There will be friendship between our species forever.
By John Walker on April 4th, 2013.
It’s always genuinely sad when a game developer closes down. People lose jobs, many lives are affected, and the industry as a whole loses a degree of potential. But before now no news of a studio closing has brought me close to tears. The death of LucasArts, while perhaps inevitable to anyone following closely enough, has made me very sad indeed.
By Jim Rossignol on April 3rd, 2013.
Oh dear. Disney have told Game Informer that LucasArts studios are shutting down, although the name will remain to hold the licenses. They explained: “we’ve decided to shift LucasArts from an internal development to a licensing model.” This means Star Wars 1313 is a goner.
There’s clearly quite the story to be told here, but for such a once-mighty studio to have fallen unto complete abandonment must be one of the most catastrophic failures of management in gaming history. That or some kind of Lovecraftian curse. Yeah, maybe that’s it. Our thoughts are with those developers who are now out of work.
[Alternative headline: "LucasAren'ts"? Yeah? Big bucks, right here.]
By Nathan Grayson on February 8th, 2013.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II was utterly masterful. Sure, it had more rough edges than a Sarlacc Pit who’s also a door-to-door woodchipper salesman, but the underlying tale mixed oppressive darkness, moral grays, and an eye for exactly what makes Star Wars tick to stirring effect. Personally, I think it far outstripped KOTOR 1, but to each their own. Naturally, though, I nearly grinned my face in half when Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart told me his Black-Isle-based collective is lobbying heavily to develop a new Star Wars RPG. “I would say it’s within the top three pitches we’ve ever come up with,” he told RPS during a recent interview. But wait, what about the EA-shaped Death Star hovering over The Old Republic? Well, Obsidian’s new tale is set in a very, very different time period.
By Nathan Grayson on January 15th, 2013.
It is one of the industry’s greatest crimes, I think, that the majority of games with swordfighting don’t include any sort of insult component. I mean, seriously: what happened? Where did we go wrong? I like to imagine that, off in some wonderful alternate dimension, things went the opposite way. People traded swords for words, and dairy farmers the world over reported an all-time low of self-esteem. In the dreary, sass-less dystopia we call reality, however, there is one shimmering lighthouse beacon of hope: a free browser-based version of Monkey Island 1 and 3′s classic variations on the theme. We can only pray that everyone who’s even the least bit interested in the oh-so-sensual art of swapping steel takes note this time around.
By Nathan Grayson on November 8th, 2012.
Disney owns Star Wars now, so what better way to celebrate than with the most un-Disney character in the entire Star Wars universe? In fairness, Hk-51 isn’t HK-47 (who has already appeared elsewhere in Star Wars: The Old Republic), but they’re quite obviously cut from the same organic-life-loathing cloth. They probably also both loathe cloth, for that matter. Point is, don’t go into a frothy mouthed state of paralytic shock if your new companion combines the words “meat” and “bag” to form a phrase of a far more sinister nature. But the galaxy-spanning quest to secure an adorable HK-51 of your very own is only a small part of SWTOR’s upcoming update 1.5. The rest appears in a hyper-advanced eyeball stimulating holocron after the break.
By Nathan Grayson on October 30th, 2012.
Star Wars‘ universe is ruled by an all-powerful elderly man who’s known for controlling the masses with unspeakable technological horrors and shooting lightning out of his fingertips. I’m talking, of course, about George Lucas. However, in the most exciting twist the franchise has seen since “I am your father,” he’s now mostly out of the picture. Disney has officially purchased Lucasfilm – all technologies, IPs, and rights to every property – for $4.05 billion. We now live in a world where Pixar or Joss Whedon heading up a new Star Wars film is a very real possibility. But what does this mean for videogames? Could we finally get that Ewok tractor-driving simulator everyone’s been clamoring for? Or Grim Fandango 2 developed by the team that made Disney Princess: My Fairytale Adventure? We can only hope. So far, though, here’s what we know for sure.
Kind Of Like Benjamin Button
By Nathan Grayson on October 24th, 2012.
It was a dark and stormy evening when I recently spoke with GOG‘s Trevor Longino. We met in a Japanese hotel in San Francisco, him proudly carrying some manner of whooping cough from Poland, and me trying to keep pace with this year’s Canadian model (it’s a long story). It was, in other words, quite a momentous meeting of virus cultures – not to mention fever-addled minds. But really, this does seem to be quite a pivotal moment for the storefront formerly known as Good Old Games. The industry’s slowly but surely conforming to its philosophies, with numerous indie games embracing nostalgia wholeheartedly and DRM’s grip loosening on even the likes of big, bad Ubisoft. So where exactly does that leave GOG? Longino and I tackled that topic and many more – including Steam Greenlight and GOG’s apparent flip-flop on steep discounts being bad for the industry.
By Nathan Grayson on August 24th, 2012.
Vaguely controversial statement time! I far prefer Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 to KOTOR 1. I mean, BioWare’s original Death Star laser blast into a rather bland Star Wars gaming scene is a classic for a reason, but KOTOR 2 – for all its flaws – showed sparkling glints of actual brilliance. Unfortunately, a lot of people skipped it due to BioWare’s lack of involvement, bugginess, and an ending that sort of, well, didn’t exist. But that was then, and now – as of today – KOTOR 2′s finally on Steam. So I’m going to show you how to turn it into the game it should’ve been all along.
By Craig Pearson on August 14th, 2012.
It has jump zooms, the Inception noise, a squeaky pulsing noise to denote horror and excitement, then an uncomfortably long sequence where nothing is on screen. Welcome to the trailer to end all trailers, a new look at the gritty shooter Star Wars 1313 that just strutted out of Trailer University waving a degree over its head. It’s keen to show you all the trailery tricks it learned in as short a space of time as possible. All it’s really missing is a voice over from That Guy and it’d be complete.
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By Alec Meer on July 2nd, 2012.
While he’s most known for the rightfully divisive Far Cry 2 (me, I’m glad it exists but never, ever want to play it again), Clint Hocking is a fascinating games-brain whose trajectory is well worth following. Not purely because he played a big role in the first three Splinter Cells, but also because interviews and talks suggest a restless, ambitious mind that seems taken up with the sort of emergent, open world, experimental experiences we generally crave here on RPS. So, while a bit odd, the news two years back that he was joining LucasArts was rather exciting. With Georgey-porgey’s bunch having lately dropped any number of balls both in terms of Star Wars and, well, anything else, Hocking’s presence was surely just what this hobbled giant needed. Only now he’s bally left without any projects coming to light.
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By Jim Rossignol on June 6th, 2012.
With a strong whiff of Shadows Of The Empire, new third-person shooter Star Wars 1313 (contentless Flash placeholder site) has been unveiled at E3 running on a “high end” PC. You can see SpikeTV’s footage of that, as well as a man-chat free cinematic trailer, below. It looks rather fancy, too, although it amused me that the developer said that their intention was to make the cutscenes so seamless with the action that “you’re not sure when you’re controlling, and when you’re not”. Anyway, it’s looking lovely, and manages to hit the grimy end of the Star Wars action spectrum rather confidently. Go take a look.
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