SWG 2.0?

[Owain Taggart]

There's news of a new incoming open-world Star Wars RPG. It makes sense, given that SWTOR is aging, and set in a different time-period than the new movies.

http://geeknation.com/ea-visceral-to-produce-open-world-rpg-star-wars-game/

The fact that Uncharted's former writer, Amy Hennig is attached to this gives me some hope. I'd say, it's about time a new game was being developed to take advantage of the new lore.

 

[Reverend]

That sounds more like a Destiny/Borderlands style MMO than a replacement for SWTOR. Or perhaps more aptly; Battlefront with an open world and more Skinner Box style mechanics.

Plus SWTOR just got a significant expansion that word has it, has netted EA a surprising amount of income. Indeed, despite some overlap, the traditional MMO-RPG and more action based MP-FPS gaming scenes are pretty much separate markets, so I can't see them shutting down SWTOR any time soon.

Not that I'd put *anything* past EA, mind you.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Hmmm, yeah, now that I read it back, I see no actual mention of it being an MMO. Still, SWTOR will eventually wind down and they'll eventually need to replace it with something. Won't be this then, but they'll have to be thinking about it.

 

[Reverend]

^With the current release schedule, SWTOR won't start winding down for at least another 12 months and that's assuming they don't just release another expansion to keep interest going.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Jeez, how long do they expect SWTOR to be around, 5 or 6 years? MMOs just don't last like they used to. Didn't Galaxies run for over 10 years?

Maybe I missed it, but did anything in the link indicate a multiplayer/online game? Or are we just assuming that's what it is because that's what EA likes to focus on?

 

[Reverend]

^They're pretty much just assuming.

All it really is is a job description mentioning "hero control/mechanics, AI behaviours, combat/weapons, class design, skills/progression, enemy design, story and boss encounters."

There's certainly some hallmarks of RPG there, but the same could be said for the likes of Assassin's Creed, Grand Theft Auto and Borderlands, neither of which you'd really class as RPGs, but less an MMORPG.

The assumption of a multiplayer component seems to stem purely from Visceral's involvement, which is silly because that studio has *way* more experience with SP games that multiplayer.


What I suspect we'll end up getting will be something more along the lines of a third person action game with an open world and some RPG mechanics. Think more 'Shadow of Mordor' than Battlefront. They may include a co-op function, but there's no reason to assume as much.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Shadows of Mordor in a Star Wars setting would be pretty badass, to me! I do hope it's something like that.

 

[-Brett-]

I gave SWTOR another chance with the Fallen Empire update, and thought it was surprisingly enjoyable. The changes to the game mechanics make it feel more like KOTOR or Mass Effect in some ways, which I see as an improvement, although I'm sure the "hardcore" MMOers hate it.

It would be a shame to pull the plug now that they've finally gotten it kinda sorta halfway decent.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

All talk of SWTOR being retired is just speculation at this point.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Yeah, just speculation at this point. The new recent changes did give the game a shot in the arm, with a lot of new people checking it out, and I think it's something the game needed.


Regarding the new game, I wouldn't mind a Shadow of Mordor type of game.

 

[CorporalClegg]

SWTOR isn't an MMO anymore, so the comparison is moot. It's a single player game with friends.

 

[Reverend]

Regarding the new game, I wouldn't mind a Shadow of Mordor type of game.

It depends. Games like 'Shadow of Mordor', the recent 'Mad Max' games, 'Assasin's Creed' and to a lesser degree the 'Arkham' games, all follow a bit of a tired old formula. Mostly involving a shallow narrative, massively padded by repetitive busywork, pointless collectables and the claiming of "towers" of one kind or another.

As for SoM itself, while I really enjoyed it at the time, once I got to the end it became very clear that they were using the nemesis system to disguise what is really quite a shallow, representative game.

Now of course the combat mechanics from SoM would seem like a perfect model for a game with Jedi combat, but I suspect this new game will probably be of the blaster wielding variety. Which would probably leave us with third person shooter mechanics.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Something I just thought about. What if it's 1313, the last game that was being worked on at LucasArts before it was canned? The kind of gameplay it was promising, ie an Uncharted style game, doesn't seem so far-fetched for Visceral to be working on. With just a few tweaks to story and characters, they could have it set in the new trilogy.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

There have been rumors of 1313 being brought back, but as far as I know that's all there has been--rumors.

Regarding Shadows of Mordor: the Nemesis system really is the centerpiece. Nothing else about the game was notable or novel, but the Nemesis system mixed up the formula enough that I can't particularly complain. It's unreasonable to expect every game to be some dramatic upheaval in formula in the first place, and it's even more outlandish to expect EA, of all companies, to be a trailblazer in game mechanics. EA is big enough that they're going to be conservative by default, especially considering how they've gotten burned when they tried to do something different, like the always-online model of the newest SimCity. (I'm not saying that was even a good idea or implementation, but it was certainly a risk--and it backfired terribly.)

 

[Reverend]

I'd be surprised if 1313 gets resurrected, whole cloth. More likely they'll mine the initial concept work for usable assets to develop and incorporate them into a new game. Even if it ends up being a similar 'Uncharted' style and even if it's still about a young Bounty Hunter (was teenage Boba ever officially confirmed as the protagonist?) they'll still go ahead a write a new story and make the game their own.

