One of the biggest tragedies for game fans is “Star Wars“was the cancellation of development Star Wars Project Ragtag from the now closed team Visceral Gamesknown for space horror Dead space, and industry veteran Amy Hennig, formerly holding one of the senior creative positions in Naughty dog…
Although the general public knew about “Star Wars“Visceral Games very little, it is known for certain that before the cancellation of the project, the authors managed to achieve significant progress in their work. The ambitious creation was recently recalled by its former producer Zach Mumbachpodcast contributor MinnMaxShow…
Mumbah quite openly criticized some of the strategic decisions of the publishing house Electronic Artswhich, in his opinion, negatively affected Visceral Games, its employees and ultimately led to the closure of the studio…
“Events developed as follows. Management [Electronic Arts] comes to understand: we have a studio specializing in single-player games, specifically the Dead Space series, and in the end we take this team, hand it the Frostbite toolkit and instruct it to make a new release of Battlefield.
And okay, I accepted what happened and continued to work on. But the team had a lot of specialists specifically on the issue of story-oriented single-player adventures, and these people then had to leave us. Which, in principle, is also quite normal. Some of them eventually moved to Crystal Dynamics, where they are now working on Marvel’s Avengers. This happens in the industry. To replace the departed employees, we are hiring first-person shooter developers who help us with [Battlefield] Hardline. Yeah, no questions here either.
But when [EA] asked me to start again creating a single player game from a third person – this is simply beyond my understanding.
Who drew up the entire work plan? Nobody, obviously. We were experts in a specific genre and reorganized our studio in no time. It was difficult. We did it. And then they tell you – return everything as it was and do your usual business. All we had to do was say that those who were good at doing what you need now have already quit, “explains Zach Mumbach.
Going back to Star Wars, the developer expressed confidence that he and his team were doing something really special. Together with Amy Hennig they could well have made one of the best games in the history of the Star Wars brand, if not the best, Mumbach said.
“Amy Hennig herself was with us, every chance to make the best Star Wars game ever made, a real contender for the best project of the year. We could handle it. The whole foundation, the plot, the characters. in the implementation of the plan, but it took time. “
At that time, the industry was dominated by multiplayer games, and several years after the beginning of the creation of Star Wars from Visceral Games, representatives of EA openly stated that single-player adventures like Uncharted did not fit into its strategy, as supposedly “gamers don’t like it as before”…
“And when we were shut down, one of EA’s executive producers kept saying that about PUBG… Even letters were sent to everyone saying that no one needed single games anymore. The only pity is that they did not come to this conclusion two years earlier, “- continues to explain the former producer of the excellent game.
A separate moment of the conversation was devoted to how deeply Project Ragtag managed to advance in development. Mumbach’s strong disappointment with the cancellation is primarily because Visceral Games has gone a long way and created a whole series of nearly complete levels and vibrant scenes that no one has ever seen.…
“We had so much gameplay that no one was able to show in the end … Whole levels, albeit incomplete, but very close to that. In fact, one fully completed scene, we put the final polish on it right before closing. an episode with an AT-ST war machine, where you flee from it, break through narrow streets, watch the destructibility processed by the Frostbite engine. In a word, something that would make everyone mistake our game for Star Wars Uncharted “, concluded Zach Mumbach.
Interestingly, following the closure of Visceral Games and public criticism, EA commissioned Respawn Entertainment to create a single AAA Star Wars game, and it proved to be hugely successful, shattering the notion that solo projects are worthless. According to Jason Schreier, EA has already given the green light to the production of the sequel to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.
Read also: Fans of The Last of Us Part II for PlayStation 4 will be pleased with another innovation…
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