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Star Wars Star Wars open world game in development at Ubisoft

Wunderbar

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Nov 15, 2015
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8,825
https://www.ign.com/articles/star-wars-game-ubisoft-open-world-story-the-division-massive

Open World Star Wars Game in Development at Ubisoft
The start of a "long-term collaboration" between Ubisoft and Disney.

Ubisoft is working on a story-driven, open world Star Wars game with Lucasfilm Games. The Division developer, Ubisoft Massive will develop the new game. According to Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, it marks the start of a "long-term collaboration" with Disney.

No other gameplay details have been announced, and Massive is "actively recruiting" for the project. The game will utilise the Snowdrop engine used for the studio’s Division games, and Division 2 director Julian Gerighty will direct this project too. No indication has been given as to whether Massive's Star Wars game would be single or multiplayer, what part of the Star Wars timeline it would be a part of, or when it might be released.

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot did give a small tease to Wired, saying the game will be "an original Star Wars adventure that is different from anything that has been done before." Lucasfilm also told Wired that all Star Wars games would continue to be treated as canon alongside the film TV, book, and comic releases.

Earlier this week, it was announced that Star Wars games will be brought under a new, single brand called Lucasfilm Games. Yesterday, Lucasfilm Games also announced that MachineGames and Bethesda are working on an Indiana Jones game.

In 2013, EA and Disney announced a multi-year licensing agreement that gave EA the exclusive rights to publish Star Wars games developed by its internal studios. That deal now appears to have been altered, but EA will "continue to be a very strategic and important partner for us now and going forward", accoring to senior vice president of Global Games and Interactive Experiences at Disney Sean Shoptaw, talking to Wired.

Wired's report makes clear that Disney will take pitches from companies on using Star Wars and other Lucas properties (such as Indiana Jones), although VP of Lucasfilm Games Douglas Reilly made clear that Lucasfilm Games would have final approval on all projects.

The EA deal produced games like Star Wars: Battlefront 1 and 2 from DICE, Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order from Respawn Entertainment, and Star Wars: Squadrons from EA Motive. However, there were also some high-profile cancellations, including Amy Hennig’s Project Ragtag which was in development at the now defunct Visceral Games.

The Division games are set in a fictional version of the United States during cataclysmic events that force members of an elite military unit known as the Strategic Homeland Division as they rebuild US cities in the aftermath. Both games featured live service elements where players would continuously work on their characters and earn new gear by completing high-end objectives. Massive has also been working on an Avatar game for several years, which was recently delayed into 2022.

a star wars game-as-a-service
:prosper:
 
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Sultan

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Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Not that I should be surprised but I wish we would at least get some weird Star Wars games out of this. Instead we are gonna get Ass Creed with a Star Wars skin and it’s gonna be shit.
 

SoupNazi

Guest
Not that I should be surprised but I wish we would at least get some weird Star Wars games out of this. Instead we are gonna get Ass Creed with a Star Wars skin and it’s gonna be shit.
I wish it was AssCreed with a skin. Unfortunately, it's going to be even worse - Star Wars: The Division
 

Sultan

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Pathfinder: Kingmaker
I wish it was AssCreed with a skin. Unfortunately, it's going to be even worse - Star Wars: The Division

Oh yeah, I forgot Massive was The Division studio. Weren’t they making a game based on Avatar? Pretty sure that’s vaporware now.
 

Infinitron

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https://www.wired.com/story/lucasfilm-games-star-wars-ubisoft-indiana-jones-bethesda/

Lucasfilm Games' New Partnerships Mean the Galaxy's the Limit
The Disney-owned company just announced a new Star Wars title coming from Ubisoft and an Indiana Jones game from Bethesda. And that's just the beginning.
games_lucasgames.jpg


TODAY, LUCASFILM GAMES announced that it’s entering a partnership with Ubisoft to create an open-world Star Wars game. The title will be developed by Ubisoft’s Massive Entertainment, marking the first time that a company outside of EA has produced a Star Wars game since Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012, ending nearly eight years of exclusivity. Also in the works is a new Indiana Jones game, to be developed by Bethesda Game Studios, a newcomer to Lucasfilm’s and Disney’s properties.

Let’s start with Star Wars. Development on this new title is still very early—Massive is still recruiting for the project even—so details are sparse. Julian Gerighty, director of The Division 2 and The Crew, will serve as the game’s creative director, and the title will use Massive’s Snowdrop engine. Beyond that, Lucasfilm Games hasn’t revealed anything about the characters or settings within the Star Wars universe that the game will feature.

This announcement follows yesterday’s news that Lucasfilm is partnering with Bethesda to create an Indiana Jones title, the first non-Star Wars AAA game out of Lucasfilm in years. The move marks a seismic shift for Lucasfilm’s approach to gaming, widening the tent for developers that want to create games using Lucasfilm franchises, particularly in the Star Wars universe.

While EA had previously suggested that the company would have exclusivity on Star Wars games for 10 years, it seems like either that was misstated or the clock has run out early. (Lucasfilm would not confirm for WIRED either way.) Regardless, EA will keep making games in the future, but Lucasfilm Games is free to seek other partners.

