In the last year Lucasfilm has announced its intent to bring Star Wars to a broader range of gaming developers, ahead of a decade-long exclusivity deal with EA Games that ends in 2023. But just because Lucasfilm has altered the deal doesn’t mean it’s not working with the developer on more Star Wars adventures.
Lucasfilm and EA officially announced today that the companies are working on three more Star Wars games with developer Respawn Entertainment, a studio best known for the Titanfall and Apex Legends shooter franchise.
One of the games is a long-assumed sequel to Respawn’s own Star Wars title, 2019’s Jedi: Fallen Order, which follows a young former padawan named Cal Kestis (Gotham’s Cameron Monaghan) as he re-discovers his Jedi roots in the post-Clone Wars era. Respawn will also develop a new Star Wars first person shooter, and work with new studio Bit Reactor (formed from former veterans of the XCOM and Civilisation studio Firaxis) to develop a strategy title set in the galaxy far, far away.
The three games join at least one more in-development Star Wars title at EA: Bioware’s highly-anticipated remake of the beloved RPG Knights of the Old Republic, announced late last year.
The announcement may come as something of a surprise to Star Wars fans after Lucasfilm Games announced its intent to bring a wider range of developers to Star Wars gaming as it looked beyond EA’s exclusivity deal. So far the results have brought an announced action game from Ubisoft and The Division’s Massive Games; the long-awaited return of the Lego Star Wars series; and the controversial reveal that troubled studio Quantic Dream — reeling from a series of legal battles accusing its co-owners of fostering a toxic work environment — is developing the first video game set in the “High Republic” transmedia project Star Wars: Eclipse. But there was still more EA could do with Star Wars, even if it doesn’t exclusively hold the keys to the proverbial X-Wing — especially at Respawn, still benefiting from the warm reception to its work on Jedi: Fallen Order.
The fact that we’re getting more games in the Fallen Order world, and new stories in other genres like shooters and strategy, should be an encouraging sign that Lucasfilm is nowwilling to push Star Wars games in ways it hasn’t in recent years. We’ll have to wait a while to see the fruit of all this labour, however. We’ll bring you more on EA and Lucasfilm’s plans for Star Wars as we learn them.