Really exciting news from the Star Wars gaming front was announced today, as Lucasfilm Games and Ubisoft are working together to develop a brand new open-world Star Wars game!
The game will be developed by Massive Entertainment and will have Julian Gerighty as the creative director, and this game will be an answer to many fans’ repeated requests over the years: for a story-based, open-world game set in the Star Wars universe. Finally, it’s going to be happening.
This is thrilling news for Star Wars fans and video game fans, and it shows that a new era is beginning with the newly announced Lucasfilm Games brand. They’ve already announced an Indiana Jones game from Bethesda, and now this Star Wars game by Ubisoft. And by all indications, this is just the beginning.
Especially noteworthy in all of this is that it means that the era of EA’s exclusive Star Wars license is over. With the announcement that Ubisoft is developing this Star Wars game, it marks the first time a non-EA studio has worked on a Star Wars game since the exclusive deal was signed in 2012. But that doesn’t mean that EA is done working on Star Wars games by any means. “We’re really proud of the games we have created with EA,” Lucasfilm Games VP Douglass Reilly said in an interview with StarWars.com. “We will continue working with them and our relationship has never been stronger. While we may not have a lot of details to share at the moment, we’ve got a number of projects underway with the talented teams at EA.”
So really, this is the best of both worlds for Star Wars fans. EA has done some good stuff – Jedi: Fallen Order obviously stands out, while Battlefront II grew very strong by the end of its run and Squadrons was well-received. But at the same time, EA didn’t produce as many games as anyone expected, and even when they did, many of them were still fraught with controversy and poor reception. So it’s certainly time for the exclusive part of that license to come to an end, but moving forward I’m excited to see what EA can continue to do in the Star Wars universe, especially with the Fallen Order and Battlefront brands. And maybe the loss of the exclusivity will put some pressure on them to do it right, as now other studios will be trying to make great games in this same universe.
Overall, then, this is a huge announcement for Star Wars fans on multiple fronts – both because this game sounds like exactly what many have been wanting, and because for the first time in a long time, the future looks incredibly bright for the future of Star Wars gaming.
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