I’ll still never forget when LucasArts being shuttered was announced; it left me gutted, especially knowing a game like Star Wars 1313 would never see the light of day. Yoda says not to mourn, but celebrate one’s life in the Force, so I cherished all the memories they’d given us and set my eyes on the future, hoping this news meant developers, like say Naughty Dog, could bring us a thrilling Star Wars single-player gaming experience (and with Amy Hennig’s cancelled game, we almost did!). Then Lucasfilm announced the licensing deal with publisher EA and I was still optimistic, but it ended up being less than ideal. With the reveal of Lucasfilm Games returning to its roots, I didn’t want to get my hopes up again, but a new era is truly beginning, as the licensing deal isn’t as exclusive anymore with eyes towards a more open future, beginning with Ubisoft’s Massive developing an open-world Star Wars game!
It’s crazy to think it’s been 8 years since the licensing agreement began with EA, and with two years left to go, it seems Lucasfilm has decided to move on. I can’t necessarily blame them, as while I’ve enjoyed the Battlefront games (Battlefront II in particular for its story), Jedi: Fallen Order (if there’s a for sure sequel coming for this, I don’t suspect it’ll be in trouble with this news), and Squadrons (I beat the story but got my butt kicked so hard in multiplayer I don’t know when I’ll come back/won’t be writing a review ha!), that’s all the deal has netted most gamers so far (including a few mobile games, which just aren’t my style). We’ve gotten nearly the same amount of VR games from non-EA developers, be it Vader Immortal (which I’ll have a review for soon!) or Secrets of the Empire. And then EA has argued singe-player games aren’t worth the trouble, despite the commercial success of games like 2018’s God of War reboot, The Last of Us Part II, Hades, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, to name a few, and has left projects like Amy Hennig and Todd Stashwick’s (pictured) Ragtag in the dust, which sounded so damn promising at Star Wars Celebration Europe 2016, as well as ones nicknamed Orca (an open-world game, by the way) and Viking (a Battlefront spin-off) being let go. In the end, I’m not mad at EA, as they gave us 4 solid games, with developers that obviously care about the galaxy and its story, bringing in elements from all across canon to their game’s tales, but it’s felt like more has been pushed aside than produced, and it’s hard not to forget the catastrophe that was Battlefront II’s loot box controversy (though they’ve largely made up for it since). Change has been a long time coming, so this latest news is a promising development in the world of Star Wars gaming.
With the rebranding of Lucasfilm Games on Monday, I didn’t want to get my hopes up it meant the announcement of new/more SW games, and when they announced the new Indiana Jones game on Tuesday, I was thrilled about the prospect of returning to that world in gaming (though Bethesda’s Microsoft pact makes me worried those with a PlayStation might not get to play), especially since it had been so long from the previous potential game and I’m a giant fan of the Uncharted series, a modern-day take on Indiana Jones in some aspects. On Wednesday, I finally let my hope free a tad with the announcement of Massive Entertainment working on a story-drive open-world game! Known for The Division series, with a game about James Cameron’s Avatar world on the way, they’re also now working on this upcoming open-world game, though the amount of details stops right there and I suspect we won’t see the game for another 2, maybe 3 years. I only played The Division as a beta, but while the games-as-a-service genre isn’t my cup of caf, as I don’t have the time often enough and want to play more than one game when I can play, I’m not worried Massive’s project will be one of those games, so that’s promising enough as it is. If there’s one thing I hope for, given their pedigree, Massive puts non-Jedi characters as the focus, and I wouldn’t be surprised that means following a bounty hunting type character as has been a concept for a few cancelled SW games in the recent years. In the end, as exciting as the prospect of an open-world game is, I’m not getting my hopes truly up until we have a clear release date.
As I was writing this, Lucasfilm dropped more details on their new era for gaming, saying they’re not only continuing their partnership with EA (so expect another Battlefront and Jedi: Fallen Order game, as I suspected early), including games we haven’t heard about yet, there’s even more they’re working on elsewhere, with other developers. The future is really looking bright for gaming and Star Wars, and while we’ve been here before, something feels different this time. I hope.
Ryan is Mynock Manor’s Head Butler. You can follow him on Twitter @BrushYourTeeth. You can follow the website on Twitter @MynockManor and Instagram @mynockmanor.