It was one of the big surprises of the 2021 Game Awards. Star wars eclipse will be the next game from Quantic Dream (without the supervision of PlayStation) and it has already hit the mark with some of the players. However, internally all would not be so rosy.
According to Tom Henderson, the insider who revealed himself this year thanks to his leaks on Battlefield and Call of Duty, the game may be in pre-production, it would already be experiencing difficult development.
Funding difficulties
The 2021 Game Awards sensation is said to be already in turmoil. According to Tom Henderson, who had revealed the game before the hour, Star Wars Eclipse would experience several internal development problems. Already well before its announcement, the next production of Quantic Dream would have suffered the refusal of Sony, which would have rejected the idea of ​​an MMORPG, then known under the code name "Project Karma", in favor of Detroit: Become Human. Finally, the Spanish studio would have tried everything by reusing the assets of its stillborn project to sell a Star Wars game to Lucasfilm. Negotiations that resulted in Star Wars Eclipse.
The game being more ambitious than any other production of the studio, Quantic Dream would have tried to be bought out by Sony and other publishers to obtain new sources of financing, in vain. The studio was already at the heart of revelations about its toxic work environment which scared away investors, except NetEase which finally entered the studio's capital in 2020.
18 months of development and no playable version
From there, the situation would have been unblocked and the game could begin its pre-production. However Star Wars: Eclipse would be far from out of the woods. Quantic Dream's engine would pose serious problems. It was indeed only designed for restricted levels adapted to the studio's more modest narrative games. The ambitions with SWE would therefore be too different from the old proposals. The game would opt for example for larger or even more open levels and more NPCs, pushing the engine to its limits.
The situation is such that Star Wars Eclipse has reportedly been in development for 18 months and has no internally playable version yet. A worrying situation which would also be due to the difficulty of recruiting talent since the revelations of former employees and the various allegations on the culture of the company (racism, homophobia, sexism) which would scare developers away. Another black spot: the involvement of David Cage, at the heart of several controversies, in the production and the screenplay embarrasses many current and potential employees. According to an internal source, who is currently working at the studio, it would take at least three or four years of additional development, but Quantic Dream could call on external reinforcements for certain aspects of the game or even be simply bought out. One thing is certain, Star Wars Eclipse won't be released for a few years.
