Star Wars 1313

[Angry Ewok]

Saw a clip of this taken at E3. I love the Uncharted series and this basically looks like an Uncharted rip-off, so I may have to pre-order.

[Jesse James]

Clicky for the new gameplay trailer.

WHile Lucasarts has a long history now of letting fans down ultimately with games that don't really wow, I think this one has some potential if for no other reason then you're not a super hero in the SW universe.  A badass maybe, but average joe is right where SW games need to go.

I'm very tired of everyone being important, and everyone being a Jedi or Sith, in the SW universe.

Can't anyone just be a guy who is good at his job naturally?

[Phrubruh]

Fun to see a G9 Rigger fly by.

[shmashwitdaclub]

I don't know if this has been said yet, but I am seeing this morning that both Newegg and Amazon have a release date of 12/31/13

[Phrubruh]

Thru the magic of Disney, the release date has been moved to 13/13/2013.

[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

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.

The backstory.  A lot of this is new to me.

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.

[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.

[Jesse James]

I think people are jumping the gun...

The "It was gonna be Boba Fett" stuff is way more recent...  There's more to that they're not saying.  That rumor didn't come out of thin air, but I think a lot of it is being spun and/or assumed.

[Phrubruh]

There is no way Disney is going to release a rated M Star Wars game. Disney wants the franchise aimed at kids and they don't want something this dark and edgy messing up the IP.

[Jayson]

Speaking of 1313, i'm reading the Brian Wood series "Star Wars" and in issue #4, level 1313 is alluded to and Han and Chewie are flying the Falcon down into it. The issue even shows the Coruscant underworld police that were in the Clone Wars series

[Matt]

I don't know if you oughta read this, Jesse:

IGN: Star Wars 1313: Boba Fett Concept Art and Story Details

Recently, a source showed IGN a 15 minute demo of 1313 that would have debuted at this year's E3. While footage in the demo was still in development and much of it was still using incomplete assets, it was the most extensive look at 1313 we've ever seen, and all of it included Boba Fett in action.

We can’t show you that full demo just yet, but we can tell you how it played out and what the game was about, plus reveal new pieces of concept art that give us the best glimpse yet at how Star Wars 1313 evolved before its cancellation.

• Star Wars 1313 would have begun with a prologue on Tattooine. Various bounty hunters seen in the game would have worked for different crime bosses, and Boba Fett unsurprisingly served Jabba the Hutt. Here we see a young Fett very early in the game, long before he even has his Mandalorian armor, instead wearing only his most basic outfit.
• Since Star Wars 1313 was meant to take place between the prequel and original Star Wars trilogies, Fett’s armor would have evolved throughout the story, changing and becoming stronger, more familiar, as he progressed.
• Coruscant was meticulously detailed, with structures seen here made up of derelict ships and spare parts (including TIE Fighter wings if you look closely). It’s not hard to make out a Corellian freighter here (though our source assured us it isn’t the Millennium Falcon), and you can see the gigantic scale of the environments the development team intended.
• Our source explained that at one point in the story, Fett would also end up in layer 1314. While 1313 is a corrupt metropolis controlled by crime families, 1314 is a rarely-explored slum that has been shrouded for years in complete darkness. Part of the story of Star Wars 1313 would have seen Fett fighting his way through layer 1314 in search of his bounty.
• The main thrust of our demo saw Boba Fett chasing a Trandoshan through a sprawling marketplace in level 1313. As Fett chased after his target, he ran through several storefronts, including a sort of butcher shop that featured sliced-open Tauntauns hanging from the rafters. The crime families of 1313 were using these Tauntauns to smuggle spice to other planets, a plot point that our source tells us would have been central to Star Wars 1313’s story.
• Behind Fett is a droid companion that would have fought alongside him as his partner. We’re told that this droid would eventually have betrayed Fett, but that early in the game they fought side-by-side.

(click to view full-size)

[Jesse James]

They put out a poll on it...  I'm bummed this game is cancelled honestly.  It looked promising...  I don't care for Fett replacing the nameless guy tho but it's my understanding it was basically just minor changes to the games engine to get it to a Fett game...  I liked the story the article was laying out there though.  I'd have definitely given it a chance.  It'd really just have been Bounty Hunter 2 and you know I wouldn't turn my nose up at that.

Everyone has a solid right to be skeptical of any Star Wars game tho.  I'd have given this a chance either way but not now for whatever reason...  Lame.

Thanks for sharing that.  It's a lot of cool to me but I've already gotten. Over not getting my Fett sequal.