When one of the most powerful women in gaming made the jump from Ubisoft to EA, you had to wonder what her next big project would be. Thanks to EA’s Chief Financial Officer, we now know what Jade Raymond has been up to since forming the new studio Motive for Electronic Arts. Blake Jorgensen told a conference that Raymond was working on a new open-world action game for the gaming powerhouse.

In talking about future plans for EA, Jorgensen told the UBS Global Technology Conference in San Francisco: “We’ve never really operated in the largest genre of gaming, and that’s the action genre. That’s the Assassin’s Creed-style games; more open-world, more single-play versus multiplayer. It’s not been an area that we’ve operated in. We recently hired Jade Raymond, who was behind the Assassin’s Creed franchise for Ubisoft and she will be building an action genre for us through a studio we’re building out in Montreal right now. So a lot of excitement around the action genre.”

This follows up on comments last month by Patrick Soderlund, Executive Vice President of EA Studios, who said that EA was missing out by not having an open-world game in the action genre.

Raymond joined EA in July 2015 after leaving Ubisoft in October 2014. Raymond’s resume at Ubi was among the best in gaming. She served as producer of Assassin’s Creed and the executive producer of Assassin’s Creed II and Watch Dogs. From January 2010, Raymond served as the managing director of Ubisoft’s Toronto studio.

As for her new job at Electronic Arts, Raymond was put in charge of founding Motive Studios in Montreal who will presumably be working on this new open-world action game that EA is looking for. She is also working as part of the team at Visceral Games that is working on the upcoming Star Wars game coming out of that studio.

On the one hand, I’m excited to see what Jade Raymond has up her sleeve at EA. In about ten years in the business, she’s established herself as one of the top names in gaming. However, Ubisoft has gone back to that generic Ubisoft open-world well so many times that I think it’s run dry. Given her history with the genre and Ubisoft’s take on it in particular, I’m worried that she might hedge too closely to what she knows and what EA knows is a financial success to give us something new.

At the very least, Jade Raymond and Amy Hennig working together on the Visceral Star Wars game is certainly something that excites me. I’m hoping that we get it next year but given the talent working on it, I can understand if they push it back to make sure it’s perfect.

Source: Eurogamer, EA Motive