Former Naughty Dog creative director joins Visceral Games to work on Star Wars

Amy Hennig, the former Naughty Dog creative director who helped breathe life into the Uncharted franchise, is now working on a Star Wars game. Hennig joins the team at Visceral Games, one of the three Electronic Arts-owned studios currently working Star Wars-related projects (the other two being BioWare and DICE).

Given the acclaim that’s followed Uncharted as a story-driven game, this is about the greatest pairing of talents a fan could hope for.

Visceral, formerly EA Redwood Shores, is best known for its work on the Dead Space series. The studio’s been around for more than 15 years, and much time was spent during those early years on licensed projects. This is a team that knows its way around a pre-existing fictional universe, with credits that include multiple James Bond, The Godfather, and The Lord of the Rings games, as well as The Simpsons Game. Not all of them were winners, but the studio leveraged all of that experience to deliver Dante’s Inferno and every Dead Space title we’ve seen to date.

It’s hard to imagine a more justifiable reason to dive back in with licensed franchise work than Star Wars, especially when you factor in the new creative possibilities made possible by Disney’s 2012 acquisition of Lucasfilm. With Hennig on board — as creative director, according to Visceral’s Twitter feed — there’s huge potential here for a tremendous Star Wars game.