By George & Josh Bate
If you’re like us, your Star Wars fandom is evoked as much by certain video games as it is my beloved movies and television shows. Nowadays, new Star Wars games are few and far between, relative to the more prolific era of LucasArts releases. In recent years, various Star Wars games have started, yet failed to, complete development for a number of reasons. And, on the one year anniversary of Star Wars Outlaws, we thought it’d be cool to go over one of the most interesting of these canceled games – Ragtag.
Early Development of Yuma
In 2013, EA reached an exclusive agreement with Disney to create Star Wars games. As DICE were tasked with working on the reboot of Star Wars Battlefront, Visceral Games was brought on to develop a different game – one that seemed like it would have been a great time.
For those unfamiliar with Visceral Games, the American video game developer was best known for creating the acclaimed Dead Space series. Visceral Games are also responsible for the video game adaptation of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing, The Simpsons Game, Dante’s Inferno, and the Tiger Woods PGA Tour games. Needless to say, EA tasked an accomplished developer with bringing a new Star Wars game to life.
At the time of this task, Visceral Games were working on an open-word pirate game, code-named Jamaica. When the chance to develop a Star Wars game came along though, the developer chose not to throw out the barebones of Jamaica, instead adapting its core concept into a space setting. From then on, the Star Wars game became known internally as Yuma (side note: 3:10 to Yuma is a classic Western film starring Glenn Ford that was later remade by James Mangold in 2010).
Plaguing development on Yuma from the get-go, however, was the mandate from EA to also work on Battlefield Hardline. This continued to be an issue as the game progressed in development.
Uncharted Influences Sees Yuma Become Ragtag
Amy Hennig, known for her work on the first three Uncharted games at Naughty Dog, was brought on as creative director of co-writer of Yuma. Todd Stashwick, best known for his acting roles in Star Trek: Picard and 12 Monkeys, joined Hennig to write the story.
As development progressed, Hennig wanted Yuma to change course from an open-world space game (like Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag in space) to a more linear adventure game (like the Uncharted series). This aligned with the story her and Stashwick development, which borrowed heist elements from Ocean’s Eleven. At this point, the codename Yuma was scrapped and the game became known as Ragtag.
At this point, development on Battlefield Hardline continued to hinder development on Ragtag, which led EA to bring in their subsidiary Motive Studios to help out. However, Motive Studios were soon taken off Ragtag to work on the single-player campaign of Star Wars Battlefront II.
What Would Ragtag Have Been Like?
Under Hennig’s direction, Ragtag was due to draw inspiration from ensemble heist films like The Dirty Dozen and Where Eagles Dare. By the way, the codename Ragtag came from the fact the game would have focused on a variety of oddball characters coming together to pull of a big heist, just like the aformentioned films.
The game would have been after the events of A New Hope.
It would have allowed characters to switch control between various members of the ragtab group as the different pieces of the heist were put together.
Of note, and much to the displeasure of EA, Ragtag would not have featured Force users or lightsabers.
First Look at Ragtag
Despite problems behind the scenes, a clip from Ragtag was included in EA’s E3 presentation in 2016. The gameplay reportedly impressed with its visuals, which highlighted a linear third-person game set on Tatooine (amongst other planets).
Behind the scenes, the developers were working on various parts of the game, including a Tatooine shootout, an AT-ST chase, and a journey through the depths of Jabba’s Palace. All the while, the team was faced with issues that the game felt too similar to Uncharted, something Rogue One co-writer Gary Whitta later confirmed.
After Doug Chiang was briefly attached as Art Director of the game, EA Vancouver was brought in to take over the whole project, at which point the game shifted from a single-player to entirely multiplayer game.
Unfortunate Cancellation
A demo featuring sections of Ragtag was shown to higher-ups at EA, who allegedly had already came to the decision to cancel the game. At this point, Hennig had already left the project and rumors had long been circulating that the game had been shelved.
Eventually, fans were able to get their hands on a similar game – Star Wars Outlaws. Released by Ubisoft in 2024, Outlaws mirrored Ragtag in many ways, such as its setting during the original trilogy era, its plot focusing on heists, and its lack of lightsabers and Force sensitive characters. Notably, however, Outlaws was open-world, unlike Ragtag, which, for most of its development, was planned to be a linear third-person game.
Future of Star Wars Games
Despite the unfortunate cancellation of Ragtag and the underperformance of Outlaws, there’s still plenty of Star Wars games on the horizon. The third installment of EA’s Star Wars Jedi series is in active development, as is a single-player turn-based tactics game called Star Wars: Zero Company. There’s also Beyond Victory – A Mixed Reality Playset, which is developed by ILM for the Meta Quest 3 and 3S headset devices.
Shrouded in more uncertainty are two other announced Star Wars games. As of 2024, Aspyr Media were developing a remake of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, which Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch confirmed as “alive and well.”
Meanwhile, Quantic Dream have been developing Star Wars: Eclipse, a game set during the High Republic era. After the world premiere of its trailer in 2021, nothing had been heard about the game until The Art of Star Wars: The High Republic: Volume II confirmed that the game was still in development. Since the beginning, Eclipse has been marred in controversy, ranging from legal battles about harsh working conditions to allegations of a bigoted culture of harassment at Quantic Dream. This led to the hashtag #BlackoutStarWarsEclipse, which saw many Star Wars fans pushback against the project.
Sources for this article include Kotaku, GameSpot, IGN, Fortune, PCGamer, ComicBook.com, and USGamer.