Vince Lee, whom even those practicing Star Wars ostracism probably know as the principal behind the pioneering Rebel Assault and its FMV engine, INSANE (leveraged also by such games as Full Throttle and Outlaws) is Daniel Albu’s latest subject:
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You might not know it, judging by the sales figures, but Star Wars Outlaws released earlier this year to sort-of good reviews. The "open world action adventure" game was published by Ubisoft, initially on their own platform and now, in an act of defeated hubris, on Steam, where, among other updates, disliked "obligatory stealth" sections have been nixed. So, you know, if you care about the latest entry in a 50-year-old franchise, pew pew pew away.
If an open world, single player action adventure Star Wars game gets your blood going, then add Star Wars Outlaws to your bounty list.
Developed by Massive Entertainment and published by Ubisoft, Outlaws is targeting PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S on August 30, 2024. The game centres on a major heist and is set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, a brief halcyon period where not everyone was related to everyone else in a galaxy far, far away.
Source: YouTube
2023 continues to belt out its remastered games, with this week's flavour being 1995's Star Wars: Dark Forces. Check the reveal trailer here:
The remaster is being handled by Nightdive Studios, who recently released a "benchmark" quality remaster with Quake II. It's releasing on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and Steam, promised to be in 4K and 120 FPS (FPS in this context means "the new 'omg gr@phics!!!'").
Dark Forces is an FPS that has you blasting through Star Destroyers, Coruscant, and a yacht as a guy with the overtly sci-fi fantasy name "Kyle". Kyle's job? To "battle every man and machine the Imperial Forces can muster" in order to stop the rise of "a doomsday army - one that, if finished, will become the final cog in the Empire's arsenal of terror and domination."
I think the original trilogy answered this tantalising "will they/won't they" (as in "will they/won't they singlehandedly destroy every man and machine the Imperial Army can muster, or will it show up in the movies?"), but I doubt you're signing-up for this for story, anyway.
More info as it becomes available.
Video game documentary filmmakers Noclip have somehow acquired themselves a lot of boxes of tapes (remember those?) that they're now digitising—a decade's worth of video game history, mostly feature and BTS material, that was apparently headed for a landfill from the GameSpot vault. Among the initial batch of unearthed videos is this behind-closed doors demo of Knights of the Old Republic, from E3 2001 (remember E3?).
Noclip's Danny O'Dwyer explains more here:
One wonders at the mid-2000s gems they'll unearth from the Psychonauts, Telltale, and Special Edition days. Wonders and—if one were there and remembers the clammy awkwardness of game press events of the era—probably prays against.
Source: Noclip Games History Archive
I often forget that I gave Fallen Order a shot, but I did and it wasn’t exactly “my thing.” That said, the 2019 Star Wars game was well-received by many, and I will admit—the sequel is looking pretty good.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor releases on April 28th for Xbox S/X and PS5. PC “coming soon.”
Developer Aspyr's remake of BioWare's 2003 Star Wars RPG Knights of the Old Republic has had its hand lobbed off by daddy studio heads after a "vertical slice" of the game gone awry:
On June 30, Aspyr finalized a demo of the game, known as a vertical slice, to show to production partners Lucasfilm Ltd. LLC and Sony Group Corp. [...] The following week, the company fired design director Brad Prince and art director Jason Minor.
More on that in the Bloomberg article, which paints a lot of doom and gloom for what I'd have imagined would be a relatively straightforward excursion. Such is the way with Star Wars, though.
Source: Bloomberg
It seems that in conjunction with the Switch release of Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, the powers that be have made the laudable decision to release its soundtrack as well. As of June 8th, you can find it on a bunch of the usual storefronts and subscription services such as Amazon, Apple Music, and Spotify. But no Bandcamp, for some stupid reason.
The game’s soundtrack was the fantastic work of Mark Griskey, a prolific veteran who was an internal LEC composer in the early-to-mid 2000s. Though most of his credits during this time were Star Wars related, he also scored Gladius and Sam & Max: Freelance Police. Not that you’ve heard the latter.
