Gary Whitta, writer of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, has not minced his words when discussing the recent cancellation of yet another Star Wars game at EA.
The title was originally under the directorship of Uncharted’s Amy Hennig but the game, codenamed Ragtag, was reviewed internally and cut back, resulting in Amy leaving the project. Visceral Games, the chaps behind the classic Dead Space who were working on the project were shut down and Ragtag became Orca, a much more focused, smaller project. It seems Gary saw the original version of the game and he’s not happy with EA.
“I saw a bunch of that game and it looked terrific. After it was cancelled I saw some stuff, I saw what they had up that point, it was far from finished but it looked amazing, it would have been Star Wars Uncharted which I’m very excited about,” he said.
“My understanding is what they [EA] were saying all the way through is that we don’t want to make Star Wars Uncharted. Well, maybe don’t hire the narrative director of the Uncharted games to make it for you, and figure out what it is you actually want?”
Star Wars Uncharted? Where do we sign up?!?
Gary also laid in to EA for messing up micro transactions in Battlefront II, “If I was an EA shareholder, I’d be f**king furious,” he added, “It has been catastrophically mismanaged.”
Source: KindaFunny via WeGotThisCovered
TSBonyman
Not just disappointing for anyone with an ounce of interest in Star Wars but a shameful waste of talent and resources.
ron_mcphatty
Very true. Plus, how would this not have made them a healthy profit? It’s all just crushing, such a waste of the Star Wars buzz.
PoorPaddy89
Not just the disappointment, but the disappointwoment and the disappointchildrent too.
Jag
The sooner EA lose the Star Wars licence the better.
Imagine if it was handled like Marvel where they look for developers that make sense.
Spider-Man was such a great game and ridiculously successful and it was a single player game without microtransactions!
EA are fools to think a single player linear Uncharted style Star Wars game wouldn’t have made them lots of money, even without long term live services and monetisation. I mean Aliens Colonial Marines wasn’t even a good game and it sold well based on its licence alone.
The Battlefront games are solid games and the second game only bombed because EA were too greedy. If only they had designed the game without microtransactions in mind and it would have been a hit for them.
Star Wars is probably one of the few franchises that could go toe to toe with Rockstar’s games and maybe even Fortnite for popularity if it was handled like a first party Sony game.
gernboes
I actually just listened to this particular podcast, and if I’m not mistaken, you mixed things up quite a bit
“chaps behind the classic Dead Space who working on the project were shut down and Ragtag became Orca, a much more focused, smaller project.” Ragtag indeed became Orca, but Orca wasn’t something smaller, more focused but an even more ambitious open world game instead of the story focused Ragtag. They now cancelled Orca in favour of something smaller, more focused, scheduled for late 2020 – Orca would have taken longer and they want (and need) something to show earlier, but may pick up Orca later again.
Also, there’s a word missing here: “chaps behind the classic Dead Space who [???] working on the project”
gazzagb
Would Disney get a percentage of each game’s profits, or would the licence be a 1-time payment from EA? Star Wars Battelfront should have been printing money, instead EA got everything they could wrong on it.
Tuffcub
They would have got a huge payment up front and a percentage of each game sold.
gazzagb
Gotcha, thanks
RadicalMave
I feel that most people are blaming EA for this catastrophic mismanagement of the star wars license. However it was Disney that sold/gave the license to EA in the first place. When the core of the franchise is rotten then its bound to spread. After the travesty of the The Last Jedi and the constant failures of EA it is truly a dark time for the star wars fan base.