“EA has been and will continue to be a very strategic and important partner for us now and going forward,” Sean Shoptaw, senior vice president of Global Games and Interactive Experiences at Disney, told WIRED. “But we did feel like there's room for others.”

In 2013, Disney laid off 150 employees at LucasArts, ending in-house game development. The rationale at the time was that the move would minimize “the company’s risk while achieving a broader portfolio of quality Star Wars games,” according to a statement the company made to The Hollywood Reporter at the time.

However, in the years since, the EA exclusivity deal has been criticized as a bottleneck to that goal. Aside from a few small mobile or VR games, the number of major Star Wars games from EA since 2013 can be counted on one hand. By allowing more developers to bring in their ideas for games, Lucasfilm hopes to diversify the titles it offers.

“I think if you look at the games landscape, it's such a diverse population of folks across the world that make games,” Shoptaw explains. “For us to go capture the amount of quality that exists in the world and be fast to market, it would be a big challenge for us to do that internally.”

Just like with past EA games, any new Star Wars games will be part of the same Star Wars canon and continuity shared across all the movies and TV shows produced since the Disney acquisition. James Waugh, Lucasfilm’s VP of franchise content and strategy, explains that while this means that games won’t always connect directly to content in other media, the possibility is on the table.

“I think where people get tripped up on that sometimes is like, ‘Oh, then it has to connect to everything else. And that's not necessarily what we're always saying,” Waugh told WIRED. “That will happen if it's right for that story.”

This new non-exclusive arrangement for Star Wars games—as well as the rest of Lucasfilm’s library of franchises—leaves open the door for developers to pitch their own ideas for stories to Lucasfilm Games. “We get no shortage of folks knocking on our door, wanting to play with our toys,” Douglas Reilly, VP of Lucasfilm Games, told WIRED.

Among that camp is Todd Howard. The famed director of Skyrim (among many other games) is also a huge Indiana Jones fan. “What's been most inspiring about the Indy game in particular is it’s a passion project for Todd Howard,” Waugh explained. “He came in with a point of view and a story that he really believes in.”

Of course, these franchises are still, in Reilly’s words, Lucasfilm’s toys. “Ultimately, we have final approval over everything,” Reilly explained. While developers—including but no longer exclusively at EA—may have the freedom to pitch ideas for stories to the company, those developers will still be playing inside the Disney playhouse.

Keeping both gamers and developers inside that playhouse seems to be the ultimate goal of the newly rebranded Lucasfilm Games. Increasingly, video games compete for leisure and entertainment time with film and TV. Disney has a long history of dominating film and TV competing for consumer eyeballs, but it lacks the same level of experience with video games. Leveraging the talent of outside studios could mean consumers spend far more hours of the day inside the company’s sprawling franchises than they would if Disney relied on film and TV alone.

A single story-driven game can take up dozens of hours. An open-world game, like the kind Ubisoft is making with Lucasfilm Games, can potentially push into the hundreds of hours depending on how long a player wants to explore. “That really leans into why we are doing what we're doing, because these are massive entertainment experiences that last many hours, much longer than film,” Shoptaw explained.

“When people are paying $70, or they're paying good amounts of money to spend time with your content and play your game,” Shoptaw continued, “you've got to reward that investment.”

Whether you feel like relaxing at the end of the day by watching a TV show or picking up the controller to play a game, Lucasfilm will have something to keep you entertained. And by opening the door to third-party developers, many of whom are staffed by people who grew up with franchises like Star Wars and Indiana Jones, the company will never run out of ideas from across the industry to bring under its tent.
 

toro

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The Division is the last game I've bought from Ubisoft.

This news assures me that nothing will change for the next 10 years.
 
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:hmmm:

Why is Ubisoft working on a Star Wars open world game if they were able to get Bethesda to work on Indiana Jones? Wouldn't you want the Skyrim developer to make your open world game if you had access to the Skyrim developer?
 

lycanwarrior

Scholar
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Jan 1, 2021
Messages
1,482
I enjoyed Division 2, Assassins Creed Odyssey, Anno 1800 and especially Immortals Fenyx Rising.

Cautiously optimistic but will wait and see.
 
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kreight

Guest
Fresh rainbowed popsickles for everyone to suck. Future pcgamer RPG of the year.
 

DalekFlay

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New Vegas
Look I played AC: Origins and thought it was a middling experience packed with middling content and have avoided their other stuff for the most part, but I would play the fuck out of a well made Star Wars Creed, I'm not gonna lie.
 

Xelocix

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Dec 25, 2020
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Your moms panty drawer
They're probably just going to shit out a Cyberpunk 2077 clone within the next 2-3 years by reviving Star Wars: 1313 (at least conceptually). They'll prob change a few things around but I'm expecting it to be a game about a mercenary/bounty hunter.
 

Hellraiser

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Apr 22, 2007
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Danzig, Potato-Hitman Commonwealth
Does this mean they are pulling a gamesworkshop and just whoring out the IP to anyone who's willing to pay royalties?

I don't get why they were picky in the first place, they had no issues allowing things like the below to be made but for games apparently they have standards?

starwarsdarthvadershowerhead_7722882285.jpg

Also I just want a decent Star Wars space strategy/tactical game made.
 

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