Star Wars: Rogue One writer and co-developer Gary Whitta is currently very critical of Electronic Arts, lamenting their handling of the franchise. He claims that since EA acquired the license, the developer has failed to release a truly satisfying project.
Whitta is primarily alluding to the recently discontinued project from EA Vancouver, which he considered an extremely ambitious game that would have been on par with Uncharted. Renowned people at EA Visceral and Amy Hennig, some of the best in the industry, were working on it, which makes its cancellation all the more incomprehensible.
In an interview on the Kinda Funny Show Whitta said:
"The deal was signed in 2013; it was a 10-year deal. We're almost halfway through the deal at this point. [...] We've released two Battlefront games, one of which had no story at all, both of which were rather mediocre, and one of which ended up being a huge embarrassment due to the microtransaction fiasco. Not just for EA, but also for Disney and the Star Wars brand."
He is even more critical of the discontinued EA Vancouver project, stating:
"They had a game that was a linear, unmistakable Star Wars experience, developed by the writer of the Uncharted games, who is probably the best storyteller in the industry. It looked phenomenal. And that got canceled. All the assets were incorporated into this new, bigger, and more ambitious open-world game from EA Vancouver. That got canceled too. Okay, so what then... nothing. We've done that in five years."
It's questionable how EA keeps making these strange decisions and why Disney doesn't pull the plug to salvage what's left. The Star Wars franchise is clearly not in the best hands at EA.
Currently, EA is only assuring that Respawn's Star Wars project will be released later this year, and EA Vancouver is now doing something smaller, which will follow in 2020.
