The International House of Mojo

It seems to me like throwing the baby out with the bath water. Sure, most of Lucasarts' output pretty much since the prequels started production has been based around Star Wars, and of the Star Wars games, very few of them were even developed in-house at Lucasarts after the late 90's, so pretty much any company could make a Star Wars game. But Disney seems to be continuing the revisionist history that Star Wars games were the only thing Lucasarts ever produced, or at least the only thing they were ever known for, when anyone familiar with the history of the company knows that at the beginning, the company had to BEG George Lucas to let them do anything with Star Wars. And that up until the mid-90's, Lucasarts was arguably known more for their graphic adventures than their Star Wars games, or at least those represented more of their output than Star Wars.

That gets around to the thing that makes me saddest. While I have little doubt we'll see more Star Wars games in the future, licenses like Monkey Island or Maniac Mansion are pretty much guaranteed to a fate worse than death. That of a license owned by a studio that has no intention of developing it, but doesn't want anyone else to make money on it either, so they sit on it until only the most die-hard of fans even remember it.

Another concern I have is the new Disney Infinity thing, and how Star Wars will relate to it. Now, just by itself, Disney Infinity sounds like a neat idea. But from what I've heard about it, it sounds like Disney's plan is to have Disney Infinity pretty much supplant their entire interactive output. (With the possible exception of the Kingdom Hearts series, since they're more of a Square/Enix product.) This concerns me because the whole thing seems like it would severely limit the types of games you could make. And especially since the characters have to fit within the specific art style of the original. My concern about Star Wars in relation to this platform is that any further Star Wars games might lack the style, maturity, and depth that have defined the best games within the license. Specifically that we might never see Battlefront III, more Bioware Star Wars games, and that we might never see The Force Unleashed III, at least not in video game form.

It is like losing a childhood friend, albeit one who never really got over that whole "growing up" thing and who's spent the last ten years calling you at 2AM with "investment opportunities" and drunken recollections about that night you stayed up until daybreak supping rootbeer and playing Mario Kart in seventh grade.

Sad, but... at this point, how else COULD it end?