Star Wars Fans Heartbroken Over Cancelled Mandalorian Project — Gaming

Mando and Grogu on a walker in The Mandalorian and Grogu

There's no doubt that The Mandalorian was an important shot in the arm for a Star Wars franchise that has been struggling to find its identity in recent years. Though it arguably didn't carry that momentum flawlessly through its run, it was generally seen as a really fun outing that showed the continued potential of original stories in the galaxy far, far away.

Though we recently did get the feature-length movie adaptation, it's surprising that there haven't been more spin-offs and new releases that aimed to take advantage of the IPs popularity, particularly in those heady early days. Now, it turns out that we almost did, and it could easily have been one of the most exciting projects of the bunch.

As first reported by MP1st, now-defunct studio Echtra Games was working on a multiplayer ARPG with “shoot & loot” gameplay that centered on a Jedi and Mandalorian. The revelation emerged after several assets from development were brought to light following the studio's closure, and what we have seen of it looks genuinely quite impressive.

As you might expect, this provoked a decidedly unhappy response from fans, who discussed the potential of the project over on Reddit.

"I was fully prepared to be underwhelmed by this Magellan footage as Reddit usually gets too clouded by emotion claiming every canceled game could've been a gem... and wow, people weren't kidding. The gameplay slice is simply insane. Game seemed to be in quite an advanced state of development as well.

"This had the bones to become a classic sub franchise like the Force Unleashed games. Made by the Torchlight creator (and Diablo co-creator) still," one comment read.

While another added, "This saying it has multiplayer could have been interesting. What they should do is make something like Destiny, a semi-MMO looter shooter. There’s a huge hole now for the kind of game and I think Star Wars would fit pretty well into it."

"I would kill for another good game in the vein of Bounty Hunter. Have beautiful hand-crafted levels that you run through and try to kill or capture as many high-value targets as possible. Could even make it open world and have it basically be Star Wars: Shadow of Mordor," a third said.

Happily for Star Wars fans, there are a ton of projects coming down the pipeline that should prove very exciting, and there are probably so many that it's unlikely they will all be canceled. The one that's probably in the most jeopardy right now is Quantic Dream's Eclipse, which has been very quiet since being announced several years ago.