Open-World Star Wars Game May Still Use Uncharted Creator's Characters

EA Motive general manager Jade Raymond has shed more light on the status of the studio's open-world Star Wars game. She praised the strong talent at the team, and suggested that some of the work from Uncharted creator Amy Hennig put into her project won't go to waste.

The project, codenamed Ragtag, was in development at Visceral Games before the studio was shut down last year, and development transferred to Motive in Vancouver. The company indicated the move was to make the game less linear and to have a longer shelf-life, which included a shift to open-world. All the assets transferred over, and Raymond explained that Motive is still planning to use some of Visceral's work.

"We have three terabytes of Star Wars artwork, which is crazy, and there is a lot of really good work there," Raymond told Game Informer. "When we announced we were moving the game, the idea was pivoting more into player agency but still keeping a lot of the stuff that was great about it. There was a lot of really cool stuff like tons of assets and really cool characters that had been created. So, there's the goal of making sure we use all that."

Raymond also said that Ragtag had already been in development in collaboration with the team at Vancouver, so those core members have stayed in place. The team also includes vets from Skate, SSX, and Need for Speed. She also pointed out that it includes Black Box vets and others, so it's not just developers with sports and racing game experience.

"There are people who worked on Sleeping Dogs, a bunch of people who worked on Prototype, some who worked on a new IP that was kind of open world," Raymond said. "So, there is a mix of people from the original team and people who we supplemented."

Hennig recently made headlines by revealing that she was no longer with EA following the shutdown of Visceral, and said that her version of the game had been put on the shelf. Raymond's comments indicating they still plan to use her characters could mean that some parts of the story remain intact. Raymond is also overseeing another sci-fi project for EA at Motive, possibly unrelated to Star Wars.