Amy Hennig, creative director of Visceral’s upcoming Star Wars game, reveals further details about the mysterious project during a panel at Star Wars Celebration 2016.
When it was revealed that Visceral Games was going to be working on a brand new Star Wars game, many fans of the property were excited to see exactly what the developer could deliver, particularly given its work on the Dead Space series. However, details on the project have remained extremely thin on the ground. Thankfully, creative director Amy Hennig has now revealed some additional information on the intriguing project.Speaking at Star Wars Celebration 2016, Hennig confirmed a few details about the Star Wars title, albeit in a rather cryptic way. For starters, Hennig stated that the game will be “an original Star Wars story with new characters, new locations, new tech, new creatures, you name it.” The story itself is all set to be structurally similar to the narratives of the Star Wars movies, complete with a number of important characters, as Hennig stated that “the first thing that jumped out was that these are always ensemble stories…so the same is true of our game.”
It seems as though remaining thematically similar to Star Wars is playing a huge part in Visceral’s development choices for this “groundbreaking” game. Hennig revealed that the “end goal” of the team was that “by the time the player has finished playing the game they feel like they really did play a Star Wars film.”
This resulted in Visceral trying to create this feeling not just by way of story, but also by way of gameplay. The creative director explained that “it’s not a lone wolf story, that’s not Star Wars – your characters have to be a coordinated ensemble acting in the moment and in parallel.” It certainly seems to fit with what EA revealed about the game at E3 2016.
It also seems as though Hennig is building upon the storytelling style that she used so effectively for the Uncharted series. The creative director had a somewhat difficult split from Naughty Dog, but still received a special thanks in the credits of Uncharted 4, and Hennig has admitted that the process she is using for creation is “really similar” to what she did for Uncharted. “It’s what my writing partner Todd calls ‘breezy urgency’, the idea that there’s a sort of swashbuckling charm to the thing, there’s humour and buoyancy. At the same time there’s stakes and jeopardy,” explained Hennig – and that certainly seems to fit with the Star Wars ethos.
Although these extra details about the game are certainly welcome, those expecting a glut of information on the project in the near future are out of luck. “We’re probably going to go dark for a little while now,” said Hennig, before noting that Visceral will “really blow everything out and show you guys stuff next year.” Time is on Visceral’s side, with the game not set to release for several years, but no doubt fans will be hoping for more sooner rather than later.