Star Wars and EA are in opposite ends of fan appreciation. On one end, fans love Star Wars, in spite of how polarizing their sequel trilogy was. Meanwhile, you have EA who have a near-legendary infamy in the gaming industry. You can't say that the deal inked by the two entertainment juggernauts was a match made in heaven. In fact, fans hated it. But now, this matrimony of Disney (who owns Star Wars) and EA are starting to shift. With the revival of LucasArts into Lucasfilm Games, Disney is distancing itself from its deal with EA. The rebranded Lucasfilm Games has just recently inked new deals with both Ubisoft and Bethesda, both of which are already working on their respective games.
But what does this move by Disney exactly mean for the future of Star Wars games? Is this move away from EA a good thing or a bad thing? What else can we expect from this news? We find out.
We can hope for more and better quality Star Wars games
The first and most relevant case to be made is all about the quantity and quality of games. In the seven-year course that EA was exclusively making Star Wars games, they only managed to make four games. These were the Battlefront, Battlefront II, Jedi: Fallen Order, and Squadrons. The worse part is that none of the four games achieved overwhelming success. If anything, all four games were middling, if not mediocre. With an exception to Fallen Order, everything EA has made during their time with the Star Wars franchise were criticized for having a bad story and for lacking content.
With more developers coming in to pick up the slack, we can expect more games to come out in the coming years. There's already one open-world game in the works by Ubisoft, and we can expect more games to be unveiled soon. This also doesn't take anything away from EA. After all, their contract is still good up until 2023.
Lucasfilm Games VP Douglas Reilly clarified: “We will continue working with them and our relationship has never been stronger. While we may not have a lot of details to share at the moment, we’ve got a number of [Star Wars] projects underway with the talented teams at EA.” What these games are, we don't know much yet.
The bottom line is there will be more studios creating video games set in the Star Wars universe. Having more games mean we have a higher likelihood of getting a great game. Plus, these developers will be competing against each other for a possible bid of exclusivity somewhere down the line. All concerned will surely be doing their best to get in the good graces of Lucasfilm Games and Disney.
More content, less microtransactions
One of the biggest criticisms towards EA's handling of the Battlefront series was their heavy microtransaction features. This is, of course, not unique to their Star Wars games. EA's fancy for microtransactions have been heavily criticized specially for their FIFA franchise.
Aside from the gambling concerns that have caused the ire of lawmakers in Europe, microtransactions also pose gameplay issues. The necessity of microtransactions and loot boxes severely affect the balance of games, especially in multiplayer modes. Of course, this is extremely frustrating for players.
While EA Games isn't the only offender when it comes to microtransactions and loot boxes, they're definitely one of the worst offenders. Meanwhile, Ubisoft and Bethesda have also had brushes with fans thanks to their microtransaction policies. But with Lucasfilm Games at the helm, we can expect microtransactions in future Star Wars games to at least be toned down.
With less microtransactions in future games, developers will be able to focus on the more important stuff: more content, better service, better stability, and better stories. But this is just wishful thinking. Only time will tell if the future of Star Wars games will still be mired in microtransactions.
Less cancelled Star Wars titles
There were many planned games for the Star Wars universe from EA, but not all of them saw the light of day. When Disney inked their deal with EA back in 2013, EA gave the task of developing the games to three studios: Bioware (Mass Effect, Dragon Age), DICE (Battlefield, Mirror's Edge), and Visceral (Dead Space). Of the three original studios tasked with creating new Star Wars games, only DICE was able to produce their intended projects. They went on to create the critically-panned Star Wars: Battlefront and Star Wars: Battlefront II.
Visceral pitched two games to upper management: ‘Yuma‘ and ‘Ragtag‘. Yuma was supposed to be like Assassin's Creed: Black Flag in space, where you'll get to board other ships using the Millennium Falcon. Upper management denied approval outright for Yuma. Meanwhile, the other project got the green light. Ragtag was supposed to be like Uncharted but in the Star Wars universe. When EA Games shut down Visceral Games in 2017, Ragtag came down with them.
Around this time, the task of creating a single-player game for the Star Wars universe were then passed to Respawn Entertainment and Motive Games. Respawn created Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, which received better reception compared to the two Battlefront games. Meanwhile, Motive Games took over Ragtag, but decided to work on a different project instead. They started working on Orca, an open-world Star Wars game. But that too, got cancelled. Upper management decided to scrap Orca in favor of Squadrons, because they could release Squadron much sooner.
With Bethesda and Ubisoft on board the Star Wars train, we can hope that there would be less news of cancelled games and more news of successful launches. One can only hope.
Conclusion
Overall, this move by Disney is taken positively by fans. Over the past seven years, Star Wars fans have been clamoring for EA's head. Now that EA no longer have full control over the fate of Star Wars video games, fans are hopeful that we can go back to the old days. Back when LucasArts were responsible for the development and publication of Star Wars games, we had a Star Wars game for every genre. While we're sure the ‘golden age' of Star Wars games will never come back, we're sure that this deal will be its return to form.
Meanwhile, Star Wars: Battlefront II is offered at the Epic Games Store for free from January 14 to 20. Grab it while you can.
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