Star Wars fans the world over were somewhat rejoicing the news that Star Wars video games are still being made after Disney closed down LucasArts earlier this year. However, some video gamers are wary that EA was the one to get the license. Is this a good or bad thing?
I’ve been a lifelong Star Wars fan and is one of the few people out there that loves the original trilogy AND the prequels too. For as long as I can remember, there has been a ton of video games that LucasArts made. Some titles were good, while others turned out bad. In more recent years, LucasArts started to make more bad Star Wars games than good ones. The Force Unleashed video games were shoddy while Star Wars Kinect was the biggest insult to fans the world over. Han Solo dancing to a rendition of Jason Derulo’s “Ridin Solo” was enough to make any fan cry.
Pros
Now that EA has the license, there is some good things that the company can do that will kick start Star Wars games in a whole new way. One thing that caught my eye is that EA’s studios of DICE, Visceral and BioWare will development new Star Wars game for the future.
All three developers have made quality video games in the past. BioWare in particular has already made two Star Wars video games with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Star Wars: The Old Republic. Not to mention they’ve developed the Mass Effect series which is a popular science fiction franchise of its own. A new BioWare Star Wars game in the near future could look and play awesomely considering their past work has been of a high quality too.
DICE is also a popular video game studio and is most famous for its Battlefield series. Shooting games is what DICE does best and a next generation version of the popular Battlefront series should be on the cards. Fans have wanted to see a sequel to Battlefront 2 since 2005, but LucasArts never listened. Hopefully EA will listen to fans so we can see Battlefront III finally get made in the next few years. If not Battlefront III, at least something similar.
Visceral Games is another great studio. They may be famous for Dead Space games but they’ve actually made movie-based games in the past. They made James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing plus The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King nearly a decade ago. Both games were fun and stayed true to the licensed material that they were based on. I’m not sure what genre of game they could make into a Star Wars game, but it should be good judging by the studio’s past work.
Cons
The only bad thing about EA getting the license is EA itself. The company has been known to do practices that are anti-consumer over the past few years. They were the first game publisher to introduce the “online pass” and Dead Space 3 had micro-transactions. Not to mention Sim City 5 required gamers to log in online even if they were playing the single player mode.
Hopefully EA doesn’t use too many (if any) of these features into its future Star Wars games. Another thing that bugs me about recent EA games is the lack of offline multiplayer. There’s no splitscreen multiplayer in the recent Need for Speed games anymore plus Skate 3 lacked any offline multiplayer too. I had fond memories playing Battlefront II with my brother back in the day. I won’t have the same level of fun if I’m required to play online multiplayer only if Battlefront III goes that route…
Another thing that I hope doesn’t happen is if Disney hounds EA to produce games in a strict time limit. We all know that great games takes a lot of time to produce while crap ones are rushed. Disney plans to release a new Star Wars film every year starting in 2015. Hopefully, Disney gives EA’s studios enough time to make great games rather than releasing them to coincide with each movie release.