EA reportedly cancelled a Star Wars Battlefront spin-off last year
"'Too many cooks' was a running theme," say sources.
We've been awash with rumours of cancelled Star Wars games in recent years, and here's another: EA reportedly cancelled a third Star Wars game last year, this one purportedly a spinoff of the Star Wars Battlefront series.
Codenamed Viking internally, the shooter was initially expected to release in 2020 as part of Microsoft and Sony's next-gen console line-up, but when timescales slipped, the game was allegedly cancelled, making it the third Star Wars game to succumb to development hell alongside Amy Hennig's Ragtag and EA Vancouver's Orca.
According to a new report by Kotaku, six individual insiders shared the news on the proviso the outlet did not compromise their anonymity. It's reported that "EA Vancouver spent some time designing ideas and prototypes for Viking, and Criterion came aboard soon afterward", but "that was when the problems started".
"Although Criterion was, on paper, the lead studio, the logistical challenges of cross-country game development made that a difficult proposition," Kotaku says. "As one person involved with the game said,'"too many cooks' was a running theme."
It's now thought EA has two Star Wars games in development; a sequel to Jedi Fallen Order at Respawn and a "smaller, more unusual" game at EA Motive in Canada.
Electronic Arts' fan-favourite Star Wars RPG series, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, is also reportedly getting a reboot. It's thought the game will "integrate elements from the first two titles in order to bring certain things into the current Star Wars canon".
While rumours of a KOTOR reboot are floated fairly often, the source site did accurately leak news of an upcoming Obi-Wan TV show last year, which makes the rumour all the more plausible. It's unclear whether the reboot is in the hands of original developer BioWare or if it's been passed to another studio in the EA family but as always, we'll keep you posted as/when we find out more.
