New rumors suggest that the Star Wars game currently being developed by Ubisoft Massive will feature a vast, open universe for players to explore as they take part in missions. Although details about the mysterious title are still being kept tightly under wraps, a Twitter post from December announced that Ubisoft Massive was recruiting playtesters for the Star Wars game.Despite providing the inspiration for beloved titles like BioWare’s Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and the classic shooter Star Wars: Dark Forces, the Star Wars franchise has a somewhat spotty track record when it comes to video games. While EA managed to find critical and commercial success with 2019’s Soulslike Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, years of largely lackluster EA Star Wars games led many franchise fans to rejoice when it was announced in 2021 that Ubisoft would be working with Lucasfilm Games on a new open-world Star Wars game. This new rumor suggests that the secretive, open-world game could have an even larger scope than players had anticipated.A new tweet from Star Wars gaming account BattlefrontUpdates includes a quote from Insider Gaming claiming that the new Ubisoft Star Wars game features “a fully open, seamless universe, akin to that found in No Man’s Sky.” The quote goes on to state that players will be able to travel between different star systems while taking part in a multitude of different activities. Although gamers knew that Ubisoft’s Star Wars title would be open-world in nature, the massive scale of the game as suggested in the quote indicates that Ubisoft could be trying to compete with upcoming releases like Bethesda's Starfield when it comes to the amount of content on offer.
Many Star Wars fans were notably skeptical about the news of a seemingly massive universe to explore in the upcoming game, with some commenters pointing out Ubisoft’s tendency to release open-world games with very little for players to actually do. Poking fun at an old trope in many of Ubisoft’s open-world titles, one gamer joked that players will be able to unlock areas on their map by “scaling the Empire’s galactic electrical towers.” Other comments worried about the comparison to No Man’s Sky given that game’s troubled launch. Putting skepticism aside, some die-hard fans simply expressed excitement at the idea of being able to play a truly open-world Star Wars game.
Whether Ubisoft Massive’s open-world Star Wars game ends up a timeless classic like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic or a forgotten failure like Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi, it’s clear that fans of the galaxy far, far away are in for something wholly new whenever the game releases. If the highly anticipated title can live up to pre-release rumors and gamers’ expectations, it could mark the beginning of a whole new era for Star Wars games.
Ubisoft's Star Wars game is currently in development.