Though the mega-publisher has flirted with the concept in the past, EA now stands on the verge of building an Assassin’s Creed-style action game, with former Ubisoft employee Jade Raymond taking point on the new IP.
Joining the company back in June after serving as a veteran producer on Ubisoft’s clandestine juggernaut, there is perhaps no better candidate to spearhead a new AAA action game for EA, and just yesterday, Financial Boss Blake Jorgensen confirmed Raymond’s place at the helm of the all-new project.
Per GameSpot:
“We’ve never really operated in the largest genre of gaming, and that’s the action genre. That’s the Assassin’s Creed-style games; more open-world, more single-play versus multiplayer. It’s not been an area that we’ve operated in. We recently hired Jade Raymond, who was behind the Assassin’s Creed franchise for Ubisoft and she will be building an action genre for us through a studio we’re building out in Montreal right now. So a lot of excitement around the action genre.”
Upon her arrival at EA, Raymond helped found Motive Studios, a new development division within the publisher that appears to have been created in order to fulfil a longstanding vision. Indeed, in the past, Patrick Soderlund and other big wigs at EA have hinted at plans to expand into the blockbuster action genre, modelling a game to rub shoulders with the likes of Assassin’s Creed and even Grand Theft Auto.
And though there’s no word of a specific genre for this new creative venture, it’s certainly exciting to hear word of EA expanding in a new direction beyond its staple and annual franchises. Aside from working at Motive Studios, it’s understood that Raymond will also be involved in Visceral Games’ Star Wars game, which will surely begin to unveil itself once DICE gets the soon-to-be-released Battlefront up and running.