Ubisoft's rather mysterious upcoming open-world Star Wars game could be closer than first anticipated. Announced at the start of 2021, the title (developed by Ubisoft Massive, of The Division fame) is reportedly staying on target for an early 2024 release date.
That's according to Kotaku, which cites two sources familiar with the French publisher. In a year already filled with news of delays and troubled projects (it's only May), this sounds like exactly the kind of thing Ubisoft could use in the not-too-distant future.
Kotaku's sources suggest that while Project Helix (as it's known internally) hasn't been progressing as quickly as expected, hopes are high internally that this could be the company's next big hit that, crucially, doesn't bear the name Assassin's Creed. A Ubisoft spokesperson gave Kotaku the company line, "We don’t comment on rumours or speculation."
Are you excited to see an open-world Star Wars game from The Division team, Ubisoft Massive? What are the chances of it releasing in early 2024? Hit the jump to lightspeed in the comments section below.
[source kotaku.com]
Comments 42
I don’t know how I missed this being announced m, but Star Wars + UBisoft open world formula???? Sign me up right now!!! This might be the one thing that makes me break my no-$70-game-rule.
Still no day one but, these days need to see some reviews to make sure the thing is not a buggy mess.
@Tharsman don't worry, I'd bet a lot of people forgot about it, I certainly did haha
I don’t get why this game needs to be open world.
The best Star Wars games were typically linear campaigns. Either arcade/sim flight games or first person shooter/first person adventure affairs. Star Wars works really well in those genres.
To this day I have yet to play a Star Wars game as good as Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight or Rogue Squadron 2. Those weren’t just good Star Wars games; they were great games in general.
Force Unleashed and Fallen Order were pretty good though. I’m still waiting for Jedi Survivor to be good enough to play and a bit cheaper. So won’t comment on it yet.
@OrtadragoonX Isn't Knights of the Old Republic considered the best Star Wars game and pretty close to open world? I don't know.....if you're gonna pay to license the IP you might as well make the kind of game you want to make and Ubisoft makes open world games.
Would prefer battlefront 3
@EEZY541 - Not even close. Open World games usually have massive, seamless areas to explore in; KotOR had small-to-medium areas connected by loading screens.
So far, the closest Star Wars has come to an open world game (not counting the MMO’s) is Jedi Survivor, which imo is pretty good, but even then, it’s closer to God of War then, say, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla or Far Cry 6.
@FullMetalWesker so more of a sand box then? Not quite open world but large open areas?
Hmm so maybe it'll be shown on Wednesday?
@Khayl you and euro gamer are reporting this wildly different, you say early 24. They say the next financial year so could be 2025…
They are also saying the ‘insiders’ are saying it has issues and no mention here? So seems like info is missing?
@OrtadragoonX My guy it is Ubisoft, they're so afraid of the word "Linear" because they know that they wouldn't be able to sell their microtransactions as much
I like Ubisoft games but I'm more looking forward to Quantum Dream's Star Wars Eclipse.
@Tharsman Hope you like padding or recycled assets then.
I'm interested if this is a purely single player game. If its a The Division clone in a Star Wars skin it's a hard pass.
@PsBoxSwitchOwner hey mate, yeah Ubisoft's fiscal year runs March to March, so either 24 or 25 could be correct. But Kotaku's sources at the company are leaning towards earlier in 2024, which really just means anytime after that March
I'm not sure about Ubisoft formula open world, though it does have it's merits.
I could imagine something amongst the lines of a Mandalorian game, where you are part of the creed (Ubisoft must feel comfortable with that) with more of a monster of the week story structure with an overarching plot as well.
One can pick the armour, voice, perhaps with helmet or without alliance. You take on bounties, some can be done in co-op, you can upgrade your ship, weaponry and armour. As long as it's not a looter shooter without a proper story or online only elements I'd enjoy it.
I completely forgot about this game. It's too bad Disney broke the EA exclusivity to get French EA (aka Ubisoft) to make a game probably filled with macro-transactions and DLCs.
Hopefully it won't be yet another generic Ubisoft openworld with a Star wars theme. After Elden ring and TotK, I don't want to go back to openworld maps filled with a trillion icons you need to clear like a boring checklist.
@FullMetalWesker Open world does not mean massive areas. It means you are free to go where you want hence 'open'. Dark Souls is open world for instance.
@Rhaoulos Ubisoft don't fill games with MTs though. They put a few cosmetics in just like every JRPG that isn't Final Fantasy. Every big open world these days is based off what they made anyway. They're just better at building something on a massive scale. I would like them to change things up regarding exploration though.
Well not really ,love all things star wars ,hated the division ,at least itll look pretty I suppose.
Here's hoping it shows up at Ubi Forward next month then. I could see this turning out really great.
@Tharsman enjoy clearing out 100 imperial outposts, opening 500 bounty hunter caches and finding buried jedi artifacts based on treasure maps
What has actually happened to the KOTOR remake? It’s getting cancelled isn’t it… sigh
Yes, I'm hyped. I love Ubisoft games, and I love Star Wars. So, here I am!!
Forgot about it already, open world crap surprise surprise. Bring back Starwars 1313!!
Playing Jedi Survivor right now and I think Ubisoft are a little late to the party. Sure this is more character action + 3D Metroidvania + linear story focused ND style 3D puzzle platformer, but there’s definitely open world elements to it.
The thought of a open world Ubisoft Star Wars game makes me long for the stray bullet in ones cranium
@Khayl u mean forget about it like beyond good and evil was in development for years last update was before covid pandemic
@EEZY541
KOTOR isn’t open world. It’s structured more like the Mass Effect trilogy.
And it’s generally considered the best original story in a Star Wars game. Plenty of people (like me) consider Jedi Knight and Rogue Squadron 2 to be the pinnacle of Star Wars games.
