Amy Hennig appointed Creative Director for Star Wars

Amy Henning has been appointed as the Creative Director for the upcoming Visceral Games and EA Star Wars video game.

It was announced today via EA’s blog, by Steve Papoutsis, Vice President and General Manager for Visceral Games, that the writer for the Uncharted series has joined Visceral Games and EA following her departure from Naughty Dog earlier this month.

“I couldn’t be more excited to welcome Amy Hennig to our team at Visceral Games and EA as Creative Director on our Star Wars project,” said Papoutsis.

“Amy has long been recognized as one of our industry’s top visionaries, and is coming off an amazing run as the Writer and Creative Director of the Uncharted franchise. But her contributions go beyond the games she helped create at Naughty Dog and at Crystal Dynamics, where we worked together many years ago.”

He continued: “As both a colleague and friend, I’ve always admired her approach to creative development – focusing on nailing down the soul of a game first, and then making sure the writing, the gameplay, the design and the art comes together to form a unified, interactive experience for the player.  This fits in perfectly with what we’re trying to do here at Visceral and Amy’s going to help us continue in our pursuit to make the most thrilling, immersive games in the world.

“Over the last few weeks, Amy and I have spent a lot of time talking about what her first project would be. There are a lot of different directions we could have gone, but I could sense that what really excited her about this opportunity (because let’s face it, we weren’t the only ones knocking at her door) was Star Wars. Amy’s a huge fan. We happen to be making a Star Wars game. Just thinking about the possibilities made both of us even more excited about having her join the team.”

When news of Hennig’s departure broke, sources said that Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley, writer and director of The Last of Us, had “forced” her out of the company.

Naughty Dog later denied the reports and said that there was “nothing left to be said on this subject”.

Just last week it was also announced that the director for Uncharted 3 had stepped down from Naughty Dog and took a job with League of Legends developer Riot Games.