This week Jade Raymond reemerged after time spent in something of a “career limbo” after leaving Ubisoft. Raymond has been assigned as the head of a new studio under Electronic Arts that goes by the name: Motive.
The studio has also curated the talents of Amy Hennig, most known for her writing credits on Uncharted. Visceral Games and BioWare will also be working alongside with Motive Studios. Their first project? Star Wars.
I’m personally excited for this move. Jade Raymond produced some of the best titles in the Assassin’s Creed franchise, while Amy Hennig is one of the few writers I respect in the video game industry starting well back in her Legacy of Kain days. Raymond left Ubisoft after working on Watch Dogs, while Hennig parted with Naughty Dog under undisclosed circumstances. Once upon a time Visceral and BioWare were the best of the best when it came to games set in the great beyond, with Dead Space and Mass Effect respectively. Then EA happened.
Which leads us to the part of the article where I get cynical. While EA has “turned over a new leaf” in terms of their treatment of consumers and their approach to game design philosophy, I can’t help but think of the adage ‘Old Habits Die Hard.’ Hopefully EA keeps their hands out of Motive’s cookie jar and gives them a relative degree of autonomy, it would be nice to see what Raymond and Hennig are capable of when branching out on their own.
There’s also the fact this is a Star Wars title they’re working on, so it’s almost a sure bet that there will be an aggressive release date attached to it. While Raymond’s previous job saw her meeting some of Ubisoft’s odd and impossible sounding deadlines (and Ubisoft’s games hit a quality and consistency problem as a result), it’s still nice when developers and programmers get the relative leniency they need to achieve the quality of product they want
Even so I’m going to try and remain optimistic about this one. Hopefully the artists involved with this title are allowed to work as they please and we, the consumer, get a pretty slammin’ Star Wars game out of the deal. You can read Raymond’s press release here.
