Jade Raymond Joins EA's Team for Next Star Wars Game

Jade Raymond, the co-creator of Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed franchise, has founded a new EA studio called Motive, and will be working on the Visceral's in-development Star Wars title.

"I'm happy to announce that I'm joining Electronic Arts and opening Motive, a new development studio in my home town of Montreal, Canada," she announced.

According to Raymond, Motive will "work in close quarters with the BioWare team," suggesting the studio may have some hand in developing Mass Effect: Andromeda.

"Yanick Roy and the BioWare Montreal team are doing some new and exciting things with Mass Effect: Andromeda and it's clear that there is already so much talent to collaborate with on site," she added.

Motive will be incubating "entirely new IP and taking on some amazing projects," including the new Star Wars game from former Uncharted writer Amy Hennig, and developed by Dead Space studio Visceral.

"I've known Amy for years and have admired her work on the Uncharted games! I'm thrilled that the first big project that we will work on in Montreal will have Amy as Creative Director.

"An opportunity to work with her and the Visceral team, and to play in the Star Wars universe, is once-in-a-lifetime stuff."

Raymond will also oversee the Visceral studio in California.

Speaking about Raymond joining, Patrick Soderlund said he "couldn’t be more thrilled."

"Jade and I share the same passion for amazing games with huge imagination, and a drive to create that next big thing that everyone will want to play," he added.

After more than a decade, Raymond left Ubisoft in October 2014, calling her decision to leave the company "one of the hardest decisions of my career."

Little is known about Visceral and Hennig's Star Wars games. According to voice actor Nolan North--who voiced Nathan Drake in the Uncharted series--the game will bear similarities to Star Wars: 1313.

North also said EA and Visceral's game is modelled after Naughty Dog's Uncharted series. Rumours have suggested it may also be an open-world game, though EA has yet to provide any concrete details on the game.

In 2013, Disney and Electronic Arts signed an agreement to make Battlefield publisher EA the exclusive creator of console Star Wars games going forward. A year later, it was confirmed Hennig would co-write a new Star Wars game at Visceral.