It’s a heated debate actually. No one can really agree on the best Star Wars game. But KOTOR, Dark Forces II, and Rogue Squadron 2 are always in the top five on almost every list.
Hopefully this game doesn't focus on Jedi's and Sith. I want to be the smuggler scum or Bounty hunter.
Will we be climbing at-at towers then?
Just have to watch out for the seagulls. They keep poking my head. Stop it now.
@Tharsman (Hi-five)
@ApostateMage if it ever releases, I think that will be properly bat s*** crazy, so yeah, I'm interested in that one too 😁 Art House Star Wars...
The race they were supposedly focussing on, they featured for a bit in Andor, didn't they? Or was that just a similar tradition based race?
As for Ubisoft's effort. Surely it's going to be a bounty hunter game? Open world, go to different planets etc. What fits more than hunting down bounties in different worlds. Maybe choose your own race, but keep the job the same. And a story extended from that. Perfect for open world Star Wars.
Bounty Hunter/Assassin. Tomato/ToMando
Ubisoft already has the best possible setup for a Star Wars game: Ghost Recon Wildlands by way of the Mandalorians and/or bounty hunters.
Craft a couple large open world areas representing planets, give players the chance to fully customize their Mandalorian warrior and their ship, and have drop-in/drop-out co-op. Have you and your squad of fellow bounty hunters jump around the planets hunting down scum bags.
Make travel between the planets include some interstellar battling in your ship and you've got a great way to spice up the flow of the game.
When Ubisoft got the star wars license, they thought they were making a cold war game during the reagan era to compete against Call of Duty's hit sub franchise. No one told them it was for the damaged star wars ip.
@MFTWrecks lol I admire your optimisim. However Ghost Recon Wildlands is an awful game, from stem to sturn. AI is garbage, the missions are generic boring trash, it suffers from the worst case of ubification if any of the Ubisoft IP released during that era.
Additionally open world is not the end all be all for game design. For star wars, "This is not the way".
I think its funny that they could to Star Wars Wildlands and then add additional planets when they had hard enough time just doing the small patch of land on a single planet.
EA/RESPAWN finally got it right. Ubisoft hasn't made a solid AAA game in almost a decade. Let alone one that works without breaking in the last 15. This will be a dumpster fire, what you're asking for is gasoline on the fire.
Offline player campaign il buy day one ,online game no thanks my wallet is closed to that.
@NotSoCryptic I politely disagree. I think Wildlands was the beginning/bones of a great game formula (open ended shooting and shenanigans which was fun af in co-op). It needed some polish and tweaks, surely, but the broad strokes were there.
Sadly, Ubisoft didn't iterate on the design in the areas it needed to most (enemy/ally AI, smoothness in controls) and instead decided to GAAS-ify its sequel to the benefit of no one.
I think if they recognized what made Wildlands fun and layered improvements onto it, with a nice Star Wars coat of paint over top? Game could be fun as all get out.
This game completely escaped from my radar, never even heard about it. Is it possible they could have adapted the "Beyond Good and Evil" development progress to this game?
I just found out that the collaboration between Ubisoft and Lucasfilm was announced in january 2021... would 3 years of development be a regular time period for this genre of game?
@MFTWrecks Ya you subscribed hard to the "Players Story" model which is what that was born out of.
You got the game they intended to make out of that aside from the busted AI, which Ubisoft honestly lacks the chops to do right. I agree on GAAS its an industry cancer.
This game will not work, star wars is strongly narrative driven. Open ended game play, especially when ubisoft does it where the toys in the sandbox they give you either don't work or are really generic and really ad dnothing to the experience, just isn't good.
I'm pretty sure any fun you had (believe me I have hard time taking anyone who says something is "fun af"), can be largely attributed to you and your friends hanging out and watching the game implode on its self. Shenanigans is good for about 2 or 3 hours, not a 40 hour campaign. You basically invested in "The players story" which was the design philosophy of ubisoft at that time. This is a stupid way to make a game as most of the time its game breaking bugs that fuel that story. If you're not creating anything in that world of any real objective, then you're just playing with a box of junk. To be fair ghost recon wildlands' box of junk isn't that fun to play with.
The game it's self is a collection of other ubisoft games slapped together. Recycled systems (that didn't work in the original games they came from) bolted together to make this game that feels uninspired and requires more work out of the player to achieve what the game should be doing by default.
This won't work for star wars. There is a reason Respawn built a fresh game from scratch on unreal instead of just slapping it on Titanfall. I say that as someone who loves titanfall 2 and the MP of Titanfall 1. Even then that wouldn't work.
Ghost recon is not a good foundation for star wars. I assure you ubisoft does not understand their own games let alone what makes them fun. What you invision doesn't even make sense. Hey Star Wars Masters of Teräs Käsi was a great idea right?
There is no way this game will be accurate as it will probably have a Storm Trooper hidden halfway across the map, with a pistol, that will be able to shoot me in the head 84 times while aiming backward. Then when I find him I will need to shoot him in the head 8 dozen times with the most powerful "microtrasacted" gun in the game all while a "Heavy Trooper" struts up with his shield and "one shot" me with his pea shooter.
Then I will go into a PvP area where I can watch everyone break dancing everywhere while they spam the squat/roll button while ignoring the cover mechanism and then "one shot" me and steal all my loot.
Now that's what I call a Looter Shooter.
@LordAinsley
This sounds ok !
@Fortysixter_uk Just curious, how many of those games have you played? (AC and sequels, Far Cry, Ghosts of Tsushima etc etc)
And you still enjoy them as much as you did the first? I dont mind them, I just feel like overexposure to this type of game has dulled the edges for me
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