Casey Hudson, Game Director on Star Wars: Fate Of The Old Republic, has suggested during an interview with Bloomberg that the upcoming RPG won’t take players hundreds of hours to finish, nor will it suffer from a prolonged development cycle.
While Hudson doesn’t have an exact release date in mind right now, he did say that he has never taken more than four years developing a game in the past, and therefore has no intention of spending five — seven years working on one. In addition, the former Mass Effect developer ruled out the use of AI to help speed up production, describing it as “creatively soulless” and “unhelpful.”
Instead, the development team at Arcanaut Studios are looking to bring in contractors to help with development of the highly anticipated Star Wars project, but looks to keep costs feasible by avoiding taking on hundreds of in-house staff.
Bigger isn’t necessarily better. If I’m excited about a game and then I find out that it’s 200 hours long — even if I have no ambition to actually finish it — I wonder, if I put 20 hours in, will I even be out of act one? A lot of players just want to play something and finish it.
Earlier this month it was revealed that a number of ex-BioWare members are now at Arcanaut Studios working on Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic. This includes Ryan Hole, Caroline Livingstone, Melanie Faulkner, and more, who have worked on the likes of Mass Effect, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, and Dragon Age.
Star Wars Fate of the Old Republic was announced during The Game Awards 2025.
[Source – Bloomberg]