It’s more noteworthy than it ought to be that a LucasArts soundtrack should see official release. When Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012, all of the music the studio owned (encompassing the scores to movies and games alike) ultimately wound up under Walt Disney Records. What this means if you’re, say, Limited Run Games, is that licensing a LucasArts game and a LucasArts game soundtrack are two totally distinct (read: unfeasible) processes of red tape machete'ing, which is why your no-brainer idea that albums should have been included among the extras in some of those over-the-top collectors editions never actually happened.
So anyway, this is cool, and needs to be highlighted. Plus, I figured I’d do Lucasfilm a solid by drawing attention away from the fact that the game is apparently broken as hell on Switch. I mean, sounds like KOTOR II to me?
Source: Disney Music Licensing
Seeing as we’re already hanging out in 2004, we might as well get comfortable there.
During this week’s "Star Wars Celebration" in Anaheim (the same event that brought you Willow and Indiana Jones 5 glimpses), it was announced that Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords will be arriving on Switch June 8th. The port is being developed by Aspyr, the studio responsible for the recent Switch versions of the original KOTOR, Star Wars: Episode I - Racer, Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast, Star Wars: Jedi Knight II - Jedi Outcast, Star Wars: Republic Commando, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and probably fifty others. Check out a trailer below:
Obsidian’s KOTOR II was of course the sequel to BioWare’s 2003 blockbuster. After the game got a spectacular reaction at E3 2004, LucasArts rewarded the team by pushing up its release date to December of that year. Though the final game was received positively enough, it was lost on no one that it was rushed – some have said incomplete. I’d assume, then, that this promise of “Restored Content DLC” at the end of the trailer is the biggest selling point, but I’ll leave it to people who have actually played this game to talk knowledgeably about that.
Source: StarWars.com
Everyone watching the latest in Star Wars on Disney+? Are you all caught up without any more Boba Fett to watch? Why not checkout some Star Wars 1313 demo reel animations that were uploaded to Vimeo a mere two to eight years ago? Mojo (and other news sites) were apparently just waiting for the right moment.
Over on James Zachary's Vimeo page, he announces that he directed the in-game animation for Star Wars 1313 along with running the motion capture performances and the actual animation pipeline for the game. For a game from "a long time ago..." I would say that the graphics on the more final rendered videos sure look good.
And maybe I'm just jealous that I wasn't the news poster to post about the Maniac Mansion claymation model from the Nintendo Power cover, so for more of a write-up on this, you can perhaps read Kotaku - Canceled Star Wars Game Footage Teases Boba Fett Bounty Hunting Action.
Source: Vimeo James Zachary
It looks like the success of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order has enticed LucasFilm and EA into furnishing Respawn Entertainment with more dollar than can be found in Big Whoop itself. A big press release from LucasFilm announces that three new Star Wars games are coming from the aforementioned developer. Three!
Shepherding the next installment in the Star Wars Jedi story is game director Stig Asmussen of Respawn; Peter Hirschmann, game director, who has a long and accomplished history with Star Wars, leads the development of Respawn’s Star Wars first-person shooter. A new studio helmed by games industry veteran Greg Foertsch will create the new Star Wars strategy game, developed through a production collaboration between Respawn and Bit Reactor. Respawn will produce the new Star Wars strategy game while Bit Reactor leads development of the title.
Now, Respawn Entertainment is the real deal, founded by key personnel involved with driving Call of Duty to monumental success. Titanfall 2 offered one of the best single-player first-person shooter experiences of the last generation, and Apex Legends was and is a refreshingly good take on the hit-and-miss battle royale concept. The studio’s Fallen Order effort was considered a solid experience for Star Wars aficionados.
I can’t help but be a little saddened, though. Respawn Entertainment has bags of potential as a powerhouse of original games, or at the very least it could continue carving out its own lovely little universe a la Arkane Studios. Instead, I fear it is just going to become ‘the Star Wars studio’, apparently taking on genres it doesn’t really have experience with and neglecting the original IPs that put it on the map. Hopefully its developers love them some Star Wars.
