In this official Star Wars game, anyone can die

Quantic Dream is famous for choose-your-own-adventure games like Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human, where protagonists can die along the way — and apparently, Disney and Lucasfilm have signed off on that idea for its upcoming Star Wars game.

“There’s no game over. Anyone can die, anything can happen, and the story sort of continues,” Quantic Dream marketing VP Lisa Pendse told IGN at the 2023 Tokyo Game Show.

“One of the big focuses we’ve had when we announced Star Wars Eclipse was to make sure it was clear that this is actually an action adventure game that has all of the elements that you would come to expect and want from a Quantic Dream title, which is intricately branching narratives, multiple playable characters,” she told the publication.

Let’s be real: Quantic Dream’s “anyone can die” bad endings are really bad. Gruesome, depressing, or — if you play the early Indigo Prophecy / Fahrenheit’s mini-endings back to back to back — just kind of amusing. I’ve embedded them all at the bottom of this story if you want a peek.

Would Disney really sign off on those vibes for its feel-good Star Wars brand? Well, I’ve gotta admit it’s been getting more flexible lately: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor finally features lightsabers that can actually dismember stormtroopers after decades of game developers shipping blunt light bats. (There was the occasional cheat code.) The Disney Plus series Andor was a surprisingly mature and well-written show by its close, and you may recall the movie Rogue One doesn’t exactly have a happy ending…

But Pendse also told IGN that the Quantic Dream game is still just “simmering,” with no real update to share since its 2021 announcement, and the Star Wars franchise has a rich history of canceled video games.