What can a Star Wars game developed by Ubisoft look like?

Disney has announced a partnership with Ubisoft to develop an ambitious Star Wars video game, under the new Lucasfilm Games label. It is the studio Massive Entertainment, behind the saga The Division, which will take care of it.

Monday, January 11, Disney announced a news identity for the Star Wars video games, which will be grouped under the resurrected banner Lucasfilm Games (original name that had given way to LucasArts in the early 90s). It was nevertheless thought that Electronic Arts would continue to deal exclusively with the various projects. We were wrong: in an article published on January 13, Wired reports a merger between Disney and Ubisoft to develop an open-world Star Wars video game. No release date has been communicated.

« EA has been and will continue to be an important partner for us in the future. But we think there is room for others Says Sean Shoptaw, vice president of the games-centric department at Disney. With Ubisoft, the deal looks like an obvious marriage, if not of reason: the French company knows how to oversee high-stakes blockbusters. And as this Star Wars project has been entrusted to the Massive Entertainment studio, we can already get a first idea of ​​the experience that will be put into the hands of the players.

A Star Wars game at Ubisoft

Massive Entertainment is a Swedish studio that is best known for The Division and The Division 2, two third-person shooter games with evolving content and a strong emphasis on RPG elements (equipment, progression with levels, unlockable skills, etc.). Generous and controlled, the second opus presents several arguments that could be taken up in a very ambitious Star Wars project. We can very well imagine a similar starting point: one embodies a soldier – of the Empire or otherwise – and one fulfills increasingly difficult missions, in cooperation or not. For the visual part, it is assumed that Massive Entertainment will rely on its in-house Snowdrop engine.

We can already trust the authenticity of the video game, guaranteed by the Lucasfilm Games label. Disney wants all future Star Wars video game productions to fit into the canon. For its part, Massive Entertainment has already proven that it knows how to handle the flagship licenses, evidenced by its work on the adaptation. South Park: The Fracth of Destiny (81% on Metacritic). The company is also responsible for setting up a video game based on the Avatar universe. ” The Star Wars universe is an incredible source of motivation for our teams to innovate and push the boundaries of our industry. Imagining new worlds, new characters and new stories that will enrich this universe is a great opportunity for us. », Enthuses Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft.

Another hypothesis, Massive Entertainment could draw on the side of the latest Assassin’s Creed to imagine an action / adventure game a little more focused on storytelling – à la The Witcher. Except that this game already exists (more or less): in November 2019, Respawn Entertainment and Electronic Arts positively marked the spirits with Star Wars Jedi : Fallen Order. A sequel is also hoped for.

For Ubisoft and Lucasfilm Games, it will simply be necessary to avoid the syndrome Marvel’s Avengers, a Square Enix game-service that no longer interests many people today.

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