New Star Wars Game on the Horizon

An announcement for another Star Wars game on its own perhaps isn’t really too surprising. What might be more surprising would be if it didn’t get cancelled before it launched. Cynicism aside though, this was all under the EA umbrella as they held the exclusive licensing rights to produce games in the Star Wars franchise.

The surprising part here is Ubisoft’s involvement. Clearly the exclusive agreement with EA isn’t looking to carry on beyond the 2023 end date, although Disney have declared they will continue to work with EA in a non-exclusive capacity.

Not too much has been said about the Ubisoft Star Wars game yet, except that it will be a ‘story-driven open-world game’ and that it is in the hands of Massive (developers of The Division and The Division 2).

We also know that like The Division games, it will be powered by Massive’s own ‘Snowdrop’ engine and Julian Gerighty will helm as creative director. A role he also held for The Division 2 and The Crew.

With that set of facts, I’m now about to say something potentially sacrilegious to the Star Wars fanbase…

Dear Lord I would be all-in for a Star Wars meets Division game.

I’ve already admitted though that I’m an all-out sucker for the looter-shooter genre and yeah, even live-service titles, despite the recurrent disappointments that can crop up in this space.

Although on the live-service front- I think this term has become analogous with ‘crappy launch, patch it later’ and suffice to say that I’m not a fan of. Perhaps what might be more accurate to say is that I love and adore when a game continues to evolve and receive significant post-launch updates to systems and content.

There are cases of this being done well — Monster Hunter: World I would hold up as a shining example of this, and I would even argue that The Division 2 did this pretty well too.

If this ends up being more of a standard Ubisoft single-player focused open-world game my interest level (for now, at least) tanks considerably. This is not to say I wouldn’t eventually become hyped for it in the future but the excitement for the sheer potential of it all at this early stage dampens markedly.

I’m picturing some cross between the Star War’s MMO and The Division at the moment and that’s an experience I really want to get my hands on.