Star Wars Eclipse was one of the big reveals at The Game Awards. However, Quantic Dream only showed an impressive pre-rendered tone piece of the title that didn’t contain any actual gameplay. According to the person who first broke news of Star Wars Eclipse, this is because the game is still three or four years away from release.
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Tom Henderson, the aforementioned insider who also first reported on both pieces of Ubisoft’s recently announced Assassin’s Creed DLC, tweeted a few more alleged details about Eclipse. First off, he claimed that the game is about three to four years away “MINIMUM,” which he capitalized for emphasis. Quantic Dream did not give any sort of release window or even platforms, which, in conjunction with the lack of in-game footage, does suggest that this Star Wars game is not launching in the near future. Additionally, Henderson noted that Quantic Dream’s internal engine has not been built for open-world games, which is an aspect that’s giving the team trouble.
He also stated that Quantic Dream’s Paris studio was writing the game (there’s also a newer studio in Montreal) and that studio Founder and CEO David Cage was still “very much involved.” Mentioning him specifically has a few purposes. Many of Quantic Dream’s critics pin their criticisms on the writing of that studio’s games because he has written and directed all of them from Omikron: The Nomad Soul to Detroit: Become Human. This is especially true for the latter game, which many lambasted for its hammy, tacky look at the civil rights movement and racism in the United States.
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His involvement is also worth bringing up within the context of the entire studio as it related to Henderson’s third point: The developer is having a hard time recruiting people. Quantic Dream has seen its share of controversy, some of which has been aimed at Cage himself. In 2018, as has been the case for many game studios, the developer was accused of fostering and facilitating an abusive atmosphere filled with harmful behavior and heavy crunch.
This includes allegedly spreading racist and sexist images around the office, something Cage was also said to have participated in or encouraged. Cage was even accused of saying “in [his] games, all women are whores” and that Quantic Dream “not make games for fags.” Cage denied the allegations, calling them “ridiculous, absurd, and grotesque.” Quantic Dream filed libel lawsuits against the French outlets that initially broke the news and has both won and lost said lawsuits. All of this turmoil can make it easy to see why the team might be having trouble recruiting new talent.
