Hi, my name is Kyle, and for most of my life I've been something of a Star Wars apologist/fanatic. I like the awful Prequels, the fantastic Original Trilogy, and I'm probably the only person who can sit through Episode II and have a reasonably good time doing so. These are all true, if not a bit shocking, facts. Hell, MY AVATAR IS THE LOGO OF THE EMPIRE. I think this can put to rest this disclaimer confirming that I am a die hard fan of Star Wars.
That said, I think I've turned a relatively large blind eye to the horrible things Lucasarts has been doing to my beloved franchise. What with release after release after release of The Clone Wars bullshit, I've tried to understand that they wanted to flesh out what was intended to be a huge part of the Star Wars "timeline". You know what? I can get behind that and let that go, let the kiddies have their games based off the CGI TV series and enjoy their time with it. I get it. I even understand turning KOTOR, arguably the prize Jewel of all that comes from the Star Wars franchise of video games, into an MMO because it seems the more ambitious and profitable route when you already have the critically acclaimed Mass Effect on the Sci-Fi RPG market.
But here it comes, from a Star Wars nerd, Lucasarts has lost my faith in their products. Shocking, I know. Before everyone causes a ruckus and goes, "Who cares? You're one customer!" This is a blog, and it's only a blog highlighting what I think Lucasarts is doing terribly wrong for discussion's sake. I'm not out to start petitions against Lucasarts and I don't plan to go around boycotting Star Wars games from my consoles or my internet profiles, I just wanted to discuss from a "hardcore" fan's viewpoint.
No Fun For Friends!
The Battlefront franchise is easily my most played game with friends. I would slave away for hours over xbox live with my closest friend and really enjoy just hammering away at the different factions in the multiplayer modes and seeing all the great maps and playing out our own scenarios. It really was some of the greatest time I've spent through online gaming, and with the death of the original xbox live servers that time has officially come to a close. The problem is, my friend and I have run dry of a lot of common ground in gaming let alone games that use Star Wars as a source material. Neither of us are interested in any of the repetitious Lego games so we're out of options when it comes to enjoying things like that together. It's even more unfortunate that it seems as though Battlefront III is completely unthinkable at this point, with Free Radical no longer existing and all, our hopes at reliving the previous gen experiences we enjoyed seem to have been extinguished. Lucasarts, aside from creating MMOs, haven't really given any console players any multiplayer options. Given how multiplayer seems strewn into every game nowadays, this is really unfortunate.
No Care For Story
Sure, the points people hold against the prequels and the their respective story lines are valid and people hate George Lucas. I know this. What I don't understand is why Lucasarts plans to exacerbate these opinions further by the announcement that Starkiller is a clone in The Force Unleashed II. While the first game was no masterpiece at stringing the Pequels and The Original Trilogy together, it sure as hell did a better job than just using a storytelling tool already used not once in the Star Wars fiction, not twice, but three times. One being within the comics and books, with Palpatine being resurrected through a clone, the others being within The Force Unleashed II and the handheld version of The Battlefront games recently released for DS and PSP. While this devious lack of imagination isn't uncommon to see in a universe that has been described in so many different formats, it's unforgivable to push this storyline on consumers expecting them to take it as anything more than "Well, we weren't really expecting to get to make a sequel so this is the best we could do. That work?"
Do you think Lucasarts can make the presentation good enough to make the reason for Starkiller's cloning reasonable? I doubt it. At this point, there isn't anything to hold my attention in the gaming world of Star Wars considering my utter lack of funds to build a PC that would be able to run any MMO. It's unfortunate that they've burned even a fanatic, but I can't see them suddenly coming out and announcing production of a console KOTOR game or the return of the Battlefront franchise. It's simply turned in a rehashing machine of uninteresting products, and I couldn't be more sad about it if I tried.
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