slight change of plans —

EA shuts down Visceral, will reboot its Star Wars game due to “marketplace”

Dead Space’s creators are gone; outlook fuzzy on Amy Hennig’s single-player SW game.

EA has now dramatically shifted the development of the above unnamed Star Wars game. This image is from E3 2016; Visceral's game had long been hidden from the public with a way-off release target of 2019.
EA has now dramatically shifted the development of the above unnamed Star Wars game. This image is from E3 2016; Visceral's game had long been hidden from the public with a way-off release target of 2019.
EA

EA packed a double-whammy announcement into a single post on its blog on Tuesday. The company announced the dissolution of an internal game studio and a substantial reboot of that studio's upcoming, unnamed Star Wars game.

Visceral Games, which began life as EA Redwood Shores in 1998, is now "ramping down." Members of its staff are being moved to "as many other projects" as possible, according to EA executive Patrick Söderlund. The studio is best known for the Dead Space trilogy, along with a number of '90s and '00s games in the Lord of the Rings and 007 franchises.

Visceral had most recently snagged headlines because the studio had been put in charge of one of EA's upcoming, unnamed Star Wars games. The project was being led by all-star game industry vet Amy Hennig (best known for the Uncharted series). That game appears to have been all but blown up, as per Söderlund's lengthy-yet-vague statement. "It was shaping up to be a story-based, linear game," he starts, only to describe "feedback about what and how [fans] want to play" and "fundamental shifts in the marketplace."

Söderlund then confirms that the only things being retained from Visceral's project are "the stunning visuals, authenticity in the Star Wars universe, and focus on bringing a Star Wars story to life." The rest?

"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," Söderlund writes. "We are shifting the game to be a broader experience that allows for more variety and player agency."

With those changes comes a delay to the game's original, vague "2019" window, which has been changed to... no window at all. A date will be announced in the future, EA says.

The statement didn't touch on Amy Hennig's continued involvement with the formerly Visceral game. Meanwhile, Kotaku's Jason Schreier said on Twitter that an EA spokesperson told him, "We are in discussions with Amy [Hennig] about her next move."

What's to come, then? The above description describes the game's story-based, linear origins in the past tense. Söderlund's vague description about "a Star Wars adventure of greater depth and breadth to explore," along with his acknowledgement of marketplace shifts, suggest anything from a Destiny-like, always-online adventure to some sort of Ewok-driven loot-box nightmare.

Channel Ars Technica