Skydance New Media, the gaming wing of film & TV production company Skydance, in collaboration with Lucasfilm Games has revealed that they’re working on a brand new Star Wars game. Skydance New Media is a newly-formed studio, founded by game director Amy Henning of Uncharted fame, and EA veteran Julian Beak who was working on Visceral’s Star Wars game before it was axed.
Amy Hennig’s return to Star Wars
For those who don’t remember, Visceral Games was working on a single-player Star Wars game back in the day. The game’s infamous cancellation came as a surprise when EA shut down the studio, prematurely moving development to another studio where it was cancelled shortly after. Internally, and soon in the whole community, this title was called “Project Ragtag” and its cancellation has become a sort of gaming legend by now. Amy Hennig was leading development on Project Ragtag and it was said to be the Uncharted of Star Wars games due to her past as writer and director on Naughty Dog’s titular series. After the game was cancelled, Amy Hennig left EA in 2019 and told Eurogamer at the time “I’m not doing anything Star Wars”. Three years have passed since then, and it looks like time has worked its wonders. Even though Project Ragtag never materialized, Amy Hennig is returning to Star Wars and will get to make a proper Star Wars game after all. There are not many people in the world who get a second chance like this and Amy Hennig is certainly deserving of one. Hennig will spearhead development on Skydance New Media’s currently-unnamed Star Wars title. Here’s what she had to say about this opportunity: Skydance New Media describes the game as “a richly cinematic action-adventure game featuring an original story in the legendary Star Wars galaxy.” While there is very little chance that this endeavor will be a continuation of Project Ragtag as the game is officially done for, it could still live on in spirit. We could see many of the unutilized concepts of Visceral’s game finally come to fruition here as Amy Hennig is at helm. As for the studio behind this, Skydance New Media, despite being a new player, has already racked up quite the repertoire. Last year, they announced they were working on a new narrative-driven Marvel game, also featuring an original story. Since the studio’s formation, it has grown to include developers and artists with decades of AAA experience along with a diverse team of creative consultants from various entertainment mediums, such as film and comics. All that is basically a formal way of saying the upcoming game is in safe hands.
Stacked catalogue
Amy Hennig’s untitled Star Wars game comes as the sixth original game announced for Star Wars in the past two years. Currently, three other studios are working on a multitude of new Star Wars titles and Aspyr Media is remaking Knights of the Old Republic for current-gen consoles and PC. With another game added to the slate, one can only imagine how far this list will grow. Quantic Dream is developing “Star Wars: Eclipse“, a highly-ambitious Star Wars game that many believe is years out at this point. Ubisoft’s Massive Entertainment is also working on an unnamed open-world adventure. Lastly, Respawn Entertainment has three Star Wars projects under works including a sequel to Jedi Fallen Order, a new third-person shooter, and a borderline indie, strategy game in collaboration with Bit Reactor. As you can tell, Star Wars fans, at least those who’ve always wanted more interactive media from the franchise, will be eating good for the years to come. Though, one interesting thing to note here is that literally none of these games, including this one, even have a release window which presents a bleak picture of how much we’ll have to wait before we can actually play them. There might be a noticeable gap in release of Star Wars games between now and when all of the aforementioned titles hit the shelves. Still, this many games is an exciting thing for fans to look forward to nevertheless. Seeing how Amy Hennig got her second chance, now, it’s only fair we revive Star Wars 1313 and give people the Star Wars game that seemed far too ahead for its time. You can check out the full press release for this announcement here.
