In recent news, Electronic Arts announced that Visceral Games will be “ramping down” and “closing,” which will see Amy Hennig “reportedly” leaving from the Star Wars story-driven project nicknamed “Ragtag” according to another publication site.
Publication site PCGamer recently found out through an internal email that Amy Hennig is no longer on board. The site notes that a development team from Worldwide Studios will take over development of “Ragtag” led by EA Vancouver.
The publication site also touches on that Steve Anthony will lead this team, which will use as much of the work that Visceral Games created. This coincides with the letter that EA just wrote up and posted on its main site:
“Our Visceral studio has been developing an action-adventure title set in the Star Wars universe. In its current form, it was shaping up to be a story-based, linear adventure game. Throughout the development process, we have been testing the game concept with players, listening to the feedback about what and how they want to play, and closely tracking fundamental shifts in the marketplace. 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.”
The letter goes on to explain that…
“We will maintain the stunning visuals, authenticity in the Star Wars universe, and focus on bringing a Star Wars story to life. Importantly, we are shifting the game to be a broader experience that allows for more variety and player agency, leaning into the capabilities of our Frostbite engine and reimagining central elements of the game to give players a Star Wars adventure of greater depth and breadth to explore.”
This means that a lot of things will not be the same regarding the Star wars game and that we should expect something different, although the story-driven game had a ways to go before becoming available for public consumption. The next part to the letter reads:
“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. Our Visceral studio will be ramping down and closing, and we’re in the midst of shifting as many of the team as possible to other projects and teams at EA.”
This move does not sit well with gamers after finding out that back on August 1st, 2017, a new BioWare Montreal studio — the ones responsible for Mass Effect: Andromeda — is currently “helping” the unannounced Star Wars project.
Lastly, EA planned to launch the Star Wars story-driven game late in fiscal year 2019, but now the title has a new time-frame that EA will announce in the future.
