The next wave of Star Wars video games may come from some unexpected places. Lucasfilm Games vice president Douglas Reilly says the company is exploring projects "large and small" with partners that will surprise fans, and that smaller AA games are now a real part of how the galaxy far, far away gets adapted into games.
Reilly shared the update on The Game Business Show, which released on Thursday (October 15th), in a conversation with host Christopher Dring and Fuse Games CEO Matt Webster. The timing makes sense. Lucasfilm has just put out two of its best-received games in years, and neither came from a giant publisher's internal studio.
Zero Company And Galactic Racer Changed The Conversation
Star Wars Zero Company arrived on August 27. The turn-based tactics game is set during the final days of the Clone Wars and was developed by Bit Reactor, a team of XCOM veterans, in collaboration with Respawn Entertainment, with Electronic Arts publishing. It holds an 85 on Metacritic.
Check out the final trailer for Star Wars Zero Company below:
Star Wars: Galactic Racer launched on October 6 as the first game from Fuse, a UK studio formed in 2023 by former Criterion developers who previously worked with Lucasfilm on Battlefront. Published by Secret Mode, the racer is set after the fall of the Empire and sends players across tracks on Jakku, Tatooine, Crait, and more. Its Metacritic score of 88 makes it one of the highest-rated Star Wars games in about 20 years.
Reilly Says The Fantasy Decides The Budget
When Dring asked whether more Lucasfilm projects would get this kind of AA treatment from veteran independent teams, Reilly confirmed it. He said blockbuster games like Battlefront will always be central, but that Star Wars lends itself to stories in just about any genre.
"It doesn't have to always be AAA. Sometimes it can be AA. And it's really about the experience that we're delivering and the fantasy we're fulfilling. And sometimes those fantasies aren't AAA fantasies," Reilly said. He explained that smaller games let Lucasfilm take an iconic moment from the movies and give fans a way to step into it and learn something new about the galaxy.
That idea is a big part of why both recent games work. Zero Company drops players into a squad-level corner of the Clone Wars, while Galactic Racer picks up the thread of the podracing scenes from The Phantom Menace and even brings back Sebulba as a bearded racing veteran in its campaign.
Reilly also pushed back on the idea that AA means lower quality. He said Lucasfilm does not think of Galactic Racer as AA in terms of execution, calling it "very much a AAA experience," and said the real differences are scope and price. In his view, a game can be "really good, tight, well-scoped" and simply end when it is done.
Lucasfilm Is Taking More Pitches
Lucasfilm no longer publishes its own games, so its role is to bring the right publisher and developer together. Reilly said that has made the company more flexible about who it hears from. "You don't have to necessarily be a top five publisher to make a great Star Wars game," he said, while noting that the company's quality bar means it typically works with experienced teams.
He followed that up with a tease. Lucasfilm is working with partners that he believes will keep catching fans off guard, to the point where people will react with surprise when they see who is making what.
Webster said that relationship works because Lucasfilm's game makers are directly involved, and he compared it favorably to other licensing deals in his career. "They're the experts in Star Wars and there are game makers there and that's incredibly valuable," he said. He added that Fuse has plans to keep supporting Galactic Racer and expects to share more in the coming weeks and months.
Which Star Wars era or moment would you most like to see turned into a smaller, focused game? And would you rather Lucasfilm keep spreading the license across more studios, or focus its biggest bets on a few blockbusters?
Sound off with your thoughts in the comments below.