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LucasArts: Internal Star Wars Games Didn't "Set the Bar High Enough"

[Sep 03, 2008, 2:33 pm ET] - Share - Viewing Comments

Lack of ambition to blame for previous Star Wars flops, admits LucasArts on EuroGamer quotes comments by Cameron Suey of LucasArts at GC 2008 in Liepzig saying that the shortcomings of the company's past internal Star Wars titles are because the license is so great that it's "really easy to get excited about that and not set the bar high enough." He goes on to claim that Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, their new console/mobile title, "really fulfilled the high bar we set for ourselves."

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39.	Re: So	Sep 5, 2008, 18:52	Flatline
	Eh? Looking fantastic is the #1 prime motivator in the gaming industry these days, so that's not a problem. Neither is sound. Controls vary by game to game. One other thing you can say if Epic made a star wars game is that it'd be boring as fuck, and be an absolute piece of trash on the PC when they finally port it. I meant compared to other LucasArts games, which thus far have the tendency to look like 3rd rate budget titles with a 1st rate, completely over-played soundtrack. The last game to actually get me interested in the Star Wars setting was Republic Commando, which is to say I went from totally ambivalent to the Clone Wars to mildly interested. Another 2 or 3 campain missions would have rocked my peepee. Aside from that, I've got the Jedi Knight series of games to fondly remember and occasionally play, and the space sim games, which I'm currently playing through (halfway done with Alliance, about 1/5 of the way through Tie Fighter, and I'm recalling why the statement "I beat X-Wing without cheating" was such bragging rights, as it's still kicking my ass). I've yet to see an RTS game that really nails the feeling of being part of the star wars universe though. Empire at War sort of made it, but that broke down completely on the ground front.

38.	Re: So	Sep 4, 2008, 23:39	Creston
	By that measure, I can't wait until Epic gets to make a Star Wars game... It'd look fantastic, sound good, and control pretty well, which more than you can say about the current crop of games. Eh? Looking fantastic is the #1 prime motivator in the gaming industry these days, so that's not a problem. Neither is sound. Controls vary by game to game. One other thing you can say if Epic made a star wars game is that it'd be boring as fuck, and be an absolute piece of trash on the PC when they finally port it. Creston

37.	Re: Pot meet Kettle	Sep 4, 2008, 23:38	Creston
	George Lucas lecturing people on not setting the bar high enough? LucasARTS. Not George Lucas. George Lucas stopped giving a shit about the game (and book) departments a long time ago. In the case of the book departments, that's been a good thing, as the people in charge there care about Star Wars and want to make sure they put out good stories. (Doesn't always work, but in general the books are solid, especially the last series). In case of the gaming department, that's been a fucking disaster with just a bare few exceptions. I have no clue what the idiots in charge of that are trying to achieve, but it is in no way related to the words "Care for Star Wars canon" or "quality games." Creston This message was edited at Sep 4, 23:38.

36.	No subject	Sep 4, 2008, 08:36	dryden555
	Some of those SW games from Lucasarts were terrible and it kept me from buying more of them afterwards. LucasArts burnt some bridges with gamers. KOTOR 1 was great of course.

35.	Re: XWIng vs Tie Fighter	Sep 4, 2008, 04:52	kxmode
	I find the lack of faith in this thread disturbing. ----- http://www.gamemusicjukebox.com/ Game p/reviewer for http://www.gameindustry.com/




	end-of-line

34.	Re: XWIng vs Tie Fighter	Sep 3, 2008, 23:38	Cutter
	How about another Outlaws for pete sake??? "I couldn't stay away. Curse your rockin' tits!" - Gerald Broflovski




	The Ballad of Gay Tony

33.	Re: XWIng vs Tie Fighter	Sep 3, 2008, 21:58	Wildone
	#30 your getting me moist....!!!

32.	Pot meet Kettle	Sep 3, 2008, 21:40	Ruffiana
	George Lucas lecturing people on not setting the bar high enough? Really? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

31.	Re: So	Sep 3, 2008, 19:35	Flatline
	By that measure, I can't wait until Epic gets to make a Star Wars game... It'd look fantastic, sound good, and control pretty well, which more than you can say about the current crop of games. Hell I'd settle for an Elite or Privateer style Star Wars game, where you scrape together some money for your YT-1300 and follow in Han's footsteps as a smuggler.

30.	Re: XWIng vs Tie Fighter	Sep 3, 2008, 19:32	Flatline
	A new Xwing vs. Tie Fighter game The commanders control all medium and capital ships which allow them to attack other groups. Regular players MUST join a squad and work together. Here's how you do it: 1. Theater control for "commanders", one per fleet, similar to a stripped down homeworld implementation. 2. Automatic assignment into wings. When multiple members of the wing are within proximity, they gain a bonus (to be determined by game balance). 3. Squads akin to clans/guilds for those who want to play more seriously. Include a personal barracks for each member, and a "rec room" where the squadron meets in between missions. 4. Commanders can be voted up and down in effectiveness by flight wings. Commanders can assign targets, priorities, waypoints, missions, etc to a flight wing, and the wing commanders assign their wingmen to complete objectives. As a pilot follows directions, they receive a point score for following directions. Higher mission fulfillment point scores lead to more preferable ships (not performance based necessarily, so that the ships are accessible by teamwork, not by rewarding people already naturally skilled). 5. Persistent campaigns, with battles for systems and hyperspace lanes, as well as resources and whatnot. Potential for squadrons to move with fleets, or be able to be recruited into the fleet on the fly. Yeah... 64 or 128 player fleet battles... I'm getting a stiffy just thinking about it.

29.	Re: No subject	Sep 3, 2008, 19:30	Creston
	Also note to LA: NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO BE CRAWLING WITH JEDI. But... but... Jedi are teh awesom?//!! Creston

28.	First reviews for Force Unleashed...	Sep 3, 2008, 19:29	JohnBirshire
	75% from Nintendo Power. 71% from the official XBox 360 magazine. The fact that these sources are often accused of being biased in their system game's favor is a scary thought as to how mediocre this game is actually going to be.

27.	So	Sep 3, 2008, 19:29	Creston
	Console-Arcade exaggerated gameplay which literally RAPES the existing Star Wars canon sideways up the ear is "Setting the bar high?" By that measure, I can't wait until Epic gets to make a Star Wars game... Creston

26.	Re: No subject	Sep 3, 2008, 19:28	Ecthelion
	I think Jedi Academy and Jedi Knight 2 were high quality, with JK2 edging out JA in terms of entertainment. I felt like a Jedi, and not a prequel badass mofo, but more like Luke, grasping blindly towards being a Jedi, without a formal code. It was a great effort by Raven I believe it was who developed it. I couldn't have said it better myself. JK2 is one of the few games I replay at least once a year. It's one of my 3 favorite shooters, along with Half Life 1 and 2 (it's hard to put them in any order, since I love them all). Nothing beats force pushing people into bottomless pits.

25.	XWIng vs Tie Fighter	Sep 3, 2008, 19:16	Surf
	A new Xwing vs. Tie Fighter game The commanders control all medium and capital ships which allow them to attack other groups. Regular players MUST join a squad and work together. Such a easy idea that for some reason LA just can't think of. Fucking dumbshits over there. I have two friends over there in the games dept and they say the place is so status quo with the same old higher ups that know shit about gaming.

24.	More XW and TF!!!	Sep 3, 2008, 19:08	The Fox
	XW was cool! TF was awesome! XWA was pretty great! If only we could get some more of that!! TFAlliance, following that other family... (Viraxo) A built in mission editor, and better flexibility for fan made ships would be a nice touch. I liked the FPS more when it wasn't all about Jedi. Being a fledgeling Jedi up against non-Jedi was kind of fun. Force powers are neat, but I like the guns!! “Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.” Honestly, I'd probably rather play all those old games with modern graphics and UI than play some of the newer stuff. Hmmm... dusting off the old Thrustmaster FCS... This message was edited at Sep 4, 07:56.

