Lucasfilm Games drops another megaton announcement in a wild week of news.
Hot off the heels of news that they were entering a partnership with Bethesda to develop a new Indiana Jones title, Lucasfilm Games announced today that they will be partnering with Ubisoft to develop a new, open-world Star Wars game. This would seemingly cut short a 10-year contract that EA had with Lucasfilm and Disney to exclusively create video games in the Star Wars universe. Details come via Wired where the outlet reports that EA will still develop Star Wars games for Disney, but that other publishers and developers would be considered moving forward.
Ubisoft is tapping talented in-house developer Massive Entertainment (The Division 1 & 2) to flesh out this exciting new project. “The Star Wars galaxy is an amazing source of motivation for our teams to innovate and push the boundaries of our medium,” Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot told Wired. “Building new worlds, characters, and stories that will become lasting parts of the Star Wars lore is an incredible opportunity for us, and we are excited to have our Ubisoft Massive studio working closely with Lucasfilm Games to create an original Star Wars adventure that is different from anything that has been done before.”
Todd Howard’s Indiana Jones Game
Details on the title are sparse, but we do know that The Division 2 and The Crew director, Julian Gerighty is on board as the game’s creative director. We also know that the project is still in its infancy with Ubisoft still hiring and bringing on talent for the title. Additionally, the game will follow the same Star Wars canon and continuity of the movies and TV shows since the Disney acquisition.
This news along with yesterday’s Indian Jones news underscores the direction that Lucasfilm Games is headed in. Without being bound to one publisher, Lucasfilm can entertain pitches from developers all over the world. Lucasfilm Games VP, Douglas Reilly noted to Wired that there wasn’t a shortage of folks knocking on their door to create games with any number of their properties. For Lucasfilm, though, the project needed to make sense and fit. This is illustrated when you see that the Indiana Jones game is a passion project for Bethesda’s Todd Howard or the fact that Ubisoft, a publisher known for great open-world games, is tasked with creating a new open-world Star Wars game.
Overall this is incredibly exciting news for fans of Star Wars or of Lucasfilm’s other properties. Hopes have already begun to soar that this new Ubisoft game is a Mandalorian game, but we’ll just have to wait and see along with everyone else what exactly Massive Entertainment has cooking.
What do you think the new Star Wars game is? Something entirely new like Jedi Fallen Order or something related to characters we already know? Let us know in the comments.