Tuesday, 25 January 2022

Three new STAR WARS video games announced, including what sounds like STAR WARS: XCOM

Electronic Arts and Respawn Entertainment have confirmed they are working on three brand-new Star Wars video games.


First up is Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order 2, a sequel to the 2019 "Metroidvania"-alike which saw a young Padawan survive the Jedi Purge and attempt to lay the groundwork for the rebirth of the Jedi Order in the years between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. The game was extremely well-received, so a sequel is a no-brainer, and indeed, its existence was an open secret in the industry. It's believed that Respawn have already been working on the game for more than two years, so hopefully it won't be too long before it appears.

Second up is a new first-person shooter in the Star Wars universe. A lot of fans of the old Dark Forces/Jedi Knight FPS series were disappointed that Fallen Order did not lean more into that game's mix-and-match approach of allowing you to use blasters and lightsabres as you wished. It sounds like this new game will take care of the less Force-using side of the Star Wars universe. Respawn are masters of the FPS genre, having previously worked on the Titanfall series (and its popular spinoff, Apex Legends). Many of their developers were previously at Infinity Ward, where they made some of the better Call of Duty games. So this sounds like a particularly well-made match.

Third, and most intriguingly, is a strategy game that will be developed between Respawn and new studio Bit Reactor. Bit Reactor were founded just a few days ago by ex-Firaxis developers, including numerous veterans of both the XCOM and Civilization franchises, with a mission statement that they would be focusing on turn-based, cinematic experiences. That very much sounds to me like their game will be XCOM: Star Wars (or a close analogue of), which is a mouthwatering prospect, especially if they implement a proper strategy layer. This game sounds like it only literally just got off the ground, so don't expect it in the near future.

Alongside the Knights of the Old Republic Remake game currently in development at EA's Aspyr Studios, that brings the total number of Star Wars titles known to be in development to four.

The news has taken some in the gaming press by surprise, since Lucasfilm terminated their exclusivity deal with EA last year in favour of collaborating with a wider variety of studios. Ubisoft and Massive Games are making an open-world action game set in the Star Wars universe, whilst Quantic Dream is developing Star Wars: Eclipse, a story-focused game in the new High Republic time-period. A new Star Wars Lego game is also in development. The feeling was that maybe EA would focus less on Star Wars going forwards. However, their two Battlefront games and Fallen Order had sold almost 40 million copies between them, making them among EA's biggest recent successes.

Sadly missing from the announcements is any sequel or expansion for the splendid Star Wars: Squadrons. The game apparently did well (especially for a lower-budgeted game) but developers EA Motive had been put to work on a non-Star Wars project.

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