EA Motive’s Dead Space remake isn’t out for several months, but the company is already working on its next big project, Iron Man. In an interview with Eurogamer, the studio’s general manager Patrick Klaus frankly discusses its first attempt at a new IP, and why it was canceled without seeing the light of day.
In the piece, Klaus explains that Motive had not yet shipped a game when he took the studio’s lead position from Jade Raymond in 2019. After publishing Star Wars Squadron in 2020, Motive focused all its efforts on Gaia, a new IP that its developers had been working on for years. The only public look at the game came at E3 2020, which showed a player character flying around with a jetpack and manipulating physics objects in an urban environment.
Klaus says that the project proceeded in the prototype stage for around two years, but they were never able to find the unique experience that they were hoping for. Motive’s relative inexperience as a studio also contributed to the decision to cancel Gaia in 2021. However, Klaus clarifies that Motive ultimately made that call, not EA headquarters.