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LucasFilm has confirmed that two announced Star Wars video games will be canonical.
The studio confirmed to GameSpot that both DICE’s multiplayer shooter Star Wars Battlefront and Visceral’s previously confirmed Star Wars project – which has Uncharted’s former creative director Amy Hennig on the team – will feature official plots that will persevere in Disney’s new Star Wars universe.
These rules do not apply to the upcoming expansion to EA’s Star Wars: The Old Republic, however, which remains part of the non-canonical expanded universe (EU).
In April this year Disney announced that fans should not consider any of Star Wars’ expanded universe content – including all previous Star Wars games – as canon.
While Lucasfilm always strived to keep the stories created for the EU consistent with our film and television content as well as internally consistent, Lucas always made it clear that he was not beholden to the EU. He set the films he created as the canon.
Now, with an exciting future filled with new cinematic instalments of Star Wars, all aspects of Star Wars storytelling moving forward will be connected. Under Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy’s direction, the company for the first time ever has formed a story group to oversee and coordinate all Star Wars creative development.
In order to give maximum creative freedom to the filmmakers and also preserve an element of surprise and discovery for the audience, Star Wars Episodes VII-IX will not tell the same story told in the post-Return of the Jedi Expanded Universe. Demand for past tales of the Expanded Universe will keep them in print, presented under the new Legends banner.
On the screen, the first new canon to appear will be Star Wars Rebels. In print, the first new books to come from this creative collaboration include novels from Del Rey Books.”
Star Wars VII, which is being directed by JJ Abrams, is due out in 2015.
