Project Ragtag
Cancelled Star Wars heist game by Uncharted creator Amy Hennig.
Project Ragtag was the codename for an untitled action-adventure third-person shooter set in the Star Wars universe, developed by Visceral Games and published by Electronic Arts. The project was notable for being led by Uncharted series creator Amy Hennig and for its cancellation in 2017, which led to the closure of Visceral Games.
Quick Facts
- Publisher
- Electronic Arts
- Engine
- Frostbite 3
- Platforms
- PlayStation 4
- Windows
- Xbox One
- Genre
- Action-adventure, third-person shooter
- Modes
- Single-player
- Director
- Amy Hennig
- Producer
- Julian Beak
- Release
- Cancelled
Facts from the source article.
Development
In early 2013, Disney acquired Lucasfilm and closed its game development studio LucasArts. Electronic Arts made an exclusive deal to develop Star Wars games through three of its studios, including Visceral. At that time, Visceral was working on a pirate-themed project called Jamaica, which EA cancelled in favor of a Star Wars game. The studio pitched a third-person action game where players would be "space scoundrels" in an open-world-style Star Wars universe, codenamed Yuma. However, development of Battlefield Hardline became a company-wide priority for the studio in 2014, and the switch to a different engine, style of gameplay, and narrative caused Yuma's production to stall. During the last year of Hardline's development, Amy Hennig, writer for the first three Uncharted games, was brought into EA as a creative director for a future Star Wars project. Hennig did not want to make a non-linear experience like Yuma; instead, she opted for a linear narrative game. She found both Star Wars and Uncharted based on pulp adventures, but while Uncharted drew from single-protagonist Indiana Jones, Star Wars was more akin to heist films with an ensemble cast, such as The Dirty Dozen or Where Eagles Dare. This led her to name the project Ragtag. The game maintained the "space scoundrel" approach and focused on a large-scale heist set after the events of Star Wars IV: A New Hope. Gameplay would involve switching between multiple character viewpoints, similar to the format used in Star Wars films. Several former Visceral employees described the game's goals as "lofty" and noted significant trouble adapting the Frostbite engine for third-person shooters. They also reported creative gates with Disney/Lucasfilm for character design and art assets, and internal conflicts with Hennig, who wanted strong creative control.
Cancellation
The November 2015 launch of Star Wars Battlefront was a major hit for EA. This success shifted the company's focus away from Visceral Games' project, Ragtag, and toward the sequel, Star Wars Battlefront II. Motive Studios was pulled from Ragtag, and Visceral was barred from hiring new people. Throughout 2016, layoffs and voluntary departures drained Visceral's staff, bringing development to a halt. To secure continued funding, Visceral started building a demo in 2016, showing a portion at E3 that June. As more employees left, EA brought in its Vancouver studio to assist. This new arrangement led developers to suspect EA was setting up Vancouver to take over. In April 2017, Visceral presented an internal demo for a gate review and got approval to keep working, with another review scheduled for six months later. The team showed the demo to EA in mid-October 2017, but its condition prompted EA to shutter Visceral on October 17, 2017. Amy Hennig later stated that EA had decided to cancel Ragtag months earlier, only formalizing the choice after that October demo. EA then handed the Star Wars game to its Worldwide Studios, led by EA Vancouver, announcing a shift from a linear, story-driven design to "a broader experience that allows for more variety and player agency."
Impact and potential revival
The closure of Visceral Games was interpreted by journalists as a signal that publishers were losing interest in single-player experiences, given the studio's history with that format. However, EA CEO Andrew Wilson clarified that the decision was not about single-player versus multiplayer, but rather about adapting to player feedback and market trends. He stated that the current design of Project Ragtag no longer aligned with these shifts, and the studio's closure and reassignment of the project occurred because "we needed to pivot the design." CFO Blake Jorgensen added that the game was too linear for what consumers wanted, and that EA aimed to push it "to the next level." At the time, Visceral had around 80 employees, having lost staff over the years, which Jorgensen called a "sub-scale nature" that required assistance from EA's Vancouver and Montreal studios. He described the closure as primarily a business and cost-saving measure. In June 2018, Amy Hennig announced she had left EA in January of that year. She noted that the new version of the game at EA Vancouver was more open-world and very different from Visceral's original, but that the Star Wars project was stalled. By January 2019, sources told Kotaku that the game at EA Vancouver had been cancelled. In April 2019, EA announced Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, a single-player title developed by Respawn Entertainment. Hennig viewed this as a strategic shift in response to criticism EA faced after closing Visceral and signaling a move away from single-player games. EA's exclusive deal with Lucasfilm ended in 2023, leading to new projects: in April 2022, Skydance New Media announced a collaboration with Lucasfilm Games for a Star Wars action-adventure game, with Hennig as project head. Ubisoft's Star Wars Outlaws, released in 2024, drew comparisons to Ragtag.
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