Former ‘Assassin’s Creed’ Exec to Work on Visceral’s Star Wars Game

We have relatively few details to go on about the other Star Wars game in development that’s not Star Wars Battlefront, but based on the talent that’s amassing behind the project, we’re at least getting a sense of what its creators are aiming for.

For fans who are too busy salivating over what it might be like to pilot an AT-AT on Hoth, we’d like to remind you that Visceral Games, the developer behind the Dead Space series and the Battlefield Hardline game, has been working on a Star Wars game for several months, but they’ve been reluctant to share any details about the game itself (unless they’re just teasing us with these clues).

But now Electronic Arts, which owns Visceral, has brought on a former executive at Ubisoft who helped develop the popular Assassin’s Creed games. Jade Raymond announced in a blog post that she’ll heading a brand-new studio under EA called Motive that will work out of Montreal, Canada. The studio’s first big project will be helping Visceral develop their Star Wars game.

If you don’t think that’s enough pressure, Raymond will also be overseeing Visceral’s studio in Redwood Shores, California, as well.

That will help her collaborate with the untitled game’s creative director Amy Hennig, whose most well-known previous credit is writing the Uncharted video game series at Naughty Dog. This move is getting a lot of praise within the industry for putting the reins of an entry into an iconic franchise into the hands of two women, at a time when video game development is dominated by men.

You only have to look at Raymond’s other past credits to decipher what this move tells us about the direction Visceral is heading. In addition to developing Assassin’s Creed games, which put an emphasis on breathtaking environment design and rewarding open-world exploration, Raymond also helped create Watch Dogs and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, further cementing her expertise in stealth-driven, sandbox-style gameplay.

This lines up with what Nolan North, a voice actor in the game, recently revealed at Florida’s Metrocon event. North says the game will take after Uncharted as well as the unreleased Star Wars 1313. That project, which was scrapped after Disney obliterated the LucasArts studio, would have reportedly allowed gamers to explore a seedy Star Wars underworld while playing as Boba Fett.

It seems evident that Visceral is heading in the opposite direction of Battlefront: Instead of crafting a raw Call of Duty-style shooter, it’s focusing on an action-adventure title with open-world influences. This latest move lends credence to that mindset while only ratcheting up our anticipation to find out just what this game is about.

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