Electronic Arts’ exclusivity rights to making Star Wars games has come to an end as LucasArts has opened its portfolio to other studios–in fact, The Division 2 developer Massive Entertainment has already announced it’s creating an open-world Star Wars game. This is exciting; I’m happy to see that other big studios are being given the opportunity to try their hand at Star Wars, and I can’t wait to get more games like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Star Wars: Squadrons. But I also can’t help but think that any Star Wars game we get from a AAA studio may just cover genres and storylines we’ve already seen before. Massive Entertainment, for example, is doing what it does best and making an open-world game. But there are so many more exciting opportunities, and I hope LucasArts chooses to let a few indie studios take a stab at Star Wars to realize them.I have no doubt that Massive can create a good Star Wars game, but I also assume it will cater to the strengths and gameplay systems that Ubisoft studios already know sell well. I’m willing to bet that this new game will be another open-world action game with RPG mechanics and a skill tree that stars a character who can be a man or woman and has enough side quests to keep audiences playing for over 30 hours–and then painted as Star Wars. That’s not shade, I’m down for it, that sounds super fun, but it isn’t all that weird for a Star Wars game. And Star Wars is at its best when you explore the stranger parts of its universe.Indie studios traditionally don’t have as big a bottom line to meet in comparison to AAA developers, allowing them to be a bit more experimental with what they make. We’ve seen this before with other major film, TV shows, or comic book properties. Bithell Games transformed John Wick into a top down strategy game with John Wick Hex, for instance, and Telltale Games made The Walking Dead into a choice-driven episodic adventure series. Neither are obvious genre choices for their respective franchises–personally, I’d expect John Wick to be a shooter and for The Walking Dead to be a survival horror game–but both worked surprisingly well.Continue Reading at GameSpot
Electronic Arts’ exclusivity rights to making Star Wars games has come to an end as LucasArts has opened its portfolio to other studios–in fact, The Division 2 developer Massive Entertainment…
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