EA Cancelled 'Star Wars Battlefront' Spin-Off Last Year, Claim Sources

It looks like we could've been jumping into a new Star Wars Battlefront game with the release of the next-gen consoles later this year but the project was scrapped by EA executives when they realised that the timeline was unrealistic. That's according to a number of sources that spoke directly with Kotaku.

The game, which had the working title Viking and was said to be a Battlefront spin-off with open-world elements, is the end of a long line of cancelled Star Wars titles. As Kotaku explains, it started off as Ragtag which was being overseen by director Amy Hennig before EA shut down Visceral Games in 2017 and Hennig departed soon after. The next game, Orca, was taken over by EA Vancouver and was even said to use some of Ragtag's assets.

Star Wars: Battlefront

But Orca shared a similar fate to Ragtag and was cancelled last year. In its place the third game, Viking, was born and was set to be a smaller-scale Star Wars title that would launch alongside next-gen consoles. London studio Criterion was brought in to help out and it appears that this is when problems started - not only from the geographical issues that arose from developing a game across two continents but the ideas that both teams had. When it became clear that the game wouldn't be ready for the end of 2020, EA executives "had no interest in extending the timeline".

While this is clearly disappointing news for Star Wars fans, it doesn't come as much of a surprise. EA has an astoundingly bad reputation with the franchise since acquiring the license in 2013 and has released at least as many Star Wars games as it has cancelled.

Jedi: Fallen Order

Both Star Wars Battlefront games had lukewarm receptions, largely due to the controversy with loot boxes that marred the launch of the first game. Jedi: Fallen Order fared much better and a sequel is already in development by Respawn after being teased a few months ago.

Another Star Wars game is also being worked on but this time by EA-owned Motive Studios. We don't have any details other than it will be "a very unique experience" but at this point, a unique Star Wars game from EA is one that doesn't get cancelled.

Topics: EA