Ubisoft Releases Statement About Open World 'Star Wars' Game, Calling It "Groundbreaking"
Lucasfilm Games was founded in 1982 as a subsidiary of Lucasfilm Ltd. and created some amazing (and some less amazing) games, both within the Star Wars universe (like X-Wing, TIE Fighter, The Force Unleashed, among many others) and outside of it, like Sam & Max or the Maniac Manson series.
In 2005, the company was renamed to LucasArts and started to move away from developing games inhouse, opting to license their IP to other developer studios. In the following years, LucasArts went through a lot of restructuring with changing leaderships and no clear direction.
When George Lucas sold his company to Disney, this also included LucasArts, which gave the license to create Star Wars games for consoles and PCs to Electronic Arts (EA) in May of 2013.
Since then, EA has released four major titles: Battlefront I and II (2015 and 2017), Jedi: Fallen Order (2019) and Squadrons (2020).
While the two recent Battlefront games had to face rather harsh backlash both from critics and gamers, for reasons like a lack of story for the first game or an excessive use of micro transactions in the second one (which was at least partly removed after a storm of complaints), the single player game Jedi: Fallen Order and the both single- and multiplayer game Squadrons both got a lot of praise.
So, the reason why many gamers are still not happy with the performance of EA is less to do with the quality of the games, and more to do with their quantity: just four games in seven years. There were some more games at least rumored to come out from EA, but none of them saw the light of day.
In January of 2021 Lucasfilm announced that they were rebranding the company back to Lucasfilm Games and that they would work with other studios and publishers, thus basically signaling the impending end of the EA exclusivity, in a move to get more titles into the hands of gamers.
In the wake of this announcement, it was also revealed the Ubisoft (together with Massive Entertainment) will be creating “a story-driven open world game,” something that fans have requested for what feels like forever.
Ubisoft has a lot of experience in creating open world games, as they are the company behind theAssassin's Creedand theFar Cryseries. Furthermore, Massive is the company behindTom Clancy’s The Division.
At a recent earnings call, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot did reveal that the game, which is still in early development, will be based on the Snowdrop engine that is also used for The Division:
“The project will be headed by our Massive studio, who will make the most of their cutting-edge technology, including the Snowdrop engine, to deliver a groundbreaking Star Wars adventure.”
So it seems to be a sure thing that the game’s graphics will be impressive, especially on the next gen consoles. But getting an open world game set within the Star Wars universe off the ground will be a tough project even for a company with the size and the experience of Ubisoft and the technology available to them.
The game, by far, is not the only project Ubisoft and Massive are working on. They will move forward with Far Cry 6 as well as with their The Division franchise, and will also develop a game that is based on James Cameron’s Avatar sequels. All of these are expected to come out before the Star Wars open world game, so a release date before 2024 is highly unlikely, although Guillemot didn’t give away any official information on this matter:
“We didn’t mention any specific dates. The game is at an early stage of development so we will have to wait a bit before telling you more about timing.”
Secondly, it remains to be seen what “open world” actually means in the context of the Star Wars game: Will the player be able to create their own character, or take the role of a “predefined” Jedi, Sith, or bounty hunter? Is “open” limited to moving around on one planet, or will it be possible to hop on a spaceship and travel to other worlds to complete a mission (basically an “open galaxy” game)? A storyline that's just based on one planet would probably be disappointing for many fans, as unlike Assassin’s Creed, Star Wars is predestined for multi-planet action. But the bigger the scope of the game gets, the bigger also the amount of work that Massive has to put into their project.
Ultimately, as with any form of entertainment, the success of the game will boil down to how immersive the story and the depth of the characters will be, in order to capture the players and to keep them invested long term. This is especially true for Star Wars, as the story of this game most probably will become part of official canon, and it will be assessed in this respect. So, Ubisoft and Massive will have to find and hire some amazing writers for their project, in addition to the designers and developers.
While Lucasfilm Games is looking for other partners to work with on future projects, EA will continue to create Star Wars games, as their license runs at least until 2023, and sequels to Battlefront and Fallen Order seem to be a sure thing. But until these projects are officially announced - possibly at E3 in June of this year - and we get further information on Ubisoft’s open world game, players can look forward to LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, to be released in the spring of 2021. Maybe not as epic and challenging as an open world game, but surely a lot of fun to play.
Source(s): The Direct, Video Game Chronicle