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Star Wars 1313
Jesse James:
Hmmm, the month of Goliober is official.
Matt:
Uh-oh.
Kotaku.com: The Strange Status of Star Wars: 1313, A Hot Game With an Uncertain Future
--- Quote ---The silence around Star Wars 1313, LucasArts' seemingly next-gen game that wowed onlookers at last June's E3 show, is nevertheless unusual. The game's disappearance, our sources say, has hidden the latest in some tumultuous turns in the game's development—turns that, frustratingly, cloud the future of what could be an amazing game.
Three unrelated sources familiar with game development at LucasArts have all told us that development on the game has been frozen or put on hold since the Disney company's November acquisition of Star Wars creator George Lucas' media empire. That freeze has caused a game that was slated for a late 2013 release on next-gen platforms to potentially miss this year's E3 and to slide into next year.
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The backstory. A lot of this is new to me.
--- Quote ---The game was conceived in 2009, we've been told privately, as a tie-in to a planned live-action Star Wars TV show. The show was set to take place between the prequel Star Wars trilogy and the classic one, as was the game. The game was called Underworld, according to one of our sources, and was, like the show, going to be for an adult audience. The 1313 title, after all, refers to the seedy underworld on the planet Coruscant, where crime, violence, drugs and other seedier elements exist. That underworld would be the setting for the show and the game.
In what will surely drive fans of great Star Wars games a bit mad, Underworld/1313 was, we're told, originally going to be an open-world role-playing game similar to the beloved BioWare title Knights of the Old Republic but with episodic character updates delivered regularly over DLC. Story arcs would go to some dark places, touching on terrorism, the dealings of crime families and prostitution.
We're told that the game was scaled back in 2010 after budgetary concerns put the TV show was put on hold. The game was re-written with a new story that was disconnected from the TV-show material. And this is where what our sources say gets even more interesting. LucasArts supposedly was set to reinvent itself in 2011 under then-studio-president Paul Meegan, attempting to make Star Wars-style games in popular genres. There would be a Star Wars riff on FarmVille and a Call of Duty-style first-person shooter codenamed Trigger. 1313 was switched from codename Underworld to codename Hive and given platforming elements, similar to Sony's hit series Uncharted. A LucasArts rep declined to comment about any of this.
Development on the game began to proceed quite well going into either 2011 or 2012 when George Lucas himself apparently saw the game. One source mentions that Lucas "loved" the game and encouraged the developers to weave stories and characters from the TV scripts. The game's storylines would answer such questions as "Who is Boba Fett?", "Why was Han working for Jabba?" and "Who were the Bothan spies?" Lucas' requests were not to be ignored, that source says, leaving the developers of the re-named 1313 with a game that had backing from the man in charge but without a concrete story or characters. A new story was still in the works when the game was shown at E3 2012.
The game dazzled at E3 and then, as any observers have noticed, went dark.
One likely venue for 1313's re-emergence was last week's PlayStation 4 event. There, finally, LucasArts could stop being coy and admit the game was next-gen. But 1313 was not shown at Sony's PS4 event, though LucasArts was listed as a developer for the Holiday 2013 console.
For weeks we've heard from multiple sources that the Disney purchase of LucasFilm (which includes LucasArts) has reoriented the company's gaming division. The focus is on the new trilogy, not on material that is unrelated to the planned JJ Abrams-directed Star Wars: Episode VII. 1313's developers may still be fervently plugging away, for all we know. As LucasArts says, the game "continues production." But it sounds from our sources like it's not currently moving forward in any official capacity.
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Jesse James:
Lucasarts ******* up a game's release? unheard of.
Jesse James:
I wouldn't say 1313 ISN'T gonna happen... Not yet. I think it's gonna wind up going through some changes.
A buddy of mine with ties to LA was telling me about the layoffs coming... Been coming for a while. :-\
I'll be honest. People are flipping their wigs over this in the fan site world... Why? What's LA put out in recent years that truly was a mind-blowing game? They've been lackluster shells of their former selves... They went from Dark Forces/Jedi Knight and X-Wing/TIE Fighter to basically half-assed clones on consoles.
The last things LA put out that I truly felt were special, were Bounty Hunter, Republic Commando (which I was sour on at first and warmed up to), and sadly, KOTOR... and all 3 were contracted out.
The company was a mess in 2005, according to my friend. I think people are waxing nostalgic on it, and forgetting the "what have you done for me lately" aspect of Lucasarts... They really haven't been relevant for quite some time. Masters of Teras Kasi anyone?
McMetal:
I think some people are freaking out because they see this as Domino #2 in Disney's scorched earth policy towards all things Star Wars that are not Sequel Trilogy related. First came the Clone Wars franchise, animated division, etc, and next will be Dark Horse and all the comic continuities. God only knows what comes after that. Hasbro? Internet fan sites?
I can sympathize, but it does sound like the situation with 1313 was a lot more muddled to begin with.
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