Quantic Dream wants a piece of the free-to-play multiplayer pie with an action strategy hybrid full of wizards and magic.
Back in 2021, Detroit: Become Human developer Quantic Dream announced Star Wars Eclipse – an ‘intricately branching action adventure game’ – at The Game Awards with a very pretty, pre-rendered cinematic trailer.
In that time, we’ve seen multiple new Stars Wars games come out, including Star Wars Outlaws and, most recently, Star Wars: Beyond Victory, but there’s never been any real updates on Eclipse.
With the studio now working on a newly announced multiplayer game, it’d be easy to assume Eclipse has fallen to the wayside, but Quantic Dream is keen to stress the game is still chugging along.
In a blog post to Quantic Dream’s website, CEO David Cage announced that with the company’s expansion over the last several years (which includes the opening of a second studio in Montréal, Canada), Quantic Dream will begin developing multiple projects at once.
‘After years as a single project studio, we also decided to take a new step,’ explains Cage. ‘Multiple teams are fully dedicated to crafting the next generation of great games, including something very different, a competitive multiplayer experience, born from the same spirit of curiosity and creativity that has always defined us.’
As a result, Quantic Dream has now formally announced Spellcaster Chronicles, and has described it as a team-based action strategy hybrid where teams of three compete to gain territory and destroy their opponents’ Lifestones.
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Characters come in typical damage dealer, tank, and support roles, but the game’s unique hook is its deck-building elements, where you put together your own loadout of spells and summonable monsters (including a giant titan that you can only bring one of) from a list of 50+ options.
This is certainly a change of pace for Quantic Dream, which has only ever worked on story-driven single-player games, but the studio has assured fans that Spellcaster Chronicles will feature an ongoing narrative dictated by the players.
‘Stepping into a new genre with a fresh artistic approach has been both a challenge and a source of growth, allowing us to evolve as a team. We now look forward to shaping the game further with players’ feedback and to perfecting this journey together,’ says Cage.
A gameplay deep dive is already scheduled for tomorrow on Friday, October 17 at TwitchCon San Diego, which will be livestreamed via the event’s official Twitch page.
Quantic Dream’s promising a lot since the whole program is set to run for seven hours, starting at 11:30am PDT, which is 7:30pm here in the UK.
There’ll also be a closed beta later this year on Steam, which you can register for on the game’s website.
As for what this means for Star Wars Eclipse, all Cage says is that development on that will continue and ‘we are eager to share more with you in the future.’
Eclipse isn’t the only Star Wars game that’s been MIA for years. The PlayStation 5 remake of Knights Of The Old Republic was also announced in 2021 but has suffered from a very tumultuous development, to the point where publisher Sony reportedly wants nothing more to do with it.
The remake is supposedly still in the works, as a joint project between developer Saber Interactive and the Embracer Group, but we’ll believe it when we see it.
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