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Full Throttle Sequel Cancelled
Thanks to IGN PC for their article indicating that LucasArts have cancelled Full Throttle:Hell On Wheels, the partially completed PC sequel to the classic point 'n click adventure. Simon Jeffery, president of LucasArts said: "We do not want to disappoint the many fans of Full Throttle and hope everyone can understand how committed we are to delivering the best quality gaming experience that we possibly can." The official Full Throttle sequel homepage has been removed, although its Google cache is still available.
...but here's hoping the new Sam and Max game is a hit. The original Sam & Max was, after all, much better than Full Throttle IMO.
The article doesn't mention the reason... but I guess no sequel at all is better than a crappy sequel.
Full Throttle was my third favorite Lucas Arts game (Grim Fandango and Day of the Tentacle being my favorite and second favorite).
Too bad, because I'm an adventure games fan and Lucas Arts always delivered in storyline and gameplay, and I haven't played a decent game since Longest Journey.
I remember when "The Colonel's Bequest" came out (I'm *that* old): interesting, imaginative, fun. Unfortunately Sierra seemed commited to releasing crap after crap for many years. Nice to see LucasArts has the guts to pull the plug before releasing a stinker (that might not have been the reason, but they are not telling).
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Hate to sound so negative but canceling it is probably a good thing. Take a look at the game feature and you can see that this time around they are trying to make FT into some kind of fighting game (with story, maybe). I best remember FT as an *adventure* game with a great story... it probably for the best that they don't ruin it.
However maybe they can reuse the current gamess assets (designs, models, textures) and make it into a 3D adventure game, like Monkey Island or Sam & Max...
Codeala - Just another mindless drone
I just don't get how game studios can just throw away good work and just cancel games. It doesn't make much sense buisness wise... they should just get some new people working on it.
How do we know that production was stopped because of coding/story quality? Maybe they were threatened with a law suit or rights were tied up. Maybe they just decided there wasn't enough of a market for the game. Maybe they implimented features for hardware that was canceled. You can bet it probably wasn't quality alone that made them cancel the game.
Lucasarts has released some of my favorite games of all time, the best IMO being Grim Fandango. At first I think "Dammit, I was really looking forward to that, there hasn't been a decent adventure game done in a while and Lucas is the company to bring one out." But it would only piss us all off if they released FT2 and it turned out to not only suck, but was obviously so bad that it shouldn't have passed production. Of course, we don't know why they cancelled it; they could have decided that their other higher profile games took priority, or they could have realized they had essentially created nothing new. So lets hope that Lucas will either resurrect the project at some point or will begin development on something like Grim Fandango II.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
I would much rather have them focus on something new and unique instead of renewing older, more successful titles. I loved all of lucasarts older adventure games, but when I hear of a company creating sequels to an existing property that is several years old, I generally think they've just run out of unique ideas and decided to milk the existing fan-base for profit. (see: Starwars)
I hope someday this studio can continue to make really new, interesting creations, because I have very fond memories of everything from Maniac Mansion to Grim Fandango.