The Future of Star Wars Gaming

Reuters has an interview with LucasArts President Jim Ward up, and it goes into a good deal of depth about the present and future of Star Wars gaming. He suggests that Jump to Lightspeed is doing well commercially, mentions that there will be a Star Wars RTS in the next year or two, and again comfirms that there will be new Star Wars properties on TV. From the article: " We will have new live-action and animated TV shows over the next few years, and I think there's a bright future there for games based on these new properties as well as original Star Wars games like a new real-time strategy PC game that Petroglyph is developing for next year."

Comments

Hit and miss

[lukewarmfusion]

I've played a good number of Star Wars games over the years, from X-Wing to Dark Forces to Jedi Knight. There have been some great ones and some not-so-great ones. The best are the ones where you're given a role within the Star Wars universe... Jedi Knight 2 is still one of my favorite games because it was the first time since I was a kid (make-believe... before I had a computer, you know?) that I felt immersed in a game. Instead of just playing a game, I was really feeling involved. That was the fun part. Not a lot of games can do that for me nowadays.

all I really want...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just sell me Tie Fighter (hell, even X-Wing) again, but with a graphics engine that takes advantage of modern graphics cards. Come on LucasArts, you've done it twice already. It's in the spirit of the multiple re-releases of the movies anyway.

That being said, Mercenaries could have potential, assuming it really is free-form like GTA. The Mechwarrior: Mercenaries games were almost exactly the same as the regular versions, except your inventory had prices listed in it. Did Mechwarrior 4:Mercs even have that much? I don't remember now.

Battlefront II

[stratjakt]

Do it again, but do it right this time!

I liked the concept of the game, but when playing it there was no real strategy element to it. You could "command" your troops, but they wouldn't listen or do what you told them to.

Here's what to do LucasArts: Go get a copy of Battlezone II: combat commander. Replace humans/scions with rebels/imperials, and you've got a winner.

Oh, and you need much bigger maps if you're going to include vehicles like X-Wings or Tie fighters. Every two seconds you run into the imaginary wall at the end of the map. While you're at it, you might want to think of actually giving the player a reason to get into an X-Wing (ie; some sort of aerial battle)

Battlefront so could have been the game I've been waiting for since I realized Activision are too pinheaded to make another Battlezone title.

Oh yeah, more flight/shooter games. More Rogue Squadron (take out that run around on the ground crap), and more Starfighter titles. Make the quality of the Starfighter titles match the quality of the Rogue titles, too.

There's no reason to have made Jedi Starfighter suck just to match the suckiness of the prequel films.

Star Wars is such fertile grounds for really good video game ideas. So why don't you actually execute some of them, start to finish. Star Wars games are perpetually "almost" good, it seems.

Re:too much already

[Fig, formerly A.C.]

The problem with a SW MMORPG is that everyone wants to be a Jedi. Obviously, that would ruin the "mood" of the game so they decided that almost nobody gets to be a Jedi. That served to take away the part of the game that made people want to play it.

A good SW MMORPG will be nearly impossible just because of this dilemma.

Re:As long as they have some more Jedi Outcast

[Hawkxor]

What about a new game based off of GTA3? Think about it, Star Wars is the best galaxy ever to be a badass in...

If only GL would go for something like that