EA Cancels a Big Open-World STAR WARS Game in Favor of a Smaller Game They Can Push Out Faster

EA Games had been developing a big new open-world Star Wars game since 2018. They took on the project after they closed down Visceral Games. When previously talking about the project, they explained:

“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. 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.”

It sounded like it could be pretty promising! According to inside sources who talked to Kotaku, the project went by the code-named Orca, and it would have involved “playing as a scoundrel or bounty hunter who could explore various open-world planets and work with different factions across the Star Wars universe.”

Unfortunately, while the project was still early on in development, EA decided to cancel the ambitious game. It’s explained that the reason is because EA “decided that they needed something earlier than the planned release date for Orca, according to two people familiar with what happened. So they cancelled Orca in favor of a smaller-scale Star Wars project that’s now aimed for much sooner—likely, late 2020, which also happens to be around the time that I’ve heard next-gen consoles will launch”

That’s a shame. I would have loved to play an epic-scale open-world Star Wars game! There are some people at the studio who hope that Orca project might go back into production after this new smaller project is finished. I hope that’s the case!

It would be a shame for a great project like this to be completely killed off for a smaller game that they are looking to rush out for a deadline.