Star Wars fans have been getting plenty of new content recently, including the film The Rise of Skywalker and the game Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, and it looks like another project is coming soon. A PlayStation Store listing for Star Wars: Project Maverick has appeared in Europe, and it’s reportedly a small-scale game.
The Twitter bot PSN posted an alert on March 4 that showed a basic title card for Project Maverick. That is likely not the game’s final name, but it was integrated into the logo in such a way that it could be used in marketing.
https://twitter.com/psnrelease/status/1235166862591352832
Neither Electronic Arts nor Disney had said anything about this Star Wars game, nor announced that any full Star Wars titles would release in 2020. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order released only a few months ago, and Star Wars Battlefront II continues to get new content updates despite being more than two years old.
Project Maverick is in development at EA Motive, and it will be a smaller project, according to Kotaku. It appears to be one of the only surviving Star Wars projects left at Electronic Arts, as the publisher reportedly canceled a Battlefront spinoff game in 2019. It had also canceled an Uncharted-like action-adventure game at Visceral Games prior to the studio’s closure, then moved some of its elements into an open-world Star Wars game at EA Vancouver. That game was eventually canceled, too.
EA Motive’s Star Wars game isn’t a secret, as the company has talked about it being a unique experience before, but the PlayStation listing without any prior warning was unusual. EA Motive has not led development on any project before, having assisted DICE and Criterion Games on Star Wars Battlefront II in 2017.
Aside from having some bug issues, Respawn Entertainment’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order has been one of EA’s biggest Star Wars successes. The game was Respawn’s first project outside the Titanfall series, and its large-scale and cinematic moments gave it a blockbuster feeling. With EA Motive’s project being smaller, it should scratch a different itch. “Small” hasn’t been a key feature in Star Wars games for several years, as EA has preferred huge games with mass appeal. Given the struggles it has faced releasing many of those, something more modest could be a better approach.