RE: the nemesis system. I feel like I was less taken with it than most. Yes it was interesting, but once you got a sense of how things were generated, it got repetitive fast. Didn't help that half way through the game they basically wiped the decks and made you start over from scratch in a new map, followed by a very underwhelming climax.
Also, you'd be hard pressed to use it in a game that doesn't involve an undead/immortal player character and hordes of similar looking procedurally generated enemies. Basically, it won't work in any kind of Star Wars game I can think of, without some very contrived circumstances.

 

[Owain Taggart]

I'd be surprised if 1313 gets resurrected, whole cloth. More likely they'll mine the initial concept work for usable assets to develop and incorporate them into a new game. Even if it ends up being a similar 'Uncharted' style and even if it's still about a young Bounty Hunter (was teenage Boba ever officially confirmed as the protagonist?) they'll still go ahead a write a new story and make the game their own.

Yeah, that's more or less what I meant. I mean, they could still have a very strong game by borrowing most of the elements they were designing into the original game, because the concept itself is quite good, if Disney allows them to delve into the seedier side of SW.

Regarding the Bounty Hunter, I don't know if it was officially confirmed, but I know Lucas was directly involved in shaping the game, and I think the story goes is that while the designers originally wanted an orignal character, perhaps a bit like Force Unleashed's character, Lucas himself wanted it to be about Boba Fett. Problems stemmed from differences in vision between the execs and those working on the game.

Ahh yes, it's in this article here, which is quite a fascinating look into the cancelled game:
http://kotaku.com/before-it-was-cancelled-star-wars-1313-was-going-to-be-470003660

And even in more detail:
http://kotaku.com/how-lucasarts-fell-apart-1401731043

Some key things from the second article:

Per directive from Star Wars creator and polarizing auteur George Lucas, this new game’s protagonist would be a bounty hunter—a generic jack-of-all-trades who lacked the Jedi powers that usually took center-stage in Star Wars games.

“One of the problems of working in a film company—[Lucas] is used to being able to change his mind,” said one source. “He didn’t really have a capacity for understanding how damaging and difficult to deal with these changes were.”

One of the most prominent examples of this came in the spring of 2012, just eight weeks before E3, when George Lucas dropped a bombshell: instead of starring a generic bounty hunter, 1313 would be helmed by the iconic mercenary Boba Fett.

So, the game had a bunch of problems including changing goalposts by the executives including Lucas himself, undoing months of work each time.

 

[Reverend]

I'm still a little fuzzy on what 1313's concept was beyond an 'Uncharted' style game set on Coruscant's lower-mid levels. The footage they released seemed very slim in terms of gameplays, just one notch up from a series of QTEs really.

I know it's a superficial reason, but I got turned off on this game early one when I saw the protagonist was as cookie cutter, brown haired mid-20's white guy--like just about every other modern videogame protagonist ever--working with a slightly older dark hared white guy.
Had they changed it to actually look like a young Temuera Morrison, I'd have been a bit more interested, but it still has all the hallmarks of a flashy but shallow looking game. Think along the lines of what 'The Order 1886' turned out to be and you'll get a sense of what my impression of it was.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Yeah, perhaps that's why Lucas decided he wanted it to star Boba Fett. I could see that maybe they were originally set to do the same thing with the character that they did with the one from Force Unleashed, ie a character that manages to weave itself within the main narrative but still manages to stay nondescript. I never got very far into that game. But it could be Lucas just didn't feel the character would be appealing.

We also never really got the full picture since the game kept being retooled, so all we really have are bits and pieces throughout the development and whatever it was when they cancelled it. It was originally going to be an open-world game, then that changed to an Uncharted-style platformer. The description of the current game sounds more like the first iteration of 1313.

So yeah, I don't know. I think it's possible the concept has been resurrected and are retooling it yet again. I'd certainly like to see a Bounty Hunter game.

This particular article has some interesting details about the development of the game:
http://kotaku.com/5987674/the-strange-status-of-star-wars-1313-a-hot-game-with-an-uncertain-future

 

[Reverend]

It's worth keeping in mind that despite all of the cool concept art, this game was essentially in development hell for a number of years. If it was a movie, it would have been on it's third director, it's fifth revision of it's third script draft by four different writers, with less than half the footage shot before recasting the lead role and starting over with a new focus in both tone and narrative.

Because they pulled the plug and it never happened we're free to wax poetic on "what might have been!" but the reality is that had it gone ahead, it would probably been poorly optimised, four hour long a train wreck with a tacked on MP and ridiculous amounts of DLC and pre-order bonuses on launch.

Also, don't be fooled by that 4 min video of "gameplay footage". Those things are very deceptive in that they're meant to look like in-game footage, but nine times out of ten it's really something they staged in-engine and edited to make it look as good as possible. Remember that "vertical slice of gameplay footage" 'Gearbox' did for 'Aliens: Colonial Marines? That thing was notoriously deceptive.

Now I'm not saying 1313 would have necessarily turned into *exactly* that kind of debacle, but I think it's worth tempering one's fervour when so much was still very much in flux and it seems so little had been nailed down.

 

[Owain Taggart]

That's true. I think overall, we never really got a clear picture of what it was going to be due to those constant development changes. Whenever we heard more about it, it seemed to be different. And I think the picture people are getting is a pastiche of all those different changes, and maybe clinging onto it. Still, maybe some fragment of it will end up surfacing into one of the future games.

And btw, I almost never watch gameplay videos as, like you say, they are very deceptive. If I ever want to see footage of something, I usually search out a Youtube video of someone playing it.