Amy Hennig, the video game director and script writer responsible for such series as Uncharted and Jak and Daxter, has officially revealed that she has parted ways with EA in pursuit of other ventures.
In an interview with Eurogamer, Hennig revealed that she had actually parted ways with EA in January following the closure of Visceral Games and the pivoting of her team’s Star Wars game’s development to EA Vancouver last October. Her departure was withheld from an official statement until this time for legal reasons.
“This is the problem, it was hard enough for them, but people were immediately asking them ‘is Amy working with you?’ and the answer was ‘well, we’re in negotiations…’ like, hmm,” Hennig says. “It was, sort of the soft pedal answer.”
Since then, Hennig has pursued other ventures independently, establishing her own independent development studio and looking into new methods of gameplay.
“I’m hoping to bring some people on board, I would love to have a little company of about six to eight people, 15 at the most, and do some more projects, do some VR stuff – I’m consulting with some VR companies and doing a ton of research because I haven’t played a lot to immerse myself in it,” she says.
Unfortunately, this has left the Star Wars title she and her team had been working on indefinitely shelved. Said to have been considered too linear, the title is now being repurposed into a more open world framework by EA Vancouver which Hennig says is very different from her and her team’s original vision.
“Y’know, once you go more open world it’s such a different game to the one we were making,” she says. “Everybody loved what we were doing and I’d love to see us resurrect that somehow, but it’s complicated.”
Much has been said and speculated about what Hennig’s Star Wars game, code named Ragtag, would have looked like. A full breakdown of what was known about the title can be found here.
