A Galaxy Far Cry Away: Hocking Exits Lucasarts

While he's most known for the rightfully divisive Far Cry 2 (me, I'm glad it exists but never, ever want to play it again), Clint Hocking is a fascinating games-brain whose trajectory is well worth following. Not purely because he played a big role in the first three Splinter Cells, but also because interviews and talks suggest a restless, ambitious mind that seems taken up with the sort of emergent, open world, experimental experiences we generally crave here on RPS. So, while a bit odd, the news two years back that he was joining LucasArts was rather exciting. With Georgey-porgey's bunch having lately dropped any number of balls both in terms of Star Wars and, well, anything else, Hocking's presence was surely just what this hobbled giant needed. Only now he's bally left without any projects coming to light.

Frustrating, in a way. While Star Wars and I divorced, citing irreconcilable differences, a long time ago, that dim hope that someone could do something special (and, I'd hoped, sandboxish) with the titan of pop-sci-fi remained. Instead, we'll have to settle for Uncharted In Space.

With no clue given as to why Hocking jumped starship, and his next destination currently under-wraps, there ain't much to conjecture about. I can only imagine he's fetching up somewhere big'n'interesting, as he's quite the known name in dev-world. Let's just hope we don't have to wait another two years to find out what he's working on. And that it doesn't involve respawning mercenaries who sound like they recorded their lines on a tape deck set to high-speed dubbing.

Hey, maybe he's gone back to Ubisoft and is shouting at everyone involved to ditch the generi-bloke playing Sam Fisher and bring back Michael Ironside instead. That would be nice, if astonishingly unlikely.