When EA officially shut the doors of developer Visceral Games back in October last year, the hush-hush Star Wars project, with Uncharted creator Amy Hennig at the helm, soon started to tumble. EA refused to reveal much details on the project since.
During the Gamelab conference in Barcelona Hennig said that she left EA as of January 2018 and is currently looking to kick off her own independent studio. She did not have a chance to announce the news or set the record straight.
As far as her involvement as creative director on the Star Wars project is concerned, Hennig said: “I’m not, I have not worked at EA since January, technically, legally. Yes. This is the problem, it was hard enough for them, but people were immediately asking them ‘is Amy working with you?’ and the answer was ‘well, we’re in negotiations…’ like, hmm. It was, sort of the soft pedal answer.”
She added: “I haven’t been in, but look – I get along with all those people, I consider even the guys on the exec team friends. But it made it awkward because it was like, ‘I never got the chance to announce that I’m not at EA so I need to just pull off that band-aid at some point – but also had nothing to announce. It makes it sound like I just went home! But I’m doing all this stuff, working on all kinds of things.”
What’s more to the point, however, she has mentioned the formation of her new studio: “I’m working independently and staying independent. I just started my own small little independent studio and am consulting with some people. I’m hoping to bring some people on board, I would love to have a little company of about six to eight people, 15 at the most, and do some more projects, do some VR stuff – I’m consulting with some VR companies and doing a ton of research because I haven’t played a lot to immerse myself in it.”
It seems like ages ago we were led to believe that an Uncharted-like Star Wars game is just around the corner. Now, the news of Amy’s new indie studio could indeed mean more cool new IPs. We shall see.
[Source: Eurogamer.net]
