titanfall

EA reports that Respawn Entertainment is now working on a new Star Wars game. Respawn Entertainment was founded by Jason West and Vince Zampella (previously set up Infinity Ward at Activision) who after aligning themselves with EA produced the multiplayer hit, Titanfall.

Better yet we've a key mind behind the God of War series, Stig Asmussen who will join West and Zampella, and the rest of the team in the production of the new Star Wars game. Asmussen published some info about his new gig on a recent blog post:

“For me, just typing these words is surreal. I have been playing Star Wars games my whole life, now I get to make a Star Wars game. But it’s not all fun and games — we promise to pay respect to the Star Wars legacy at all times, a fact that will be constantly reinforced and honored as a central game design tenet. Moving forward, we couldn’t ask for a better universe in which to continue this journey, and although I would love to share all of the exciting places we are going, we have the following piece of information to divulge with you all today: We’ll be making a third-person action-adventure game set in the Star Wars universe.

Now, I understand on the surface this might sound a bit dry, but developing a game within the ever-expanding Star Wars universe opens up so many paths for us to go down, and an unparalleled playground to design within. We have already planted the seeds by assembling a small, but incredibly talented team, ready for the amazing journey that lies ahead. With this in mind we are looking to expand the dream.”

Third-person action-adventure. Alright, alright. Thoughts on that? Seeing as that's pretty much all we've got to run on at this point.

Initial reactions?

Yesterday, EA's CFO casually confirmed dates for Titanfall 2, Mass Effect: Andromeda, and the next Battlefield during the Media & Telecom Conference at Morgan Stanley Technology. Here's what he said, transcribed by NeoGAFfer salromano:

We've got a great year ahead... we've got our Battlefield first-person shooter game coming in the third quarter, and our third-party title that Respawn, our partner, built, it's called TItanfall, it's the second title that they brought into that brand. Both of those are first-person shooters and will be targeted around the fast, action-driven shooter market, as well as the strategy-driven market in that quarter... We have our Mirror's Edge runner game this first quarter, and then we have Mass Effect, which is a sci-fi action game, in our fourth quarter. So big year ahead and we're pretty excited.

The quarterly date ranges he mentions are fiscal year (EA's fiscal year starts in April), so they roughly translate to an October-December release for Battlefield and Titanfall 2, and an early 2017 release for Mass Effect: Andromeda.

Meanwhile, GameStop is advertising Titanfall 2 in store, so either they know something we don't, or they're getting a little too excited.

Read more here.