New Rumor States ‘Star Wars: Eclipse’ May Still Be 3-4 Years Away
On Friday, December 9, the upcoming Star Wars video games list got a new entry. The 2021 Game Awards Lucasfilm Games and Quantic Dreams announced Star Wars Eclipse. The press release describes the game as a mix of “action gameplay and intricate branching narrative to create a unique and epic experience.” Together with the announcement, a massive cinematic trailer was released, in scale and quality at least equal to those that came out before Bioware’s Knights of The Old Republic.
Despite the trailer showing that Eclipse is already quite far into its development cycle, the press release also stated that the game is currently “in early stages of development.” An insider of the gaming industry now weighs in with some good and some not-so-good news on the current state of Star Wars Eclipse.
RELATED: 'Star Wars Eclipse' Trailer Breakdown
The game will be set in The High Republic, a period roughly between 200 and 82 years before the Battle of Yavin when the Republic and the Jedi Order were at their height. So far, this era has been covered by several books for adults, young adults, and young readers and by several comic series both from Marvel and IDW. Overall The High Republic is a very ambitious multi-year project by Lucasfilm, structured in three phases – Light of the Jedi, Quest of the Jedi, and Trials of the Jedi. The third and final wave of Light of the Jedi will kick off with Claudia Gray’s novel The Fallen Star in January of 2022.
Neither the press release nor the trailer gave away when in this period of more than 200 years Eclipse will be set. The trailer also didn’t include any hint of the Nihil, the marauder gangs that are the main antagonists of the Jedi and the Republic in the current publications. Furthermore, it showed several battleships of the Trade Federation that look pretty similar to those in the prequel trilogy. So it is a fair guess that the game will probably take place at the end of The High Republic era, much like the upcoming Disney+ series Acolyte.
Tom Henderson, a freelance writer for Video Games Chronicle, IGN, and Real Gaming Intel, tweeted on December 10 that the game is likely 3-4 years away. Developing massive video games like Eclipse is similar to making big blockbuster movies, concerning the budget and the time it takes until the final product can be released, so this assumption is all but implausible.
He also wrote that Quantum Dreams is currently having trouble hiring talented employees, much like many other IT companies. Eclipse will be developed both at the headquarter of Quantum Dream in Paris and in Montreal. The company’s job board currently shows more the 70 open positions, most of them in France, including writers, animators, game designers, programmers, and quality assurance. Of course, not all of these people will work on Eclipse, but as the game is the biggest project for the company so far, it is safe to assume that most new hires will be involved in developing the game one way or another. Quantum Dream’s inability to recruit the necessary workforce in time could push out the release date of Eclipse even further.
A few things on #StarWarsEclipse
— Tom Henderson (@_Tom_Henderson_) December 10, 2021
- Being written by QD Paris (David Cage is very much involved)
- Eclipse is believed to be around 3-4 years away MINIMUM
- QD Paris is currently struggling with hiring staff (I wonder why)
In a subsequent tweet, Henderson also stated that the game engine that Quantum Dreams has used for its previous games wasn’t built for an open-world game, which appears to be the concept for Eclipse, creating another big challenge for the development team. So far, nearly all of Quantum Dreams Games like Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain, or their most recent release Detroit: Becoming Human have been more or less interactive films, but with a powerful narrative, and this is where the good news comes in. David Cage (real name: David De Gruttola), who founded Quantum Dreams in 1997 and who, as a writer, is responsible for the deep and clever storytelling of all of the company’s games, will also be the writer for Eclipse.
So it seems that fans will have to wait quite some time until more details of the upcoming game will surface, but Star Wars video game fans should have learned to be patient by now. Ubisoft’s massive open-world Star Wars game was announced nearly one year ago without any significant update on the progress since then, and it might not come out until 2024.
As for games that might actually be released in the foreseeable future, there is Hunters, which also has been pushed back to sometime in 2022, and LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, which hopefully will finally see the light of day in the spring of 2022 after several postponements.
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Source(s): Screen Rant