Since Disney bought out LucasFilm and shut down the much-loved (and occasionally loathed) veteran publisher LucasArts, there's been a lot of speculation about the future of Star Wars as a videogame license. The franchise in general stands at a crossroads, poised to embark on a brand new film trilogy care of J.J. Abrams, the director behind 2009's miraculous Star Trek revival. Does Abrams represent a New Hope for the Star Wars videogame too? It's hard to say - the director has expressed a keen interest in game design, but as this year's abysmal Star Trek: The Videogame makes plain, it'll take more than a keen interest to float another armada of adaptations. Riding to the rescue in a Frostbite-powered X-Wing is Electronic Arts, which now has the exclusive rights to creating all Georgy-Baby's magic-space games following the closure of LucasArts. But what do we know about the projects in question? And how will they tie into the forthcoming Star Wars 7, 8 and 9?
DICE's Star Wars: Battlefront
The new Battlefront is due to come from the main DICE studio with help from a new team in Los Angeles. DICE has confirmed that it has access to "everything that was done in the LucasArts era", including a Battlefront 3 created by now-dead Free Radical, and will remain faithful to the license in key respects - presumably including vehicles, the lore, and so forth. The studio also, however, wants to put its own spin on the IP. We're interpreting this to mean that Battlefront will be a straight adaptation of Battlefield 4's gameplay, set in the Rebellion era of the Star Wars universe.
Tempting, right? Sadly, we might have to wait a bit for the results. EA's chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen stated at a recent EA shareholder meeting that DICE's Battlefront "will most likely come out around the same time that the Star Wars movies start to come out, probably in the summer of 2015."
[embedded content]
Tangentially related quote: These blast points - too accurate for Sandpeople. Only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise.
A new Knights of the Old Republic from BioWare
It was the tenth birthday of the best-ever Star Wars series just over a month ago, and Electronic Arts celebrated by not shutting down the White-Bantha that is Star Wars: The Old Republic, BioWare-Mythic's attempt at an MMOG based on the beloved Knights of the Old Republic games.
The core Bioware lot up in Edmonton, Canada are almost certainly working on Mass Effect 4 (as originally conceived, Mass Effect was essentially the Knight of the Old Republic team's way of making more KOTOR without access to the Star Wars license). Given persistent affection for KOTOR and EA's determination to revive old franchises such Ultima Forever and Syndicate, a KOTOR reboot hardly seems out of the question - though the lack of any website registrations indicates that it won't be happening before Mass Effect 4.
Side note: KOTOR 2 developer Obsidian has aired its willingness to develop a threequel a fair few times of late. The developer's Feargus Urquhart is particularly struck by the idea of a Star Wars game set between Episodes 3 and 4 - the Jedi's darkest hour, with the Sith firmly in control of the galaxy. Tantalising. Anyway, here's the traditional "Hitler ranting about a nerdy subject" video for your delectation:
[embedded content]
Tangentially related quote: The Force is strong with this one.
A new Star Wars game developed by Disney itself
Disney's self-published games have a 63% average on Metacritic, and that's dragged up by a whole load of so-so racing and family-friendly Lego games. Who knows how low they'd be, otherwise? (Dan's note: I should point out that my loathing for Disney's gaming efforts is personal, caused by having to sit through a two-hour presentation of the godawful Turok reboot, which was handled by a man who had no idea about shooting games, let alone the franchise. He probably thought raptors really were man-sized, rather than chicken-sized too. Grr.)
Thankfully, the majority of Star Wars game efforts appear to have been licensed to EA, leaving Disney with only mobile, social and online titles - so it seems unlikely any of these will be coming to 360 or Xbox One. Phew! To underline the point, here's Disney's greatest contribution so far to the franchise: the Star Wars dance-off.
[embedded content]
Tangentially related quote: I find your lack of faith disturbing.
A Republic Commando sequel from Visceral
Given Visceral's work on Dead Space, Army of Two and Dante's Inferno, it's a safe bet that this unannounced title will be a third-person action game. EA's Frank Gibeau has confirmed that the game will be built with the Frostbite 3 engine, too, but that's hardly earth-shattering news when it comes to EA projects nowadays. Truth be told, we're having a hard time thinking of an EA project that doesn't run on DICE's deformation-happy tech. Peggle 2, perhaps?
