EA rumoured to have cancelled Open-World Star Wars game

The Open-World Star Wars game that was in production by EA Vancouver has been rumoured to be cancelled according to sources from  Kotaku . The project was announced by the company pairing with the closure of  Visceral Games in October 2017.  Since then, it had been in development at EA’s considerably large team in their Vancouver office.

So, what did this Star Wars Vancouver project entail?

EA Vancouver, who mostly handles support for the publisher’s trademark titles including FIFA and Battlefront, had kept information and news about the title previously code-named as Ragtag mostly under wraps, with no footage shown publicly. The change of direction of the game is likely the cause of this.  It was reported as originally being a linear action-adventure game  when it was under the control of Visceral and Uncharted director Amy Hennig.  When EA Vancouver took over however, this was a different story.

The project was ‘rebooted’ from almost the ground up, only keeping some art assets and then boasting it as an open-world game.  EA detailed this change and stated at the time that “the design needed to be pivoted in order to deliver an experience that the players will want to come back to and enjoy for a long time to come.”

Star Wars has been an important piece of the EA puzzle in the past few years with the release of both Star Wars Battlefront and Star Wars Battlefront II. Respawn, another company now helmed by EA is also currently working on a Star Wars title called Jedi: The Fallen Order and is slated to be released in the last quarter of 2019. EA is yet to respond to these cancellation rumours and this leaves much to be questioned about what EA Vancouver’s future projects will be.

Given EA’s history with the Star Wars name does this come as a surprise to you? Let us know in the comments below.