When EA first announced Visceral’s single-player Star Wars game in the style of Uncharted, fans were eager to get their hands on it. The game was expected to be even better after Naughty Dog’s Amy Hennig joined Visceral as gameplay and story director. In a sad turn of events, though, EA would eventually shut down both Visceral Games and its untitled Star Wars project.
Until now, there was little known about the project outside of a few vague glimpses at E3. A new report from Kotaku, however, dives into the vision that Amy Hennig and the studio attempted to create. According to the report, the code name for the untitled game was Ragtag, and it would have been a heist story with a focus on a group of “scoundrels in space.”
After speaking to nearly a dozen former Visceral employees, Kotaku reported that the game would have followed a “cracked mirror version” of Han Solo named Dodger. Throughout a journey filled with crime families and heists, Dodger would have been joined by a small group of other scoundrels. These other characters included a gunslinger named Robie, a mob boss’ daughter named Oona, and a mentor named Buck. Everything would have taken place between the original 1978 Star Wars film and The Empire Strikes Back, dealing with the destruction of Alderaan.
In order to distinguish itself from Uncharted, players would have been allowed to control multiple members of the team. Instead of taking out enemies directly, the emphasis was put on messing with the environment to distract enemies. With their attention turned elsewhere, enemies could be taken out in non-lethal ways.
As expected, EA reportedly demanded that a multiplayer function be added to Ragtag. The report suggests it would have featured combat similar to Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag‘s pirate ship gameplay, except in space.
Hennig supposedly had little interest in the more recognizable parts of Star Wars such as the Jedi, lightsabers, or the Force. As the report suggests, EA was not happy with this lack of recognizable elements and characters.
Progress on Ragtag was said to be very slow. Aside from the brief glimpse shown in 2016, core gameplay like shooting or environments to walk through had not been determined. Even after EA Vancouver, the studio in charge of revamping Ragtag, was brought into production, it was its similarity to Uncharted and lack of innovation that gave it the ax.