With the closure of Visceral Studios, many wondered if EA was done with an open-world ’Star Wars’ game. But they’re not giving up yet.
Before it was closed recently, Visceral Studios, the team behind Dead Space, had spent years developing an open-world Star Wars game. After the shuttering, it looked as if EA wasn’t going to bother, but it appears the project lives on.
GameSpot found a job posting where EA explicitly states it’s for an “open-world Star Wars game.” By itself, it’s not surprising. Five years of work went into the game, after all, although it appears the problem was that Visceral made, well, pretty much what you’d expect a Star Wars game to be, “a story-based, linear adventure game,” according to EA execs. Instead they want a game more like Grand Theft Auto Online, where players keep returning over months and years.
Honestly, Grand Theft Speeder seems like it’d move a few million copies, persistent open world or not. And we have to wonder if creating a “persistent” game really lends itself to the world of Star Wars, a franchise that’s defined by adventure stories and strong protagonists and antagonists.
Once you start digging into the world of Star Wars, nothing really makes any sense. Why is the Emperor spending lavishly on useless defense projects? Why does a gangster basically live in the middle of nowhere on a planet nobody cares about? Once you start handing out fetch quests and heisting Sun Eater plans, that veneer will wear through fast. That said, if they really want to make money, we’ve got three words: Cabela’s Ewok Hunter. Think about it: It wouldn’t even be weird for that franchise.
(via GameSpot)
