Old Man Gamer

I don’t *want* there to be global nuclear holocaust, but at least then I wouldn’t have to see pictures of “cosplay” online.

Disney Shuts Down LucasArts, Cancels Star Wars 1313 And Star Wars: First Assault

Disney has laid off the staff of LucasArts and cancelled all current projects.

Staff were informed of the shutdown this morning, according to a reliable Kotaku source. Some 150 people were laid off, and both of the studio's current projects—Star Wars: First Assault and Star Wars 1313—were cancelled. Disney will still use the LucasArts name to license games, but the studio is no more.

Publicly, Disney is saying their current games could be licensed out to a different publisher or developer, but according to our source, that's unlikely. Our source says Lucas has pursued the option for "one or both games," but nothing happened. "With the teams now basically being dispersed I think both games are effectively dead forever," our source said.

A second source also told Kotaku this afternoon that the chances of Lucas licensing out 1313 are very slim. The odds are "effectively zero," the source said.

I'm less upset about 1313 but the legacy that was LucasArts is officially dead.

Some of you may not remember a good Star Wars game, but there was a time that they existed and LucasArts made them.

But LucasArts was more than Star Wars they made beautiful looking, funny, imaginative games that defined genres and inspired millions.

LucasArts however somehow lost its magic.  I always hoped that they would come back somehow.  I was really hoping Disney would inject some much needed fairy dust to bring it all back and pump out something like Full Throttle 2, or an update to the X-Wing or Tie Fighter games.

But although I'm sad about LucasArts being shelled out and turned to a label there is some hope.  Maybe there will finally be good Star Wars games instead of something half baked, buggy, and the outright retarded titles we've been getting for the past few years.  

It looks FUCKING amazing.  Almost like a techy version of Assassins Creed.  

Jezum Crow, there's a lot of info here...  Bungie style.  So that means a lot of platitudes and very little on anything else.

So here's what I gleaned 

It's an MMO but not, that you can play it solo but have friends help you out along the way.  Or meet people that'll join in your fight.

It's an always on persistent world, that you'll be able to interact with via mobile devices when you're not in game.

The story is big, like real big.  They plan to keep this thing going for a decade.

Players are highly customizable.  Including naming your weapons.

Space combat.

Based mostly on earth, but also travel to other planets in our solar system will be necessary. 

New graphics engine.

It will be out for the 360, and next gen consoles hinted at for next gen consoles.

Activision is publishing this one, and it will be available for the ps3 and ps4.

It's all over the internets so you can check out their reaction, but very little game play is shown.  

It's interesting, very interesting, but my beef is that Bungie thinks that players will be friendlier to each other when they encounter each other in the game.  Like there's a code of honor.

So I don't think player behavior is going to change by the time its out.

They'll invent a new way to teabag maybe.

Oh no, nothing is gonna go wrong with this idea.  This is a perfectly safe invention.  Although if I was the Dropkick Murphy's I would be on the phone with my lawyers.

LA Noire, poor under appreciated LA Noire.  At least it gave us an unblinking glimpse into the uncanny valley.

Although the one option I would love to have seen is a classic 1940s interro-beat down like they did back then.