Everyone worth a damn at Lucasarts is long gone anyway. Pretty much every single good game to come from Lucasarts can be followed by the company that was founded by the person who made it and left. Monkey Island? Cavedog. Grim Fandango? Double Fine. Sam and Max? Telltale Games.

What about Battlefront? Pandemic, not Lucasarts. KotOR? SWTOR? Bioware. KotOR 2? Obsidian.

I'm pretty sure Disney is just as capable of publishing and licensing games as Lucasarts was, and I wouldn't be surprised if more jobs were created in the studios that end up with the licenses than were lost when Lucasarts shut it's doors.

 

Yeah, Sam & Max Hit The Road is pretty much the only Lucasarts game I have fond memories of, and they pretty much handed that license off to someone else.

 

Whaaa? You didn't love monkey island?!

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

 

All I ever really wanted from Lucasarts was a new X-Wing/Tie Fighter/XvT game, so...mildly saddening.

 

So, EA has bought the rights for the Star Wars games

Don't quite know how to feel about this. On one hand, yeah, EA fucked up so many things and it will no doubt fuck up many of the new Star Wars games. On the other hand, it promised that the top developer teams they have, DICE (Battlefield), Visceral (Dead Space) and most importantly Bioware, will work on the games.

So, a Battlefront using the Battlefield engine would be quite nice and I would love to get a real KOTOR 3 but I also fear that EA is just going to give those teams like two months, enough time for EA to build an empty money bin and fill it with the money they earn from rushed Star Wars games.

Thoughts?

 

After the shitpile that was The Old Republic, not to mention the way they drove their other franchises into the ground, do you really want Bioware touching Star Wars ever again? The fact that Bioware is still being referred to as a "top developer" by anyone is sad.

The only way we'd get a real KotOR 3 is if Obsidian got the chance to make another game.

I suppose a DICE-made Battlefront 3 could be decent, as long as it's not just a reskinned Battlefield 4. But I have little hope for anything else.

 

I am...cautiously optimistic?

I mean, yeah... who doesn't love to hate EA, and it's not like they don't deserve it. But they've also turned out games I've thoroughly enjoyed, not matter how much I may dislike the company. I never buy the god damned DLC anyway, so it doesn't bother me too much - so far.

The most disappointing thing, I suppose, would be if they put out some kind of bland co-op oriented shooter that required always on internet. Like a combination of the Sim City and Deadspace fuckups. I wouldn't put it past them, and I wouldn't buy the game. But I'm also not really losing anything if this flops, it's not like there's been a quality Star Wars game in a while.

 

I am kind of hoping, that between 50 shitty cash-in games, we will get one or two good games. I mean, Bioware dropped the Ball with DA2 and Mass Effect 3's ending but, yeah, think they can make a decent KOTOR if they are called for it. Haven't played TOR, to be honest, and I don't know how the story in that prevents a KOTOR 3 or how static that would be but I would be fine with a spiritual successor.

 

No. EA will not give you the game you want. It is foolish to even hope for it.

 

I think you're being naive. Harsh, I know, but it's what I think nonetheless. EA doesn't care about art, or even making good, solid games. They care about making money. They do hype and media expos and cut endorsement deals with soft drinks and Taco Bell. If they think they could turn a profit by using the license to release $15 DLC skinpacks for the latest FIFA game that lets you play as teams of Storm Troopers and Rebel Commandos, they'll do it without a second thought. And you'll see Coca-Cola and Doritos Locos Tacos ads on the sides of the stadium.

EA gives zero shits. They don't allow "extensions" or pad out someone's budget because they're doing a good job. They don't experiment. They don't care about pleasing what they consider to be a minority crowd. They'll give whoever they allow to use the license six to twelve months to come up with something that will sell to what I like to call the "fratboy" market, i.e. the mainstream FPS, TPS, and sports game fans who live in dorms and throw keggers every weekend. That's who they want. That is their target market. And the studio will have one year to get it done, no excuses, and they'll be expected to have it out in twelve months and be ready to release the sequel in another six, using the same physics engine and platform and with only slightly touched up graphics.

