Nolan North reveals details on canceled Star Wars video game

Nolan North revealed new details of the canceled Amy Hennig Star Wars game. The actor was to portray an unnamed playable character.

Star Wars video games have often had a bumpy road towards release. From canceled projects to the micro-transaction controversy that plagued Battlefront II, the franchise has had its ups and downs with games. Now there is another victim to add to the list, a canceled sandbox-style game codenamed Ragtag. The project was being developed by veteran game director Amy Hennig.

One of the actors who had been involved with the game, Nolan North, revealed some small details in an interview on the Kinda Funny produced podcast We Have Cool Friends. North explained that he would have played a bounty hunter character who would’ve been just one of the multiple playable protagonists, saying during the interview that “there were multiple people that you play as.”

What would the nitty-gritty details of the game have been? In what era would it have taken place? That information was not given out, and possibly never will be. Despite this, Nolan gave some insight into what his character would’ve been like, saying:

"It was a bounty hunter type character, it was kind of, think of a Han Solo type character, yet without the moral compass. So it was interesting. And I wouldn’t even say Han Solo, because there was another character like that. He was a bounty hunter, and it was different from Drake [Nathan Drake from Uncharted], and it was so great."

As with many of the large tentpole video games being developed today, the Ragtag project used a significant amount of motion capture technology. Motion capture allowed the game developers to create more expressive characters and really put the actors into the video game.

North revealed that the plans for this motion capture were canceled four months in, going into some detail on more of the technical aspects as well:

"With Ragtag, there was at least four to six months of shooting. We did a bunch of stuff. It was ensemble they had done with other characters. But it was visually stunning. It was just really cool."

So, for the time being, Ragtag has been put on the shelf, and it doesn’t look like there are plans to finish the game any time soon. There are still Star Wars games coming out in the near future, with Star Wars: Squadrons releasing next month and Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga scheduled for a 2021 release.

While the full reasoning for the cancellation isn’t known at this point, North did express sadness at the game’s scrapping. Adding to the disappointment is the revelation that Ragtag was reportedly being set up as a trilogy of games. With the likelihood of Jedi Fallen Order 2 in the near future, it is possible that something similar would’ve been in development for Ragtag.

Star Wars video games have rarely gone down the open-world path. The canceled Star Wars 1313, which was canceled a number of years ago, seemed like it could’ve been similar to Ragtag based on recently leaked concept art, so it is possible that this new game was an attempt to revive the sandbox-style game that Star Wars fans have been asking for.

While the Ragtag project may not ever see a finished product on the shelves, it is nice to get details from an inside source that worked on the game, so that we may dream about the open world, multi-protagonist Star Wars extravaganza that could’ve been.