Titanfall dev talks Respawn’s upcoming Star Wars game
Respawn Entertainment’s third-person Star Wars game is almost a complete mystery.
However, the studio’s founder, Vince Zampella, recently chatted with IGN about the title’s beginnings.
The concept began after Zampella talked with several members of J.J. Abrams’ studio, Bad Robot, during the production of The Force Awakens. He noted that they said “You guys need to do a Star Wars game.”
For Zampella, the idea was tantalizing.
“I’m a huge Star Wars fan,” he said. “I grew up with it; it’s part of my DNA.”
After bringing God War III director and fellow Star Wars fan, Stig Asmussen, to Respawn, the duo discussed the idea of a Star Wars game and eventually pitched it to EA.
“He and I talked about ‘wouldn’t it be amazing if we could do this Star Wars game?’ We talked to EA about it,” Zampella said. “Initially it didn’t look like it was going to happen, so we moved on and started creating an original IP with that team.”
Stig Asmussen (far right) working with a pair of actors on Respawn’s untitled Star Wars game.
Despite that initial hiccup, EA eventually changed its mind.
“EA came back, not that long ago, maybe a year or something, and said, ‘Wait a minute, maybe we do want you to do a Star Wars game.’ We were able to work it out,” Zampella said. “We couldn’t be more excited. It’s a great team.”
Respawn now handles multiple development teams. The studio is also is known more for its first-person shooters, rather than the third-person action adventure genre of the untitled Star Wars project. However, Zampella added that having multiple teams allows “people to try out new things; express themselves creatively in a different way—in a different type of game.”
EA currently plans for the Star Wars game to arrive sometime after 2018. The publisher has yet to reveal much about the title besides that it “features a different style of gameplay and takes place in a different timeline we have yet to explore with our EA Star Wars titles.”
Asmussen also 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.”
The Star Wars talk starts at around 41:20 in the video below:
