A single-player, open-world Black Panther game is in early development at EA's recently-opened Seattle studio, according to a new report.
"The project is called Project Rainier," Jeff Grubb says on Giant Bomb's Game Mess Mornings show. "It is a single-player game. It is in very early development. The game starts with Black Panther being dead, and the player is going to take on the challenges of becoming the new Black Panther, and that seems to be the set up for the game."
While the death of Black Panther appears to be a major bit of the upcoming film, Wakanda Forever, as a tribute to the late Chadwick Boseman, T'Challa originally takes up the superhero's mantle in the wake of his own father's death. It's unclear who the characters would be in this version of the story.
The 'Rainier' of the codename is the mountain in Washington state, and Grubb suggests that it's a reference to the studio making the game. Project Rainier is "very likely being produced by the new Seattle studio that was founded by Monolith Productions vice president and studio head Kevin Stephens. So yes, this is an EA-published game."
Grubb also describes Project Rainier as a "big, open-world" title. He additionally suggests that despite EA's infamous reticence about single-player games, the success of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order has the publisher more open to greenlighting non-multiplayer projects. (Notably, after Anthem's shutdown, EA-owned BioWare is asserting that Dragon Age 4 is a single-player game.)
Further major Marvel games at companies besides EA and Sony are also in various stages of development, Grubb suggests. (Marvel's Midnight Suns is one such game due to launch later this year.)
The first trailer for the second Black Panther film, Wakanda Forever, was released as part of San Diego Comic-Con over the weekend.
