Cancelled STAR WARS: MAGELLAN Action-RPG Revealed in Gameplay Footage, and It Looked Pretty Cool
Another Star Wars game has joined the increasingly painful collection of projects fans will never get to play. New footage has surfaced from Star Wars: Magellan, a cancelled multiplayer action-RPG featuring playable Jedi and Mandalorian characters, lightsaber combat, Force powers, blasters, loot, and plenty of enemies to tear through.
The footage comes from a project that was in development at Echtra Games, the studio founded by developers with experience on the Diablo and Torchlight franchises.
Zynga acquired Echtra in 2021, and at the time announced that the team was developing "a new, yet to be announced role-playing game (RPG) for cross-platform play, in partnership with Zynga's NaturalMotion studio."
It now appears that mystery RPG was Star Wars: Magellan. The project never made it to an official reveal. Echtra Games was shut down last June, bringing development to an end.
More than a year later, MP1st discovered footage from the game in the portfolio of a former Echtra developer, whose identity and role on the project have been kept anonymous.
What survived gives us a surprisingly interesting look at what Echtra was building. The material includes third-person gameplay along with character models and animation showcases, and the game was described on-screen as a "multiplayer ARPG" built around the familiar and dangerously addictive idea to "shoot & loot."
Gameplay features both a Jedi and a Mandalorian battling groups of enemies, with each character offering a completely different style of combat.
The Jedi gets right into the action with lightsaber attacks, acrobatic moves, and Force abilities. The Mandalorian brings the heavy hardware, relying primarily on blasters and a jetpack to move around the battlefield and unload on enemies.
It's easy to see how those contrasting playstyles could have worked nicely in a multiplayer action-RPG, especially if Echtra planned to expand the roster with additional Star Wars archetypes and abilities.
There was apparently more to the game than blasting through enemies and collecting gear. The report also claims Star Wars: Magellan featured a system that allowed players to bond with NPCs, suggesting relationships with supporting characters would have played some part in the RPG experience and its story.
The game was being developed for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S before Echtra's closure killed the project.
Seeing actual gameplay has Star Wars fans adding another title to the franchise's long list of cancelled games they wish had survived. It really is a shame that this game was cancelled, but it's always cool and interesting when footage like this leaks out.
Cancelled games are fascinating because we're usually looking at something that was never intended for public consumption. There are unfinished animations, placeholder elements, incomplete mechanics, and ideas that may have changed considerably before release.
At the same time, you can sometimes see the foundation of something that could have turned into a seriously fun game.
A multiplayer Star Wars action-RPG where Jedi and Mandalorians have distinctive combat styles, players tear through groups of enemies for loot, and NPC relationships add an RPG layer to the experience sounds like it had plenty of potential.
At least we got a glimpse of Star Wars: Magellan. Unfortunately, that glimpse also gives fans one more cancelled Star Wars game that we wish we could’ve played.