23.	Re: Classic	Sep 3, 2008, 18:21	Flatline
	A Freespace-type game with top end graphics and more complicated fleet engagements would be awesome. Seriously... check out the Freespace Open Source project. The engine source code was released entirely as non-commercial, and people have been updating it ever since. It's nearly on par with anything we could make today. http://scp.indiegames.us/ A fan-based XvT style epic space combat game would be the dog's nuts. I'd take Freespace 3 before that though to be honest, but that'll never happen thanks to who owns the IP.

22.	Re: No subject	Sep 3, 2008, 18:17	Flatline
	KOTOR and Lego SW are the only good games released since Lucas destroyed the property with the prequels. Ok, and perhaps Empire at War. And none of them has been developed at LucasArts. \ Empire at War was passable. The space combat was fun and exciting, but ground battles were unbelievably boring. So boring that I'd often amass overwhelming forces for a ground assault and let the computer take care of the rest, even though it resulted in higher than normal casualties. KOTOR had excellent, unparalleled writers, which is what puts it in my top 10, otherwise it was a computerized D20 roleplaying game, and thus the mechanics of the game were passable at best and limiting at worst. Lego Star Wars was the video game adaptation of a partnership that has been around since the dinosaurs, and I think what surprised everyone was not that a star wars game was fun, but that a lego based game was highly entertaining. I think Jedi Academy and Jedi Knight 2 were high quality, with JK2 edging out JA in terms of entertainment. I felt like a Jedi, and not a prequel badass mofo, but more like Luke, grasping blindly towards being a Jedi, without a formal code. It was a great effort by Raven I believe it was who developed it. The main problem with Jedi-based games is that you never really feel like a Jedi. Your character on the screen does 38 kata forms in a row when you press X. That's not engaging, that's Devil May Cry's approach to showing you kicking ass, but not really letting the player do it. Also, the idea that three stormtroopers can pelt eleventy billion blaster bolts on a Jedi who's not actually fighting and eventually drop him seems lame. Again, the movies and JK2 and JA had it right. If you're not actually swinging at someone with a lightsaber, deflecting blaster bolts should be a non-issue. Maybe LucasArts needs to just get it over with and hire Team Ninja to make the definitive Jedi fighting game, ala Ninja Gaiden. Silky smooth, ultra-responsive combat, unbelievably brutal difficulty, and lots of body parts (no blood, because sabers don't create bleeding wounds, except for in Tatooine cantinas). I feel more like a Jedi in NG2 than I do in any LucasArts games.

21.	Re: Classic	Sep 3, 2008, 18:16	NKD
	Yeah it's a shame that in the space sim genre we only get trading-sims like EVE Online and the X-series. (Combat in both leaves a lot to be desired, though I do enjoy EVE for other reasons.) A Freespace-type game with top end graphics and more complicated fleet engagements would be awesome.

20.	Re: Classic	Sep 3, 2008, 18:02	CJ_Parker
	SWG wasn't good before the NGE either... Very true dat. Still it's kinda ironic that they dropped the NGE bomb on the game when for the first time since the game's launch in June 2003 things finally started pointing at least ever so slightly upwards. The CU (combat upgrade) that went live in April 2005 and that inevitably (cuz of SOE at the wheel) at first fucked everything up properly had finally reached a somewhat acceptable level of polish and then BOOM the NGE hit in November 2005 fucking everything up again but this time beyond any recognition or hope of repair. Anyway, rating SWG in all its different incarnations would definitely be like rating piles of shit by their smell. It's pointless. It always was and it still is shit and it will always be shit, too, because they lack the talent (and now after the mass exodus also the funds) to ever do this game justice.




	* Born to troll *

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