First announced back in 2021, Star Wars Eclipse has remained largely a mystery since its striking first reveal. Last year, developer Quantic Dream quashed rumours the game had been delayed and was suffering development trouble, noting it had yet to announce a release date. In a subsequent interview, Quantic Dream CEO Guillaume de Fondaumiere said Eclipse would retain Quantic Dream's fundamentals despite being an action-adventure game at heart.
But 2023 has so far been a no-show for Star Wars: Eclipse, leaving some to wonder what’s happening with the game. During a recent interview with IGN at Tokyo Game Show 2023 in Japan, Lisa Pendse, Vice President of Marketing for Quantic Dream, described development as “simmering”.
“Can I say it still exists? Because it exists,” Pendse said when asked for an update. “It's just not ready. It's simmering.”
Star Wars Eclipse is a new action adventure game set in the High Republic era of Star Wars, a golden age of Jedi hundreds of years before the birth of Anakin Skywalker. While a lavish teaser trailer paints a thrilling picture of the game’s setting, details are still scarce.
In an interview with IGN last year, Quantic Dream’s development chief David Cage reiterated that Star Wars: Eclipse will be markedly different from Detroit: Become Human, which released on PlayStation 4 back in 2018 and PC the year after.
Pendse confirmed to IGN that Star Wars Eclipse, like previous Quantic Dream games such as 2013’s Beyond: Two Souls, does not have a game over screen.
"One of the big focuses we've had when we announced Star Wars Eclipse was to make sure it was clear that this is actually an action adventure game that has all of the elements that you would come to expect and want from a Quantic Dream title, which is intricately branching narratives, multiple playable characters," Pendse said. "There's no game over. Anyone can die, anything can happen and the story sort of continues so that those signatures are still there. But what we've been doing is even more ramping up our expertise in the gameplay arena."
Quantic Dream opened an office in Montreal, Canada in 2021, to help build Star Wars Eclipse. It’s currently home to about 50 staff whose focus is on gameplay. Still, Star Wars Eclipse is reportedly years away from launch. But Pendse insisted Quantic Dream has the freedom to focus on getting the game right, despite now being owned by Chinese company NetEase.
“One of the amazing things about working with NetEase is that they're not imposing release dates on us,” Pendse said. “Quantic Dream has always released games when they’re ready and I think the high level of quality that you get when you buy a Quantic Dream game is a testament to the value of that approach. And it's the same exact same thing with Star Wars Eclipse. So you will know, but it's too early right now to really give any update on it.”
Quantic Dream, for its part, has been in the news quite a bit since 2018 due to toxic workplace allegations — allegations Cage has strongly denied. In August 2022, NetEase announced it was acquiring Quantic Dream, and the studio has since revealed Parallel Studio's Under The Waves in a bid to expand its boutique publishing label, Spotlight.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
