According to a report by Wired, production of the game is
still in the early stages and nothing has been revealed about the characters or
setting, or how the game will fit into the Star Wars cinematic universe. The
project is being built using Massive’s proprietary Snowdrop game engine, under
The Division’s creative director, Julian Gerighty, who also worked on the
Prince of Persia and Far Cry franchises.
In a blogpost about the announcement, LucasFilm Games
vice-president Douglas Reilly said: “We know that fans of Star Wars value the
feeling of immersion – of being transported into the Star Wars galaxy and
moving through richly detailed environments. It’s fun to imagine what the team
at Massive can do within Star Wars by bringing their innovative spirit and
their commitment to quality.”
It is the second major announcement following Disney’s
decision to revive the Lucasfilm Games brand and take over production of games
based on Lucas properties. On Tuesday, Elder Scrolls and Fallout developer
Bethesda announced that it would be producing an Indiana Jones adventure, with
development duties going to MachineGames, the studio responsible for the
acclaimed series of shooters, set in an alternative timeline where the Nazis
won the second world war.
The revival of Lucasfilm Games, original formed by George
Lucas in 1982 and renamed LucasArts in 1990, is a change of direction for
Disney, which bought LucasFilm in 2012. The company closed LucasArts a year
later, switching to a licensing model to minimise its risk in the games market.
Publisher Electronic Arts signed an exclusive deal to develop and produce Star
Wars games, and released a string of titles including Jedi: Fallen Order and
the Star Wars Battlefront series. However, EA’s exclusive access has created a
bottleneck for Star Wars games, just as the wider brand is expanding. In
December, Disney announced a swathe of new movie and television projects to
capitalise on the success of the final Skywalker trilogy.
Since the Ubisoft announcement, Lucasfilm Games has
confirmed that Electronic Arts will still be working on Star Wars projects, but
no details have been given.
An epic open-world narrative adventure set in the Star Wars
universe is something fans have long called for. It has been almost 20 years
since the release of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the role-playing
adventure title that many consider the best Star Wars game ever created.
Veteran fans may well be hoping for revivals of older titles, especially the
X-Wing and Tie-Fighter space combat sims from the 1990s.
Referring to the revival of LucasFilm as a games producer,
Reilly said: “This is really the culmination of years of preparing to come out
and say, ‘We’re here, we’ve got a team of people, we’re going to make a lot of
great games, and here’s some new things you weren’t expecting from us’ […]
We’re going to continue to announce projects that are more representative of
the legacy of the old Lucasfilm Games that we’re now trying to live up to.”
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