Remember the Star Wars action game that was previously in development at Dead Space studio Visceral Games? Well, EA pulled the plug on what could have been one of the best Star Wars games ever made. Details have surfaced from the cancelled project and it sounds genre-defining. According to former producer Amy Hennig, the cancelled Star Wars game had several major set pieces and its overall design was well under-way before it got axed by EA.
According to producer Zach Mumbach, the cancelled Star Wars game codenamed “Project Ragtag” starred a rogue described as a cross between Robin Hood and Star-Lord. In an interview with MinnMaxShow, Mumbach described the tough working conditions which Visceral Games faced from the start of development. He explains how the team quickly had to pivot back from its previous project, Battlefield Hardline.
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[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”#F5652F” class=”” size=”21″]”The timing was weird. The sequence of events was like – ‘hey, we have a studio with their own engine who make really high-quality single-player games – the Dead Space series – and we’re going to take that studio, move them to Frostbite and have them make a Battlefield game’. OK, I’m fine with that. I stayed there and worked on that.[/perfectpullquote]
However, the cancelled Star Wars game suffered from loss of staff. Mainly in the story department.
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”#F5652F” class=”” size=”21″]”But we had a lot of people at the studio who were experts on narrative and single-player games and those people left. And that’s fine – some of them went to Crystal Dynamics and worked on the Avengers game. That kind of stuff happens. Then we went and hired a bunch of multiplayer first-person shooter experts to help us with Hardline. Cool. So to ship Hardline and go ‘hey you guys are now going to make a single-player third-person [game]…’ That’s the thing which is hard for me to get over.[/perfectpullquote]
Mumbach explains that after the staff resigned, EA told them to go back from making multiplayer games and continue on single-player story titles. However, this was an impossible task due to the expert’s departure from the studio.
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[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”#F5652F” class=”” size=”21″]”Who’s making this plan? There is no plan, obviously. We were experts at this [genre of] game two years ago and then we re-made our studio. And it was hard. And we pulled it off. And then it was like ‘go back to what you guys did before’. And we were like ‘well those guys who were good at what we did before left’.”[/perfectpullquote]
EA Games forced the studio to make massive cuts. EA’s haste to ship the cancelled Star Wars game began to affect the quality of the experience. In addition, during the two years of development, several sequences were nearly complete including gameplay people never got to see. Mumbach claims the studio had full levels which were playable which no one will ever see.
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”#F5652F” class=”” size=”21″]”This crazy AT-ST moment which was really cool. You were on foot running from it and it was trying to hunt you down but you were more agile, slipping through these alleyways, barrelling through and crashing and using all the destruction of Frostbite… You would have been like ‘oh that’s like Star Wars Uncharted’.”[/perfectpullquote]
So while EA cancelled Ragtag and shut down Visceral Games, they then decided to make Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order elsewhere. Sure, Jedi: Fallen Order was a success but the game cost a lot of money to make. LA is one of the most expensive placed to make a video game said Mumbach.
All of this sounds like typical EA Games. While we will most likely never see the cancelled Star Wars game in action, it sounds like it could have been pretty fantastic.