I also worry for the mental health of Vince Zampella, who is apparently overseeing this new effort in addition to having been announced last month as taking the helm of the Battlefield franchise. This follows and is likely because of the disastrous launch of Battlefield 2042, which was executed with about as much finesse as delivering a new Monkey Island title that is actually a disguised Candy Crush Saga. That franchise is handled by DICE, which funnily enough was primarily handling the Star Wars: Battlefront games beforehand. What a yarn this all is.
Quantic Dream, the studio behind Heavy Rain has revealed it's working on a new action-adventure game "Star Wars: Eclipse" set in the 'high republic' era (800 years after KOTOR, and 200 years before the original Star Wars trilogy).
The marketing guff says: "Star Wars Eclipse is the first video game to be set in an uncharted region of the Outer Rim during The High Republic era, known as the golden age of the Jedi. The game will build upon Quantic Dream's expertise in delivering deeply branching narratives and will go beyond their already established acclaim. Player's choices will be at the heart of the experience, as every decision can have a dramatic impact on the course of the story."
So, high on cutscene narrative, dialogue trees, and quicktime events to progress the story, one presumes? The game is estimated to be 3-4 years away, so speculating on platforms seems a bit premature, though you can expect latest PC, Playstation and Xbox support. Some people are not happy with the studio and founder David Cage due to past allegations of sexist and anti LGBTQ+ behaviour.
Source: Star Wars Eclipse website
You’ve gotten your Milk Duds and Diet Mr. PiBB and found your seat again, all just in time to catch the second half of Genesis Temple’s roadshow interview with Larry Ahern. Picking up where we last left off in August, the story continues with the post-CMI act of Ahern’s LucasArts career, a similarly frustrating stint at Microsoft, the noble casualty that was Insecticide, and an only recently ended stretch as a Disney Imagineer that sometimes reunited him with his old cohort Jonathan Ackley.
It’s an altogether great read, but I draw special attention to the fact that Ahern divulges new information about Vanishing Act and Attempt #1 at the Full Throttle sequel (which was never really called Full Throttle: Payback, a moniker which he indirectly chides Mojo for perpetuating), as well as some soon-to-be-stolen concept art for those games that I don’t believe have surfaced before. (Update: After review it turns out we did already have them. I should have known better; fortunes have been lost betting against Mojo.)
I guess it’s up to Dune: Part II to disappoint you, as the back half of the Larry Ahern interview delivers the goods.
Source: Genesis Temple
Okay listen, headline aside, I'm gonna dial back on the snark that it has been politely noticed I tend to dish out when Limited Run Games robs a deserving SCUMM title of one of these top notch packaged releases by routing the budget to a Star Wars title instead while their licensing arrangement with Lucasfilm presumably tick, ticks away.
It's inappropriate, it's not the time, and frankly it's not reading the room.
So in the interest of fair play here - and for gosh sakes, what do I stand for if not fair play? - and without further unsolicited commentary from the peanut gallery, here is the announced Star Wars: Republic Commando boxed set, presented in its full glory:
But if I could just say one thing. Limited Run? You listening? I want to run something past you right quick. It'll just take a second.
You get it, Limited Run Games?
See what I'm saying, Limited Run Games?
I love you, Limited Run Games.
Source: Limited Run Games
Not surprisingly, EA has been kicked to the curb – thankfully, after the yawn fest that was Fallen Order – and Ubisoft/Massive has taken the mantle. A teaser for a new “story-driven, open-world Star Wars adventure” has been announced:
There’s a short interview which says very little, so we’ll see what happens next. Personally I’d be into a good Star Wars game that aspires to be more than painfully average.
While Jason and Ron Howard’s family are showing great excitement for Disney+’s Willow, the more rational amongst us are feeling strangely drawn to the streaming service’s new Star Wars special:
That’s right, Life Day is happening again in The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special. It premiers November 17th.
Even though George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012, the actual offices have remained at the Letterman Digital Arts Center in The Presidio -- a park in San Francisco. As Lucas owns those facilities, Disney has actually been paying George rent for that space despite owning the assets held there.
