Jedi: Fallen Order Has Just Saved EA's Star Wars

7. The Failed Previous Attempts

You don’t need me to tell you that the publisher’s handling of the galaxy far far away has been terrible. At this point, five years into their deal with Disney, the publisher have cancelled more Star Wars games than they have released.

Visceral games’ Ragtag, a single-player focused heist game headed up by Uncharted’s Amy Hennig, was the first to be cancelled, with the studio itself being shuttered at the same time.

That project was handed off to EA Vancouver, with the aim of being transformed into an open-world live-service, a project which was again canned by the publisher a few years later in favour of a smaller title.

Even though fans never actually saw these games in action, their loss was deeply mourned. In theory, they represented everything fans wanted from a new Star Wars; story-driven, single-player titles that explored areas of the universe players had never seen.

The games EA actually released, however, were the antithesis of this. The original Star Wars Battlefront was a decent enough effort, but it felt particularly clear that the game was rushed out in order to release alongside The Force Awakens. Lacking content, depth and shipping with no story mode, the shooter was great in small doses, but was very clearly designed for a casual market in order to cash in on Star Wars hype as much as possible.