New Details On Cancelled Star Wars Game From Dead Space Studio

There was a time where EA was starting and cancelling single-player Star Wars games willy-nilly, and sadly none of those games will ever come to fruition. Probably the most promising of them was Project Ragtag, which was under development for two years at Visceral Games (Dead Space). Now, a former producer at Visceral has offered some perspective on the project, claiming that EA kneecapped what had the potential to be the definitive Star Wars game.

Helmed by acclaimed game director Amy Hennig (Uncharted, Legacy of Kain), Project Ragtag would have focused on a Han Solo-esque rogue in a rollicking tale of space derring-do. According to former staffer Zach Mumbach, who recently spoke with the YouTube show MinnMax, the difficulties that the game experienced were mainly due to EA execs mismanaging the studio.

When EA told the studio to move from their single-player roots to multiplayer franchises like Battlefield and Army of Two, many of the studio's most talented staff left to work elsewhere. Then, when EA gave Visceral the opportunity to work on a single-player Star Wars game, they had to completely rebuild the studio yet again.

"We had this leadership team come in from Vancouver... and not knocking them, they were in the same position I was in [with] Army of Two. They were like 'We need to ship this thing, let's go, cut this, cut this, cut this,'" Mumbach recalled, per Eurogamer.. "And I'm thinking, this is effing Amy Hennig, we have the chance to make the greatest Star Wars game ever made and a possible Game of the Year contender. This isn't an Army of Two game. I think we would have made the best Star Wars game ever made."

Last year, EA published Respawn's Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order to rave reviews, the first major single-player Star Wars game in almost a decade. Mumbach has moved onto the indie space, where he's working on an airship game called Airborne Kingdom.