A new AAA open world Star Wars game is in development by EA’s Vancouver studio, GameSpot reports. The news, initially, was found in a EA job posting for a lead online engineer, though it looks like the publisher’s pulled any mention of open world after news hit. As of writing, open world isn’t mentioned once in the job listing.
Beyond the note about the open world, the listing also mentions maintenances of “high-traffic services for multi-platform games” and a need to “iterate, design, and implement improvements to live systems.”
This job is at EA Vancouver, which the publishers have said will lead development on the rebooted Visceral game. EA’s original statement also suggested that part of the reason they wanted to shift direction with the game was due to its linear focus, and an open-world game with online features would certainly fit with the subtext we saw at the time.
EA also have two separate listings for “Production Designer/Lead Concept Artist” on a Star Wars title, and these positions are both based at EA Redwood Shores – perhaps ironically, the former location of Visceral.
Visceral’s Star Wars game, codenamed Ragtag, was shaping up to be a linear, Uncharted-like action game. Though the cynical narrative around the studio’s shutdown was that this concept wasn’t monetizable enough, reports from inside the studio suggest that Ragtag’s development faced far greater problems.
While it’s hard to say what EA is planning with this open world Star Wars game, it could be a reboot of Visceral’s Star Wars game. Back in October, EA announced it was closing the studio, moving its Star Wars game to a new, unannounced studio. “[W]e are shifting the game to be a broader experience that allows for more variety and player agency, leaning into the capabilities of our Frostbite engine and reimagining central elements of the game to give players a Star Wars adventure of greater depth and breadth to explore,” EA Executive Vice President Patrick Söderlund said at the time.
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