Details on Disney and Epic’s grand plan, which includes Star Wars, have been revealed in a new report. Bloomberg have exposed what to expect from Epic Games and Disney’s close collaboration including when we’ll begin to see it come to fruition.
A few years ago, Disney announced they would be investing $1.5 billion into the Fortnite maker. This deal would involve the creation of a Disney mode in the game. Star Wars was always confirmed to be part of it but details on what exactly this experience would be have been kept under wraps until now.
Bloomberg say that Star Wars content will be used to “lure” fans into Fortnite. The target audience of these fans will be of the younger ages and an attempt to get them more into Disney’s IP. How much Star Wars will be involved in this big initiative remains to be seen.
At this moment in time, Disney’s first game with Epic is targeting a November launch. That’s according to employees at Epic Games. The game is a shooter which is similar to mega hit ARC Raiders. Fans will be able to play as Disney characters taking on AI enemies whilst trying to make it to an extraction zone. Another two games are planned.
Internally, there is some scepticism among staff that this first game has unoriginal gameplay mechanics which are not going to win players over. On the other hand, some employees dispute this. Will Star Wars and Disney fans like this? We’ll have to wait and see until later this year. The second game has been described as mid at best during internal testing.
Interestingly, the report also states that internal data showed the limited timed AI Darth Vader was not the hit people thought it was. It went viral due to bugs that allowed the James Earl Jones-powered NPC to say slurs. However, engagement among players did not grow due to it. To make things worse, AI Darth Vader led to lots of bugs being created that were not fixed. Epic responded to Bloomberg’s reporting by saying that the AI-powered tech will be coming to Fortnite content creators in the near future once it has been polished.
In other Fortnite news, Star Wars games created by fans will be going live next month. More details can be found here. Just last week, it was reported that Disney have looked at buying Epic.
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