It's been an exciting weekend for Star Wars fans, as the franchise's annual Celebration event was held in Chicago and revealed plenty of upcoming movie and TV shows. The event also debuted Respawn Entertainment's highly anticipated game Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order's trailer that finally showed off the protagonist, allies, setting, and even some of the villains like Purge Troopers and Sith Inquisitors. The other surprising element to this announcement is that Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is an entirely single-player experience without microtransactions, something in stark contrast to recent EA style games, and a fact that isn't lost on Amy Hennig.

In a recent interview following the Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order announcement, Amy Hennig admitted that it was strange seeing that the game would be single-player only and lack any sort of monetization. While she's is well known for her days working on the Uncharted franchise at Naughty Dog, Hennig was most recently at EA working on an unannounced and single player Star Wars experience code named Ragtag. Unfortunately, EA made the decision to cancel the Star Wars project for what Hennig described as being too linear and without ways to monetize the experience through loot boxes or other live services methods.

While the single-player route was very clearly not an acceptable plan for EA at the time of her employment with the company, she speculates that the shift in design was likely achieved through a couple of different means. The first is that development on the title was likely well underway prior to EA buying Respawn Entertainment, which helped the game remain a protected entity. Having Respawn's co-founder Vince Zampella also serving on the executive board no doubt helped the project as well.

The other elements for this change are likely due to the change in leadership since Hennig's project was canned two years ago. Major players such as Patrick Soderlund and Jade Raymond have departed, while the former Star Wars franchise general manager Laura Miele, has taken over as an executive vice president.

Electronic Arts Amy Hennig Indie Studio

Before the interview concluded, Hennig provided a few more details regarding the cancelled Ragtag, a game where she took inspiration from pulp adventure sources like Uncharted, Indiana Jones, and even the classic Star Wars trilogies. The studio would be creating compelling AI companions for the player, forming almost a well-oiled crew working together, and possibly pulling off heists. The game has even been compared to one of Disney's standalone Star Wars films that released in between the mainline movies.

"So I thought OK, not only does that mean that we need really compelling AI for these characters, so that you can work like a well-oiled team, particularly if it's a caper crew. But we were going to need playable characters in parallel sequences, because that's how Star Wars works. You only accomplish your goals by working together or working in parallel or both."

Whatever the reason for the sudden change in philosophy or if this is a larger shift for future EA games as well, Hennig seems to harbor no ill will, and only laments that fans will never get a chance to see what her team worked on. It looks like she's excited to see more from Respawn's upcoming game, and has since moved on to start up her own independent studio last year with a small team of 6-8 people.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order launches on November 15, 2019 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

Source: Eurogamer