I still think that the storyline of the game and that the fact that an AT-AT just shows up in the middle of the storyline like you should know what it is seemed to hint the game might have at one point been intended to be a "Mandalorian simulator" (the central macguffins also had a very "Lost Mandalore" from Clone Wars and Rebels cartoons/"KOTOR" feel; the central quest hub pub was very Star Wars cantina-ish; etc). I don't think we'll ever get the full story on what happened, but it seemed like the game came out in a period where EA was worried they had lost the Star Wars license forever and might have panicked and over-corrected from a licensed game with a lot of excitement behind its storyline to an "original" property without the right writers to file the serial numbers off very well and without enough passion for whatever they were trying to make original about it. Whereas if they waited just a couple years they would have a shared Star Wars license again and the hype train of Disney+'s Mandalorian show, and a "Mandalorian simulator" might have been very well timed to be what "everyone" wanted.