Back in April, EA announced that the Motive Studios has branched out from Montreal to open up an office in Vancouver. The division in Montreal was established in July 2015 by Jade Raymond, a former Ubisoft executive, the founder of Ubisoft Toronto and a producer on Assassin's Creed, Watch_Dogs, and Splinter Cell. In 2017, EA officially confirmed it's merged BioWare Montreal with Motive Studios. Raymond and her team most recently developed the single-player campaign for Star Wars Battlefront II, and was working on Visceral's (seemingly cancelled) Star Wars game codenamed Ragtag.
In the wake of Uncharted Creator Amy Hennig's unexpected departure from Motive, Jade Raymond had a chance to explain the complicated situation in a recent interview with Game Informer.
Let's start with the troubled Star Wars title. The Ragtag successor is being helmed by Motive Vancouver with assistance from Motive Montreal. The Vancouver division used to co-develop that game with Visceral back when the closed studio was leading the title. Vancouver’s development team contains artists from PopCap Seattle (Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare), Radical Entertainment (Prototype) and United Front Games (Sleeping Dogs), but the studio is still offering new jobs.
According to Raymond, Amy Hennig's game had 3 terabytes worth of Star Wars assets that they intend to reuse. Apparently, everyone admire Hennig's work and would love to keep it in the final product. Raymond is unsure on when this game is actually coming out and Ragtag V 2.0 is definitely an open-world game, as Hennig’s more cinematic and linear approach is all but officially gone.
When it comes to the unannounced IP, it's helmed by Motive Montreal, and was the main reason EA opened the studio in the first place. Raymond wants to create a sci-fi title which will be a positive statement about humanity, whatever it means. This game will offer a "dynamic, living, breathing world" that's constantly evolving. The IP will feature some social mechanisms, allowing you to play with friends. Raymond is hoping to start talking about it around this time next year, possibly at E3.
The next Plants vs. Zombies is being made in Vancouver. It sounds like it's Garden Warfare 3 (which has been leaked by Amazon's comic book description) and will have a campaign mode.
The mysterious fourth title is created at Motive Montreal, and the title was pitched by three employees who worked on it in their free time and then it got greenlit by EA. It seems that it may a smaller project that will be released on the EA Originals label. Apperently, Motive is very happy with the project.