Amy Hennig, who was the creative director of Visceral's Star Wars project before the studio was shuttered last October, left EA in January and is moving into indie development. This comes from a Eurogamer interview with the Uncharted co-creator at Gamelab in Barcelona, where she also discusses how the project, previously codenamed Ragtag, isn't really the same game in the hands of new developer EA Vancouver.
"The Vancouver studio is working on something pretty different," Hennig says, describing Visceral's project as being "on the shelf". "It's really not... Y'know, once you go more open world it's such a different game to the one we were making. Everybody loved what we were doing and I'd love to see us resurrect that somehow, but it's complicated."
You may remember that EA's Patrick Soderlund said the studio would "pivot the design" of Ragtag into a "broader experience", widely interpreted to be an open world style of game. While it was reported by Kotaku that Hennig was in discussions about her future at EA, she confirmed to Eurogamer than she departed earlier this year. "I have not worked at EA since January, technically, legally."
Hennig says she's just started an independent studio, and hopes to recruit somewhere between six and 15 members of staff. She's also doing consulting work with VR companies. EA's next Star Wars game, meanwhile, will almost certainly be Respawn's single-player Jedi: Fallen Order, which was announced at E3 earlier this month.
