A/V No Bigger Luke Here- Massive Star Wars Video Game - Star Wars Outlaws!

https://kotaku.com/ea-shuts-down-visceral-games-1819623990



EA is shutting down Visceral Games, the studio behind games like Battlefield Hardline and Dead Space, the publisher said today. The Star Wars game in development at Visceral will be revamped and move to a different studio, EA says, although it will now be something completely different.

“Our Visceral studio has been developing an action-adventure title set in the Star Wars universe,” EA’s Patrick Söderlund said in a blog post. “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.”
Söderlund added that Visceral will be “ramping down and closing” and that “we’re in the midst of shifting as many of the team as possible to other projects and teams at EA.”

“Lastly,” he said, “while we had originally expected this game to launch late in our fiscal year 2019, we’re now looking at a new timeframe that we will announce in the future.”

Sadly, this means that we're never getting Dead Space 4.

:sad face:

 

This game seemed so cool, I knew it would never come out.


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I'm angry at these people right now.

 

Star Wars game development is dead and has been since 2011. I don't find Visceral's closure all that surprising since EA is a terrible publisher and much of Visceral's output was never all that great.

 

Doesn't change the fact that Project Ragtag looked much more like the kind of SW game I like than any of the new Battlefront could ever be. And let's not even speak of the no-scenario iOS games.

 

Figures, this Star Wars game was the only one that seemed like it might have the chance to be something different and interesting. Battlefront I and II are mostly just generic shooters (the first one didn't even have an offline mode or something like that). Not a surprise, considering its EA, but between Visceral and Amy Henning I had a little bit of hope. Not anymore now.

And of course there's basically no chance for Dead Space 4 ever now (unless some other company buys up the rights, but that's doubtful and would at the very least take years, kind of like Darksiders). Not that I ever liked that series much, but I didn't want it to end at 3.

I honestly forget if there's any other games in development, though that's probably partially due to all the focus being on Battlefront II at the moment. Well, aside from whatever cash grab mobile game is active at the moment (and the ship one is still a ways off).

 

Mind you, EA's complaints about the game seem to be "it was a linear corridor shooter."

Unfortunately, it also seems their complaint was, "It wasn't Multiplayer we can milk for microtransactions."

 

Sad that the game that looks like it had the most potential is the one that got cancelled/pivoted design.

What's wrong with doing a decent, story driven, single player game?!

 

Indeed. Not everyone likes multiplayer. I don't. And so far, the only canon Star Wars games you can play on your own have no story--except BTF 2, of course.
This is irritating.
I don't want games in which get gunned down by people who've basically played that kind of thing all their life and then just teabag you character's corpse while chatting in terrible English.
I want a story, and a new one. I want a KOTOR, a Jedi Academy.

 

Yeah, I can't get too angry about this because I'm already pretty much at Full Zeta when it comes to Star Wars gaming anyway. Even Battlefront 2 is just a case of being interested in the story, but not really the game itself.

 

(my emphasis)

Yeah and the success of Horizon: Zero Dawn proves there is a substantive market for this type of game.

 

There's no indication that this is shifting over into a multiplayer game. It sounds more like they've shifting from a linear, one and done, story-focused game (aka a playable movie) into a more open world style of gameplay that people can replay.

 

What do you think the odds are that we get an announcement soon that the Battlefront II campaign has been converted into a DLC expansion that won't be available until six months after launch?

Also can I point out that this is the SECOND time this has happened to a linear "Uncharted-style" star wars game *Cough 1313 *Cough!

 

Which really kills video games as an artform.

 

True. I'm possibly reacting prematurely, but the statement they issued doesn't really inspire confidence.

Personal preference, I'd much prefer a good "playable movie" game than an sprawling open world just for the sake of it. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time was a short game but it was an absolute joy to play, I must have replayed it at least half a dozen times and love coming back to it. Same for Batman: Arkham Asylum (though I only replayed that once). I'd much rather something like that than a big open world just for the sake of it.

If we get Breath of the Wild I'll take all this back in a heart beat, but if we get something like Assassin's Creed (relatively short main game padded out by extra achievements) then I'd much rather have the playable movie.

 

I don't get it either what's the problem with a focused, story driven game. Not everyone wants the promise of a billion hours of gametime. Today gameplay seems to be turned into habit forming mechanisms disguised as gaming. I know it's about business, and that's all right, but why is the push towards this mobile gaming based mechanisms that are as far from a gameplay experience as possible and resemble more to gambling or some tedious work with the 'reward' of some actual gameplay for your time. Anyways, deep down I still hope that we will get a decent single player action adventure in the Star Wars universe as Battlefront however beautiful, being a multiplayer game it is is not something we can enjoy in our own rhythm, so the immersion gets broken regularly.

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This is notably why Walt Williams left game writing until returning to write Battlefront 2.

https://www.amazon.com/Significant-...&qid=1508336886&sr=8-1&keywords=Walt+Williams



He basically grew sick of the repetitiveness of games being designed around justifying violence as well as minimizing story beyond, "You are the Big HeroTM." Which makes it interesting that he's the guy writing for Inferno Squad's journey across four hours of gameplay.

 

This is exactly it. I loved the early Assassin's Creed games but they became extremely stale and repetitive with the touted gametime artificially inflated by a bunch of collectibles that do very little other than tick a box to say you've completed it (being fair I've not played Unity or Syndicate so I don't know if they've fixed this or not). I remember a requirement for full sync (completion) in Assassin's Creed 3 was to fully uncover the map. In previous games this was done by viewpoints but they didn't fully uncover the map in 3, so they literally made an objective of completion to go everywhere in the open world, even though you'd done everything else so you knew there was nothing left to be discovered in the final few uncovered areas. Anyone can make a 60-70 hour game if they count going everywhere on the map as part of that time.

Nintendo seemed to master making the open world inviting and rewarding in Breath of the Wild. I wanted to explore that world, it pulled me in. But it did feel that sacrificed story to do it. So whilst I'd love a Star Wars that played like that, I'd want more from the story. There has to be a way to do that.

 

As other posters have eloquently said, it's not just about THIS game. There's an industry-wise problem, and it's not about to get any better. Shouldn't we... grab our torches and pitchforks or something?

 

If you think the only way video games can be art is by imitating cinema. I'm annoyed by this, too, but a video game doesn't need to be a "playable movie" to qualify as art. You may as well argue that only photorealistic paintings deserve a place in galleries.

 

More meat for the slaughter that is Electronic Arts.

 

Why does the video game market have to try to maximize milking the consumer all the time instead of telling a story?

 

Greed.