Star Wars offers a rich history of third-person action games, from the once-revolutionary Dark Forces and Jedi Knight games, to the promisingly-dark Republic Commando. LucasFilm registered a domain for "Star Wars: Wolfpack" in May, incidentally - this presumably refers (cough) to the battle-hardened Wolfpack squad who served with the Republic Army during the Clone Wars under Jedi master Plo Koon, known for their love of high-intensity extraction missions and general derring-do. Sounds like a good fit for a team-based Republic Commando-style tactical shooter, if you ask us.
Here's the fun starting sequence to Republic Commando, until we get some more details on this:
[embedded content]
Tangentially related quote: Aren't you a little short for a Stormtrooper?
Star Wars: Attack Squadrons
The most demanded Stars Wars remake over the past twenty years has been hard-as-nails dogfighting sim and RPG X-Wing vs Tie-Fighter. Seeming spin-off Attack Squadrons - brought to our attention by a domain registration from earlier this year - seems to promise a return to this wonderful world, on the strength of the name alone. That the aforesaid domain registration comes from Disney itself is cause for concern, perhaps, but EA also registered a similar domain back in 2000. We're hoping this is another of the Frostbite 3-powered games Frank Gibeau boasted about. The fortunes of the space sim at large right now suggest that a Facebook strategy-lite spin-off is the stronger possibility. It's a trap!
Tangentially related quote: Evacuate in our moment of triumph?
Star Wars: 1313 and Star Wars: First Assault
1313 wowed us from the word go - a familiar but gorgeously upholstered action game set deep in the Empire's capital city-planet of Coruscant. Uniquely, the project's visuals and aesthetics are the work of the special effects team at Industrial Light and Magic. First Assault, meanwhile, is a downloadable predecessor to Battlefront III that was near-finished at the time of Disney's acquisition of LucasArts - you can watch a video of it in action below.
[embedded content]
Both were put on indefinite hold at the time of the Lucasfilm acquisition and, given that Disney has laid off all the staff who made them, they're unlikely to ever see release. 1313 has more chance of seeing daylight than First Assault, given the degree of anticipation around it, but without inside knowledge of how much development work remains to be done, it's hard to offer precise odds.
[embedded content]
Tangentially related quote: Strike me down, and I will become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Source: OXM
Join Our Facebook Group For All The Latest News[SUP][1][/SUP][SUP][2][/SUP]
[h=3]References[/h]
Thanks to: Rheena.com
DICE's Star Wars: Battlefront
The new Battlefront is due to come from the main DICE studio with help from a new team in Los Angeles. DICE has confirmed that it has access to "everything that was done in the LucasArts era", including a Battlefront 3 created by now-dead Free Radical, and will remain faithful to the license in key respects - presumably including vehicles, the lore, and so forth. The studio also, however, wants to put its own spin on the IP. We're interpreting this to mean that Battlefront will be a straight adaptation of Battlefield 4's gameplay, set in the Rebellion era of the Star Wars universe.
Tempting, right? Sadly, we might have to wait a bit for the results. EA's chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen stated at a recent EA shareholder meeting that DICE's Battlefront "will most likely come out around the same time that the Star Wars movies start to come out, probably in the summer of 2015."
[embedded content]
Tangentially related quote: These blast points - too accurate for Sandpeople. Only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise.
A new Knights of the Old Republic from BioWare
It was the tenth birthday of the best-ever Star Wars series just over a month ago, and Electronic Arts celebrated by not shutting down the White-Bantha that is Star Wars: The Old Republic, BioWare-Mythic's attempt at an MMOG based on the beloved Knights of the Old Republic games.
The core Bioware lot up in Edmonton, Canada are almost certainly working on Mass Effect 4 (as originally conceived, Mass Effect was essentially the Knight of the Old Republic team's way of making more KOTOR without access to the Star Wars license). Given persistent affection for KOTOR and EA's determination to revive old franchises such Ultima Forever and Syndicate, a KOTOR reboot hardly seems out of the question - though the lack of any website registrations indicates that it won't be happening before Mass Effect 4.
