We’ve been awash with rumours of cancelled Star Wars games in recent years, and here’s another: EA reportedly cancelled a Star Wars game last year, this one purportedly a spinoff of the Star Wars Battlefront series.
Codenamed Viking internally, the shooter was initially expected to release in 2020 as part of Microsoft and Sony’s next-gen console line-up, but when timescales slipped, the game was allegedly cancelled, making it the third Star Wars game to succumb to development hell alongside Amy Hennig’s Ragtag and EA Vancouver’s Orca.
According to a new report by Kotaku, six individual insiders shared the news on the proviso the outlet did not compromise their anonymity. It’s reported that “EA Vancouver spent some time designing ideas and prototypes for Viking, and Criterion came aboard soon afterward”, but “that was when the problems started”.
“Although Criterion was, on paper, the lead studio, the logistical challenges of cross-country game development made that a difficult proposition,” Kotaku says. “As one person involved with the game said,'”too many cooks’ was a running theme.”
It’s now thought EA has two Star Wars games in development; a sequel to Jedi Fallen Order at Respawn and a “smaller, more unusual” game at EA Motive in Canada.
Electronic Arts’ fan-favourite Star Wars RPG series, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, is also reportedly getting a reboot. It’s thought the game will “integrate elements from the first two titles in order to bring certain things into the current Star Wars canon”.