A recent leak exposed a new unannounced Star Wars game with the codename Project Maverick. Outside of the name and one leaked piece of key art for the game, almost nothing is known about it. However, one additional detail has been discerned by digging further into the game's info on the PSN Store, where the leak originated, which appears to confirm that Star Wars: Project Maverick will have multiplayer.
Star Wars:Â Project Maverick is being developed by EA Motive and has been described as "a smaller, more unusual project." But it is unknown exactly what that means and what makes it unusual and what that is being compared to. Is it smaller and more unusual than the Battlefront games or Jedi: Fallen Order or something else?
Either way, with so little to go on, people are starting to pick apart clues based on the few details so far, with a popular theory being that Project Maverick could be the return of a Star Wars aerial/space combat game akin to the Rogue Squadron games or X-Wing VS. TIE Fighter. The theory makes one of its deductions from the image from the Project Maverick key art, which features a small group of X-Wings flying towards a Star Destroyer. There are no human characters, ground combat, or anything else shown that someone might expect from a game like Battlefront and some people are hoping that means that this game will return players to the cockpit and put them in either single-player space/aerial combat missions and multiplayer dogfight matches.
Also being seen as a possible clue is the codename itself, Project Maverick. Due to Tom Cruise's lead character Maverick in the classic 1986 film Top Gun, the term Maverick has become associated with fighter pilots. The theory goes what better codename for a game about dogfighting and aerial combat.
Both Battlefront games featured multiplayer space combat, so this would not be the first time players could get behind the stick of an X-Wing in recent years; however, many fans have fond memories of the Rogue Squadron games, which were very popular Star Wars games on the Nintendo 64 and Gamecube; as well as the 1997 PC game X-Wing VS. TIE Fighter. In fact, in the 90s, Star Wars games were often very focused on space combat, but that has fallen away as a genre for the franchise over the years.
While it is too soon to know exactly what Project Maverick is for sure, it certainly is a compelling thought and hope for it to be a return of a game in the lineage of Rogue Squadron or X-Wing VS. TIE Fighter. While it may qualify for the description of the game being "more unusual," its other description as a "smaller" game could quickly debunk this theory. But, hopefully, EA will reveal more about its Star Wars lineup soon and fans will be able to get a better look at exactly what Project Maverick is.
Star Wars: Project Maverick is unofficially confirmed for PS4 and has no current release date.