Footage left behind by a now-defunct studio shows a Star Wars looter shooter led by a Jedi and a Mandalorian — and the internet still hasn’t gotten over it.
Before it shut down, Echtra Games was developing a multiplayer ARPG built around “shoot & loot” mechanics, set in the galaxy far, far away. Development assets made their way out into the open once the studio closed, and what can be seen of the project looks genuinely impressive.
The one Mandalorian spin-off nobody knew existed
Here’s where it gets strange. For a franchise that had spent years struggling to find its identity, The Mandalorian was a shot in the arm. The show didn’t sustain that momentum perfectly across its run, but it was broadly regarded as a fun outing — proof that original stories in this universe still had room to breathe.
A feature-length movie adaptation did materialize. What never arrived, oddly enough, was the wave of spin-offs and new releases you’d expect to ride the show’s popularity during those early, heady days when appetite was at its highest.
As it happens, one nearly made it. And it might well have been the most interesting of the lot.
Reddit went in, and then went quiet
The response was roughly what you’d predict from a fanbase that has learned to grieve on schedule. On Reddit, fans pulled the project’s potential apart, with the mood swinging between wounded and furious.
“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.
It’s that final detail that really stings. The pedigree was all there.
What fans wanted it to be
Elsewhere, commenters began sketching out the game they’d rather be playing. “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,” another added.
Someone else reached deeper into the back catalogue: “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.”
The specificity in those posts says everything. Nobody here is asking for just anything. They know precisely what they want, and roughly when it stopped being made.
The next one on the chopping block
The despair does have a floor, mind you. A decent number of Star Wars projects are still working their way down the pipeline, and there are enough of them that the odds of every single one being canceled are slim.
The most precarious of the bunch at the moment is Eclipse from Quantic Dream, which has gone very quiet in the several years since its announcement. In this industry, quiet is seldom the same thing as calm.
Forty-nine years of this
Star Wars began with George Lucas in 1977. Following the release of Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (which originally carried just the title Star Wars), the property expanded outward into sequels, prequels, TV shows, video games, comics and plenty more. Once Disney acquired the rights, it wasted little time building out Disney+ — and the very first thing it made for the service was The Mandalorian.
Which brings us to this point: a show that rescued the brand, a studio that no longer exists, and a handful of minutes of footage showing a Jedi and a Mandalorian shooting their way through a game nobody will ever get to play.