With the conglomerate undergoing a period of COVID related belt-tightening, rumor has it that Disney is finally ready to relocate all those assets to their home turf in Burbank.
The move down south for Lucasfilm apparently has been the plan for years. It is unknown what has been the delay in getting them down to Burbank. The goal was to have all of their divisions at convenient proximity to Disney headquarters. With that, they cut down distance and they no longer have to pay Lucas rent.
Why do we care? Well, presumably this means that the Lucasfilm archives are destined to make a six hour road trip, and as elTee's illuminating interview with Limited Run Games revealed, the original assets related to the old adventure games have not necessarily been digitized. And I'm not making judgments, mind you. It's hard to ask a supposedly state-of-the-art studio to make time over a thirty year period to digitally bank Monkey Island key art when there's a hundred other things to do. Those Baby Yodas aren't going to stack themselves.
I'm just asking everyone to join me in a collective prayer that they, you know, have the straps on the flat bed fastened tight as they load it up with irreplaceable diskettes of source code or Ken Macklin artwork for The Dig. And you know, that they throw a tarp over it if the weather forecast looks dicey. Things like that.
Source: LRM Online
Have you seen this lineup? I'm not newsing all this garbage as it comes out: https://limitedrungames.com/
Somebody who has actually played some of these game ought to step up. ¬
For the record those games are forthcoming Jedi Knight titles making their Limited Run appearance.
I ruffled some feathers earlier this week when I underestimated the nostalgia people had for Star Wars Episode 1: Racer. The repudiation of my assumptions continues with this paean to the Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace game published by The RetroBeat. Their argument is worthy of Criterion Collection liner notes:
Look, I’m not trying to suggest that the Episode I game is some massive hidden gem. It has not held up as well as other Star Wars games from that era, such as Episode I: Racer and Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast. It also has some glaring problems, such as an awkward camera angle that is positioned far too high above your character and some lazy voice-acting.
But The Phantom Menace also has a lot of merit. It’s a snapshot of a much different time in the history of licensed video games, when developers were struggling to make 3D experiences that felt like true interactive versions of the moves they were based on. Eventually, this practice became much too expensive and difficult to create with a release date guaranteed to coincide with the release of a film, so now we see movies flock to the mobile space for their licensed games.
You know what, I'm just going to keep my mouth shut this time. Except to say this: If Masters of Teräs Käsi gets some sort of lionizing reappraisal next, a straitjacket's getting appended to my wardrobe rack.
Source: The RetroBeat
The arms race for undeserving re-releases continues to heat up! Having already received a bogglingly reverent N64 cartridge recreation from Limited Run Games a while back, the 1999 bestseller Star Wars Episode 1: Racer is now getting ported to Switch and PS4 as well. Be amazed as James Vicari of Aspyr attempts to frame the most obvious tie-in product ever conceived as some sort of crown jewel of the LucasArts catalog. But he didn't count on the pushback from those notorious skeptics at StarWars.com. I'm kidding, of course:
StarWars.com: Star Wars Episode I: Racer is really fondly remembered. What do you think is the legacy of that game?
James Vicari: Legacy is an interesting thing to try and talk about. There’s like the pure metrics aspect, right? It’s one of the bestselling racing games of all time. At some level that means something, but it’s not the thing that makes people talk about a game 20 years later. That’s an intangible. And with Racer, I think its legacy is a very specific feeling of joy. When we announced it within the company, it was crazy how many faces lit up. Once we had it up and running, people from every department kept dropping in to check it out. If you’ve played it, you know. There’s just something about being in one of the coolest scenes from a Star Wars movie.
StarWars.com: Why is reintroducing Racer important to Aspyr?
James Vicari: Honestly, because good games should never be forgotten and great games deserve to be revisited as much as possible. I think Racer, like Jedi Academy and Jedi Outcast before it, has two crucial qualities: it’s a great game and it has emotional resonance. Those are very important to us. We really believe in reuniting fans with something they cherished, or connecting a new audience with something they may have missed.
Get ready to re-live the emotional resonance of Star Wars Episode 1: Racer May 12th.
Source: StarWars.com