Ubisoft's forthcoming open-world Star Wars game wouldn't be happening if it weren't for a chain of events linked to Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, which was only just announced at E3 2021, according to a recent interview. Both are being developed by one of the company's Swedish studios, Ubisoft Massive.
The Star Wars project was originally announced in January 2021 and is still largely a mystery. It is that universe's first open-world game, however, as well as the first in eight years without EA. While EA did shepherd favorites like Jedi: Fallen Order and Squadrons, it has also been blamed for debacles like the launch version of Battlefront 2, which leaned heavily on microtransactions to the point that players accused it of having a pay-to-win system. The company was pressured into temporarily dropping transactions while it retooled them.
Plans for the Ubisoft Star Wars game emerged within the last two years, following immediately from talks about the recently announced Avatar game, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. This development was explained to IGN by the senior VP of Walt Disney Games, Sean Shoptaw. "That first meeting we had with Massive around the Avatar game after we acquired Fox [in 2019] was really the jumping off point for the Star Wars game," he said. "There was such alignment and such creative passion around the Star Wars IP from that team that it just was a natural evolution to the relationship, and really led to the Star Wars game we announced not too long ago." Disney was looking for the "right partner," Shoptaw noted, instead of seizing on immediate demand for an open-world Star Wars game - though both Massive and Disney are said to have been interested in producing one.
Ubisoft Massive is perhaps best known for The Division and South Park: The Fractured But Whole, but has a track record dating back to the 2007 real-time strategy game World in Conflict. It in fact played a key role in developing Uplay, Ubisoft's proprietary storefront. The Division 2 could serve as a possible template for both Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and the Star Wars title, not the least because Frontiers of Pandora is based on an upgraded version of the Snowdrop engine used in both Division entries.
Gamers may have to wait years for the Star Wars game to be shown, much less released. Full-scale production is waiting until the completion of Frontiers of Pandora, which is only set to ship in 2022. That might mean little more than trailers by 2023, and a launch in 2024 or beyond, depending on the size of Massive's team and whether it has outside help.
Source: IGN