Late in 2017, around the same time Star Wars Battlefront 2 released and caused a lot of controversy due to the introduction of loot boxes in its multiplayer mode, Electronic Arts announced that it was working on an open world Star Wars game. The new Star Wars game was supposedly going to be a break from the linear and narrative-driven structure of Visceral's canned Star Wars game, as it would have been a much bigger open world game.

Very recently however, a report by Kotaku revealed that this open world Star Wars project was cancelled by EA. At the time of the announcement, there were not many details about the game, but an update on the report revealed more about the cancelled game.

One of the first details is that the cancelled Star Wars project was code-named Orca, and it would have centered on exploring various open world planets while fighting for different factions in the Star Wars universe as a scoundrel or a bounty hunter. However. it seemed as though this project was too ambitious and would've released a lot later than EA would have wanted, which is why it was reportedly scrapped and replaced with a smaller-scale, more linear Star Wars game aiming for a 2020 release.

EA further released this statement soon after the announcement, which assures fans that the company remains committed to Star Wars despite Orca being cancelled:

"There’s been speculation overnight about one of our Star Wars projects. As a natural part of the creative process, the great work by our team in Vancouver continues and will evolve into future Star Wars content and games. We’re fully committed to making more Star Wars games, we’re very excited about Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order from Respawn, and we’ll share more about our new projects when the time is right."

So while Orca itself may never see the light of day, it seems aspects of it may be retained in future Star Wars titles. The extent of that remains to be seen, however.

Source: Kotaku