Disney closes Lucasarts.

[Vendetta]

I'm sure they'll be dressing Battlefield up in Star Wars clothing. Who knew that Star Wars guns had so many tacticool scopes?

But I was talking about from the perspective of making a space pew pew, you couldn't make one and sell it as a proper game, but you might be able to make money out of a free to play game because people will fill bars up to get their X-Wing.

[Stark]

Getting an X-Wing is the easy part in level 3 space planes; then you have to grind up your bars to get to the -J type with 20% more space millimeters and a level 3 astromech droid.

Seriously, there's enough made up space planes in Star Wars to wholesale transplant the formula. Pay $1 to remove wing folding actuators for +0.5% more space turns!

[Connor MacLeod]

I remember TIE fighter's novelty being 'its more fun than X-wing' which was a pretty lackluster game compared to wing commander. All the X-wing/TIE fighter games basically had the idea of nostalgia pushing them - it was OMG I'M FLYING AN X-WING. Or OMG I'M FLYING A TIE FIGHTER. TIE fighter was what X-wing could have/should have been from the get go and once TIE fighter was established very little changed with successive iterations (The main diff between TIE fighter and XvT was that it was more multiplayer oriented and emphasized both sides, wheras X-wing alliance basically featured OMG YOU FLY THE FALCON as its selling point, as I recall.)

Take away the nostalgia and/or novelty factor and there really isn't much to the game. I actually HATED the flight aspects because it was too tedious/boring to have to try to do all the shit the missions required of you, and I remember having abyssmal accuracy because I literally had to deluge a single target in shots to get the couple hits I needed to take down even ONE tie fighter. I also absolutely loathed the micromanaging power systems (along with time) because if you screwed up once there you WERE fucked.

[Stark]

The flaws were pretty pervasive and ended up in most of the knock off genre too. Boring missions build on following waypoints to spawn points, lame circular battles, and poor mechanics and balance killed it. This also arguably affects the moribund WW2 dogfight game genre as well, although several of those are released a year.

To be honest I think space pew games need a really robust higher level to give context and allow more focus on action, but that's probably just me. Who wants to fly their Zaku for ten minutes towards the enemy then die? Of endlessly circle the same Japanese plane over Pearl Harbour?

[Connor MacLeod]

Wing commander was much the same way. IT was driven more by 'novelty' and 'new approach' than anything involving 'interesting' gameplay or shit like that (which in reflection was pretty lackluster and even wish fufillment.) It was the introduction of the animation and cutscenes (EG the story and plot) that was the attraction (and X-wing didn't even have that, although TIE figther did better.).

Its kind of funny that this reached its peak in WC3 (new appeal LUKE SKYWALKER AND REAL ACTORS) and hit rock bottom with WC4 (which was a movie with a little space fighter stuff thrown in once in awhile.) And Prophecy... an attempt to 're boot' the franchise but not understanding what made WC a big deal.

[chitoryu12]

I'd like to see some more "adult" Star Wars games. Not going all the way to the dark side and having gory decapitations and throwing in English curses all over the place like Prince of Persia tried to do, since that would just be comical. But I just want something that can be competitive in the modern game market and appeal to adults who aren't Star Wars fans. Something a bit more serious and hard, with a good punch to the combat. Republic Commando is probably the closest we came to that, and KOTOR after that. The Force Unleashed tried to be dark, but it was still sanitized enough to avoid having anything that would alienate everyone under 13.

Unfortunately, Star Wars is enough of a cash cow franchise even today (especially with the incoming films) that it's more profitable to churn out something that has general appeal and doesn't cost a whole lot to make. And we've spent so long with family friendly Star Wars that I think there would end up being a backlash if a game on the higher end of a T rating came out, to say nothing of going all the way to M. M-rated games are pretty much the most profitable market right now, but Star Wars or Star Trek or The Avengers any other mass market franchise entering it would cause hysteria.

[RogueIce]

That's a lot of words to say you want them to make Grand Theft Speeder: Coruscant.

Anyway, what does the ESRB (insert your equivalent here) rating have to do with the quality of a game?

[Terralthra]

The best Star Wars game in recent memory was the Lego Star Wars set, which are as family-friendly as you can get while still having lightsabres.

So, yeah, not buying it.

[Starglider]

That's a lot of words to say you want them to make Grand Theft Speeder: Coruscant.

An open-world SW game - more in the vein of Just Cause 2 than GTA so that you can actually use the vehicles properly - could be really good. I agree though that there is absolutely no need for M-rated content in SW, it would detract from the feel of the franchise and do nothing to improve the gameplay or storyline.

[chitoryu12]

That's a lot of words to say you want them to make Grand Theft Speeder: Coruscant.

I'd love that if it could be done well, but I never actually said that in my post. I just want something mature with high production values coupled with good, solid gameplay.

Anyway, what does the ESRB (insert your equivalent here) rating have to do with the quality of a game?

It has nothing to do with quality. It has to do with marketability. Star Wars has traditionally been a franchise marketed to a general audience, from children to adults. There's an impression that any mass market product for that franchise has to be suitable for a general audience, rather than just anyone 16 and up. The video games, especially, are highly sanitized in almost all cases and perfectly suitable to hand to a 10-year-old (though whether they'd enjoy playing X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter is another matter entirely). Releasing a Star Wars game that appeals to an older crowd would inevitably result in backlash from parents and moral guardians who view Star Wars as family friendly by default, and especially from parents who ignorantly purchase it for their children and are shocked by the content.

[Vendetta]

It also wouldn't add anything to the game, really.

That's kinda been my thought since Star Wars 1313 was announced. If I want a gritty shooting game, I'm not going to look for it from Star Wars. You don't have to squeeze and hammer a property so that you can fit it into every single niche, far better to decide what it's actually inherently good at (in the case of Star Wars, bright shiny heroics and blowing up Death Stars) and emphasise that.