As for BioWare, what little credit they didn't blow with TOR and DA2, they effectively beat to death with ME3. Literally everyone who was in that company that was worth anything has left or been fired by their EA overlords, and I'm sure that whatever This-Totally-Isn't-Mass-Effect-You-Guys sequel will come out next for the setting will be basically ME2, only minus the good writing and anything remotely resembling real choice and consequences. An on-rails T/FPS with a few magic powers taking place in Not-Star Trek, essentially.

Will EA do something with this license? You bet your ass they will. Star Wars sells, and as many things in the past have proven, it doesn't have to be good, either. It'll still sell just because it's Star Wars.

In my mind, the most likely scenario is that they restart 1313 or spin it off into their own thing, because 1313 was supposed to be a "gritty, intelligent look at Star Wars," and that sort of thing gives EA executives a massive moneyboner, they'll give it to BioWare or one of their other sockpuppet studios, and then it gets mutilated into something that has completely lost all but the most shallow and pretentious of the "intelligent look" part, and is essentially Battlefield 3 with tacked-on moral choices and a few crappy gadgets that no one bothers to use because the pistol is OP as fuck-all. At least, it will be, until the $25 DLC that lets you use a lightsaber and Force powers drops, even though not being any sort of Jedi or Sith was in fact the entire point of the game.

I'm not jaded. I just masturbate to your nightmares.

 

I'm still very sad that 1313 got shelved.

 

Don't worry. They'll be parading it's rotting corpse across the stage to wild applause soon enough.

 

Let's put it this way - EA's company culture is such that it prioritizes profit above all else. This means cutting corners, "reseraching" (follow the leader) ways to exploit the market, and getting as much product to market as possible ('whip cracking'). If you want to be optimistic, that's fine, but the most optimistic thing you can say is that the next AAA (or as EA now calls them "quadra-A") Star Wars game will be about as good as Medal of Honor: Warfighter or Battlefield 3. If you're a fan of those games, great! But I for one happen to think they're dull at best (or in Warfighter's case, sloppy, shallow and hilariously buggy).

Many Star Wars games (Rogue Squadron, Shadows of the Empire, Tie Fighter, KOTOR1, KOTOR2, et cetera) are not only finely crafted, but examples of being "some of the best" in their respective genres. It's more likely we'll see minigame collections, hallway shooting galleries and Battlefield clones from EA, however; not the innovation and excellence that has existed in the past. But if mediocrity suffices for EA, let's just hope they can hold onto that (in the wake of SWTOR's, Sim City 5's, and Warfighter's heavy floppage, I'm not so sure they can even maintain a substandard level of quality).

 

The saddest thing of all is that I would be willing to choke on the dick of mediocre hallway shooting galleries if they'd skin it as Republic Commando 2. They just won't, because we're not allowed to have nice things anymore.

 

I know that feel, bro. RIP Sev.

 

I wish I could lie and say I wouldn't play the unholy fuck out of a Battlefront 3 game modeled in Battlefield 3 style.

But I can't.

I would play that game raw.

 

Holy shit, this might be happening. I dislike EA as much as the next person, but I can't bring myself to be annoyed with this if there is any chance of a Battlefront 3 BF3 style. On that note, names would get pretty confusing if there was two BF3's made by DICE within a few years of each other...

 

Well, you don't need EA's permission to revive BF3.

http://www.swbattlecry.com/

 

I'm so very worried some upper-echelon EA fuck will see this being successful and sic their lawyers on the project, then promptly shelve it for years, build up hype, and then ruin it.

 

I've seen this floating around and a lot of people are taking it to mean that there won't be any more sequels to old Star Wars games, a fresh start even.

Edit: /wrong link