edition of Battlefront, I did a breakdown a few weeks back).
Battlefront 2
The second installment of EA’s Battlefront will be on its way sometime next year. It’s currently in co-development by DICE (which developed the latest Battlefront) and Motive Studios.
The newcomers to the franchise will be “building out a significant new addition to the game.” Folks have speculated that the Montreal-based studio is crafting a campaign that is lacking in EA’s first foray into the Battlefront series, but no official confirmation on the topic has arrived yet.
This past June, Jade Raymond, who is the Group General Manager for Motive Studios and Visceral Games, wrote that Motive had grown to 65 employees after launching in June 2015. She noted that the team was “driven by unbridled creativity to make unforgettable action games.”
“There’s no point in making something in the Star Wars IP if you’re just going to do what’s been done before,” said Motive’s game director Mark Thompson in EA Star War’s “Look Ahead” trailer. “It’s a fantastic opportunity for Motive to really tell the world what we’re about and we’re going to bring that to Battlefront, which is crazy. It’s incredible.”
EA’s CFO Blake Jorgensen also revealed during an earnings call in May that this future Battlefront title will showcase “bigger and better worlds” while utilizing content from “the new movies.” Jorgenson didn’t specify which movies he was referring to, but the current edition of Battlefront only focuses on the Original Trilogy and Rogue One (which is set just before Episode IV begins).
At this point, we don’t know much else about the game, but there have been hints that additions to the current Battlefront, like the fan-requested Skirmish mode, might make a reappearance.
“With everything you do, there are learnings,” said Battlefront’s game director Niklas Fegraeus in an interview with PC Gamer last month. “We’ve done a lot of stuff with Skirmish mode, with expansion packs, and a bunch of other things, and all of the stuff we’ve learned there we’ll of course bring with us going into the next one.”
Visceral’s untitled project
San Francisco-based Visceral Studios is currently developing an as-of-yet unnamed action adventure set in the Star Wars universe. The game due to be released sometime in 2018.
Writer and Creative Director of the Uncharted Amy Hennig joined Visceral Games in 2014 to help build this game. Similar to Uncharted, this game is meant to be narrative-driven, not open world as previously rumored.
“Our goal has always been not to just make a game that is set in the Star Wars universe, but to really tell an authentic Star Wars story,” Hennig said in the “Look Ahead” trailer. “That’s actually a hugely different thing.”
“It’s critical that we have this really close collaborative relationship with our partners at LucasFilm,” Hennig added during EA’s panel at Star Wars Celebration. “The reason is we’re writing an original Star Wars story with new characters, new locations, new tech, new creatures—you name it. All of it has to sit authentically alongside the stuff people know now.”
Hennig has also compared her process while working on this game to her process working on the Uncharted series.
“The process I’ve been using is really similar to Uncharted,” Hennig said. “If you are trying to recreate that familiar classic […] experience, then you need to deconstruct the film so that you know how to reconstruct them in an interactive context as gameplay. The end goal of a game like that is by the time the player has finished playing the game, they feel like they really did play a Star Wars film.”
Hennig also hinted that the game will feature an ensemble cast with, perhaps, multiple playable characters.
“[Star Wars is] always ensemble stories,” she said. “If you think about the Original Trilogy […] it’s as much Leia’s and Han’s and Vader’s story as it is Luke’s. […] The same thing is true of our game.”
This ensemble cast has also posed an interesting hurdle in the game’s development process.
“It’s not a lone wolf story—that’s not Star Wars,” she added. “Your characters have to be a coordinated ensemble acting in the moment and in parallel.”
Hennig further teased that the game’s characters will be “underdogs” and that while news will be sparse for the rest of the year, the studio is excited to “blow everything out” and show stuff “next year.”
Respawn’s untitled project
While the focus for Respawn Entertainment right now might be Titanfall 2, EA announced in May that the Los Angeles-based studio would be working on a third-person action adventure Star Wars game.
Little is known about the title, save for some lightsaber capture work shown off in the “Look Ahead” trailer. EA has also noted the game “features a different style of gameplay and takes place in a different timeline we have yet to explore with our EA Star Wars titles.”
Stig Asmussen helms this project. He wrote in a blog post in May that “developing a game within the ever-expanding Star Wars universe opens up so many paths for us to go down, and an unparalleled playground to design within.”
“Our promise to gamers is ultimately gameplay first,” Asmussen said in the “Look Ahead” trailer. “We all demand that the game has these huge wow moments that translate really well into the Star Wars universe. We’re going to deliver that Star Wars awe like fans have never seen before.”
Asmussen previously worked on the God of War series as its creative director.
Beyond
EA has teased that future titles are also being worked on. According to the company, they’re “early in pre-production on some other projects.” What those projects are, or which studios will be undertaking them, is unknown currently.
The Star Wars Game Outpost will be following all these future games. Be sure to check back on the road ahead to find out more!
