Project Ragtag

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Project Ragtag
Single-player

Project Ragtag was a codename for an untitled

Motive Studios and EA Vancouver had assisted the game's development. Visceral Games was shut down by Electronic Arts on October 17, 2017, and the game's development was rebooted by EA Vancouver to become an open world
title. Despite this, the project was reportedly cancelled.

Development

In early 2013,

LucasArts. EA quickly made a deal to help develop lucrative Star Wars games through three of its studios, including Visceral.[1] Visceral was working on Jamaica, a pirate-themed project at that time. EA cancelled the Jamaica project in favor of a Star Wars game. The studio opted to pitch a third-person action game that maintained the spirit of Jamaica, having players play as "space scoundrels" in an open-world-style Star Wars universe, and code-named this project as Yuma.[1] Amy Hennig, the writer for the first three Uncharted games from Naughty Dog, was brought into EA for Visceral as creative lead and to help write the story for Yuma.[1]

animated series.[3] Gameplay would have included the player switching between multiple character viewpoints, akin to the format used in the Star Wars films, as parts of the heist came together.[3] Several of the former Visceral employees called the game's goal's "lofty", and there was significant trouble in adapting the Frostbite engine for third-person shooters. They also stated that there were several creative gates they had to pass with Disney/Lucasfilm for character design and art assets, and described internal conflicts with Hennig, believing that she wanted strong creative control of the game.[1]

After Hardline finally shipped in 2015, EA let go of Visceral's General Manager Steve Papoutsis and replaced him with

Uncharted 4.[1]

Cancellation

EA released Star Wars Battlefront in November 2015, which was extremely successful.[1] Because of this, Visceral found that EA started to draw away from Ragtag, and instead funnel more of its studios into Battlefront's sequel, Star Wars Battlefront II; Motive Studios were taken off Ragtag, and Visceral was not allowed to hire additional staff.[1] During 2016, EA laid off some of Visceral's staff, and others left for other positions, leaving Ragtag's development stalled. Visceral knew they had to make a good game demo to get further development funding from EA, and began work on this in 2016. Part of this demo was shown at E3 2016 in June of that year.[7] With more of Visceral's staff leaving, EA opted to bring its EA Vancouver team to help with Ragtag's development.[1] While this provided extra man-power to expand the demo, the new structure enforced in Visceral made it seem to the developers that EA was positioning EA Vancouver to take over the project.[1]

The team presented its internal demo to EA for a

gate review in April 2017, and were given the green light to continue development, with expectations to have another review six months later.[1] Visceral worked to get the demo in place, and showed it to EA in mid-October 2017, but based on the state of the demo EA made the decision to close down Visceral days later on October 17, 2017.[1] According to Hennig, EA had already planned to cancel Ragtag a few months earlier, and only formally made this decision after the October demo.[3] EA reassigned the Star Wars game to its EA Worldwide Studios, led by EA Vancouver, and said they will revamp the gameplay, which had been described as a linear, story-heavy title, into "a broader experience that allows for more variety and player agency".[8]

Impact and potential revival

The closure of Visceral was seen as a sign of the waning interest in publishers in making games that are strictly

linear for what they felt consumers were looking for and towards EA's goal of pushing the game "to the next level". At the time of Visceral's closure, the studio was down to about 80 staff after losing several over the years, which Jorgensen said was a "sub-scale nature" that required them to assign EA's Vancouver and Montreal studios to help, and that the closure was primarily a business, cost-saving measure.[13]

In June 2018, Hennig announced that she had left EA earlier that year in January. While Hennig had been involved with some of the initial work at EA Vancouver, she stated the new game was more open-world and far different from the title Visceral had developed. However at the time of her departure, she stated that the Star Wars game was stalled and EA Vancouver was working on something very different.[14] In January 2019, insiders from EA Vancouver stated to gaming websites that EA has since cancelled this game.[15]

In April 2019, EA announced a new single-player game, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, to be released later that year and developed by Respawn Entertainment. Hennig stated that this seemed like a change of strategy related to the criticism that EA received after its closure of Visceral and its strong indication that it was moving away from single-player games.[3]

In April 2022, it was announced that

Skydance New Media would be collaborating with Lucasfilm Games to produce an action-adventure game based in the Star Wars Universe, with Hennig serving as head of the project. Many have speculated that the game is a revival of Project Ragtag.[16][17]

In 2023, following the expiration of Electronic Arts' exclusivity deal with Lucasfilm for Star Wars games, Ubisoft announced Star Wars Outlaws, which drew comparisons to Ragtag.[18] Developed by Massive Entertainment, it is currently due to release in 2024.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Schreier, Jason (October 27, 2017). "The Collapse Of Visceral's Ambitious Star Wars Game". Kotaku. Retrieved October 28, 2017.
  2. ^
    US Gamer. Archived from the original
    on October 21, 2017. Retrieved October 20, 2017.
  3. ^ a b c d e Philips, Tom (April 15, 2019). "Amy Hennig reacts to Jedi: Fallen Order announce, reveals more of her cancelled single-player Star Wars game". Eurogamer. Retrieved April 15, 2019.
  4. ^ Schreier, Jason (April 8, 2015). "Management shake-up at Battlefield Hardline developer Visceral Games". Kotaku. Retrieved April 10, 2015.
  5. Gamasutra
    . Retrieved October 20, 2017.
  6. ^ Karmali, Luke (July 13, 2015). "Jade Raymond Starts New Studio To Work On Amy Hennig's Star Wars Game". IGN. Retrieved September 27, 2015.
  7. ^ Purchase, Robert (June 12, 2016). "In-game footage of Visceral and Amy Hennig's Star Wars shown". Eurogamer. Retrieved October 17, 2017.
  8. ^ Wales, Matt (October 17, 2017). "EA has shut down Visceral Games". Eurogamer. Retrieved October 17, 2017.
  9. ^ Sarkar, Samit (October 18, 2017). "EA's Star Wars 'pivot' is a vote of no confidence in single-player games". Polygon. Retrieved October 20, 2017.
  10. Gamasutra
    . Retrieved October 20, 2017.
  11. ^ Klepek, Patrick (October 17, 2017). "Today's Star Wars News Makes the Future of Single-Player Look Very Messy". Vice. Retrieved October 20, 2017.
  12. ^ Chalk, Andy (November 1, 2017). "EA CEO says Visceral closure and 'Ragtag' cancellation wasn't about single vs. multiplayer". PC Gamer. Retrieved November 1, 2017.
  13. Gamasutra
    . Retrieved November 29, 2017.
  14. ^ Phillips, Tom (June 28, 2018). "Uncharted creator Amy Hennig has departed EA, and her Star Wars game is "on the shelf"". Eurogamer. Retrieved June 28, 2018.
  15. ^ Schreier, Jason (January 15, 2019). "EA Cancels Open-World Star Wars Game". Kotaku. Retrieved January 15, 2019.
  16. ^ Davis (Pomojema), Grant (2022-04-20). "Amy Hennig Possibly Revisiting 'Project Ragtag'". Star Wars News Net. Retrieved 2022-04-28.
  17. ^ "Amy Hennig and Skydance New Media Creating New Star Wars Game". StarWars.com. Retrieved 2022-04-28.
  18. ^ Rowe, Willa (12 June 2023). "STAR WARS OUTLAWS IS THE GAME PROJECT RAGTAG NEVER GOT TO BE". Inverse. Retrieved 18 February 2024.
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