Side note: KOTOR 2 developer Obsidian has aired its willingness to develop a threequel a fair few times of late. The developer's Feargus Urquhart is particularly struck by the idea of a Star Wars game set between Episodes 3 and 4 - the Jedi's darkest hour, with the Sith firmly in control of the galaxy. Tantalising. Anyway, here's the traditional "Hitler ranting about a nerdy subject" video for your delectation:
[embedded content]
Tangentially related quote: The Force is strong with this one.
A new Star Wars game developed by Disney itself
Disney's self-published games have a 63% average on Metacritic, and that's dragged up by a whole load of so-so racing and family-friendly Lego games. Who knows how low they'd be, otherwise? (Dan's note: I should point out that my loathing for Disney's gaming efforts is personal, caused by having to sit through a two-hour presentation of the godawful Turok reboot, which was handled by a man who had no idea about shooting games, let alone the franchise. He probably thought raptors really were man-sized, rather than chicken-sized too. Grr.)
Thankfully, the majority of Star Wars game efforts appear to have been licensed to EA, leaving Disney with only mobile, social and online titles - so it seems unlikely any of these will be coming to 360 or Xbox One. Phew! To underline the point, here's Disney's greatest contribution so far to the franchise: the Star Wars dance-off.
[embedded content]
Tangentially related quote: I find your lack of faith disturbing.
A Republic Commando sequel from Visceral
Given Visceral's work on Dead Space, Army of Two and Dante's Inferno, it's a safe bet that this unannounced title will be a third-person action game. EA's Frank Gibeau has confirmed that the game will be built with the Frostbite 3 engine, too, but that's hardly earth-shattering news when it comes to EA projects nowadays. Truth be told, we're having a hard time thinking of an EA project that doesn't run on DICE's deformation-happy tech. Peggle 2, perhaps?
Star Wars offers a rich history of third-person action games, from the once-revolutionary Dark Forces and Jedi Knight games, to the promisingly-dark Republic Commando. LucasFilm registered a domain for "Star Wars: Wolfpack" in May, incidentally - this presumably refers (cough) to the battle-hardened Wolfpack squad who served with the Republic Army during the Clone Wars under Jedi master Plo Koon, known for their love of high-intensity extraction missions and general derring-do. Sounds like a good fit for a team-based Republic Commando-style tactical shooter, if you ask us.
Here's the fun starting sequence to Republic Commando, until we get some more details on this:
[embedded content]
Tangentially related quote: Aren't you a little short for a Stormtrooper?
Star Wars: Attack Squadrons
The most demanded Stars Wars remake over the past twenty years has been hard-as-nails dogfighting sim and RPG X-Wing vs Tie-Fighter. Seeming spin-off Attack Squadrons - brought to our attention by a domain registration from earlier this year - seems to promise a return to this wonderful world, on the strength of the name alone. That the aforesaid domain registration comes from Disney itself is cause for concern, perhaps, but EA also registered a similar domain back in 2000. We're hoping this is another of the Frostbite 3-powered games Frank Gibeau boasted about. The fortunes of the space sim at large right now suggest that a Facebook strategy-lite spin-off is the stronger possibility. It's a trap!
Tangentially related quote: Evacuate in our moment of triumph?
Star Wars: 1313 and Star Wars: First Assault
1313 wowed us from the word go - a familiar but gorgeously upholstered action game set deep in the Empire's capital city-planet of Coruscant. Uniquely, the project's visuals and aesthetics are the work of the special effects team at Industrial Light and Magic. First Assault, meanwhile, is a downloadable predecessor to Battlefront III that was near-finished at the time of Disney's acquisition of LucasArts - you can watch a video of it in action below.
[embedded content]
Both were put on indefinite hold at the time of the Lucasfilm acquisition and, given that Disney has laid off all the staff who made them, they're unlikely to ever see release. 1313 has more chance of seeing daylight than First Assault, given the degree of anticipation around it, but without inside knowledge of how much development work remains to be done, it's hard to offer precise odds.
[embedded content]
Tangentially related quote: Strike me down, and I will become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Source: OXM
Join Our Facebook Group For All The Latest News[SUP][1][/SUP][SUP][2][/SUP]
[h=3]References[/h]
- [SUP]^[/SUP] Source: OXM (www.oxm.co.uk)
- [SUP]^[/SUP] Join Our Facebook Group For All The Latest News (www.facebook.com)
Thanks to: Rheena.com