Rogue One screenwriter blasts EA for cancelled Star Wars project

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The latest Star Wars game to get the mid-development axe apparently would have been an open-world adventure with a series of Nathan Drake-worthy scripted narrative set pieces, according to one especially well-connected Star Wars writer who’d laid eyes on an early build.

Gary Whitta, screenwriter on Rogue One: A Star Wars Story as well as a long list of video game titles set both in and out of the Star Wars universe, said on a recent podcast that it’s a shame we won’t be getting a cinematic, Uncharted-style adventure in a galaxy far, far away, and that fans — and EA shareholders — have every reason to be upset.

“I saw a bunch of that game and it looked terrific,” Whitta said on a recent episode of Kinda Funny Games Daily (shown below). “After it was canceled, I saw some stuff — I saw what they had up that point. It was far from finished, but it looked amazing. It would have been ‘Star Wars Uncharted,’ which I’m very excited about.”

But EA’s evident decision to scrap the game in order to shift the focus to a number of smaller, less ambitious projects represents a bungling of one of entertainment’s most bankable brands, Whitta added.

“If I was an EA shareholder, I’d be f***ing furious,” he said. “It [EA’s Star Wars license] has been catastrophically mismanaged.”

Via Kotaku, EA’s Vancouver studio took over development on what was then a reportedly “linear” Star Wars title after EA shuttered Visceral Games, where the project first began, with none other than original Uncharted: Drake's Fortune director Amy Hennig as part of the development team. EA Vancouver reportedly inherited Visceral’s work, rebooting it into an even more ambitious open-world adventure.

“My understanding is what they [EA] were saying all the way through is that ‘We don’t want to make Star Wars Uncharted.’ Well, maybe don’t hire the narrative director of the Uncharted games to make it for you, and figure out what it is you actually want?” Whitta chided.

Kotaku’s report indicates the canceled game “was very early in development but would involve playing as a scoundrel or bounty hunter who could explore various open-world planets and work with different factions across the Star Wars universe.”

The game’s long development cycle, which meant that its release date wouldn’t be arriving anytime soon, reportedly prompted EA to nix development in favor of something less ambitious in order to get a Star Wars-branded title out the door and into gamers’ hands much sooner.

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