Why Did the Star Wars Open-World Game Got Canceled by EA?

According to three sources close to Electronic Arts, the open-world Star Wars game has been canceled. Back in 2017, Visceral Games was shut down but the game continued to be developed in Vancouver by EA.

Visceral Games was developing their own Star Wars game through a project called Ragtag, a linear action-adventure game directed by Amy Hennig (Uncharted director). EA was previously assisting with the development of project Ragtag and then began working on that Star Wars game in October 2017 when they closed Visceral Games.

However, as they took over the game, Star Wars completely changed and only kept some art assets. This is how Star Wars completely morphed into an open-world game. How come that this project has died too?

Ragtag Versus Orca

EA hasn’t commented yet on their decision.

Back when Visceral was shut down, EA talked about the open-world game:

It has become clear that to deliver an experience that players will want to come back to and enjoy for a long time to come, we needed to pivot the design. A development team from across EA Worldwide Studios will take over development of this game, led by a team from EA Vancouver that has already been working on the project.

Last summer, EA announced the expansion of Motive studio (Jade Raymond as the lead) to Vancouver and executive Samantha Ryan began overseeing Motive in October, with Raymond later leaving the company.

According to Digital Overload, the open-world Star Wars game from EA was codenamed “Orca,” and it was in very early development. Some of the features it would have was to have players choose to play as a scoundrel or bounty hunter and explore open-world planets, working with some factions from the Star Wars Universe.

A Third Star Wars Project Began

However, EA’s decision-makers looked at project Orca’s planned release date and decided it took too long to develop. So they canceled it and chose a smaller-scale Star Wars project that should be pit in the late 2020 – conveniently around the time when the next-gen consoles from Sony and Microsoft will be launched.

The sources from inside EA said that even though the open-world Star Wars was canceled, nobody was fired and some people at the studio hope Orca will be restarted as the current project is finished.