This weekend at Star Wars Celebration 2019, EA and Respawn finally pulled the curtain back on Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, which they were very eager to identify as a good old-fashioned single-player adventure. That’s a bit surprising, as EA loves their “live service” games and recently shut down Visceral Games’ Star Wars project because it was too much of a straightforward single-player adventure.
Nevertheless, EA’s new marketing push is that Star Wars Jedi won’t have microtransactions, loot boxes, or any other kind of non-traditional monetization, and it never will.
No microtransactions. No loot boxes. And no, we won't be adding them. A single-player Star Wars story for those of you who are ready to become a Jedi. https://t.co/kTheWVBjJc
— EA Star Wars (@EAStarWars) April 13, 2019
Following these comments, Eurogamer caught up with Amy Hennig, who had been heading up Visceral’s Star Wars title (codenamed Ragtag) until it got canned. Needless to say, she was a bit perplexed by EA’s sudden change of heart regarding single-player adventures…
"It's odd! I have to be candid with you. I mean, it's coming from the EA Star Wars Twitter handle […] but I don't know whether it's implicitly referencing previous comments they made after our project was killed? […] I don't know why the change of heart happened, because that was very clearly not an acceptable plan when we were working on Ragtag! But you know, things change. [The decision to cancel Ragtag] was made in summer 2017. We found out in October 2017. So that's almost two years ago, and a lot has changed in that time, and there's been a pretty public and vocal backlash against the idea gamers don't want single-player games. […] Of course they do, of course we do!”
Interestingly, Hennig also revealed a few more tidbits about Ragtag – unlike the Uncharted games, it sounds like the game would have had multiplayer playable characters, completing different missions in tandem. The game also would have tied in tightly to the new Disney canon, presenting a story about the same size and scope as something like Rogue One. So yeah, it definitely sucks that we lost Ragtag, but hopefully Star Wars Jedi makes up for it to some degree.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order hits PC, Xbox One, and PS4 on November 15.
