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When we're all living in the Year-of-the-PS3 future where we jack all our senses into Super Hexagon through an Occulus Rift and you cry from curiosity over what's in the cube, everything will be bought with macro-transactions.

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Disney has acquired Lucasfilm and related properties and entities for 4 billion dollars. This includes LucasArts.

1) Lucas no longer has full creative control of Star Wars and can no longer run it into the ground. More important to video games:

2) LucasArts may possibly get restructured or at least management changed and get a fire lit under its ass to start producing quality video games again.

Nothing specific has been mentioned but if they decide to revive adventure game development I think everyone will be pleased as shit.

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You know there's no way LucasArts is going to hire an in house team that is ace, let alone people who are interested in being the next batch of adventure gamer geniuses. Besides, I'm sure Lucas Singapore is in full operation to do shoddy outsourcing work still.

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I expect fully nothing of this news. I have long since given up on Star Wars, as any sane person should have done, and though I'd love some quality new adventure games, Lucasarts is not the only supplier of that. There are currently tons of companies that have those things on offer, though maybe not the deep pocket to make them particularly grand.

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A few years ago i met a friend of a friend who had worked at lucasarts San Francisco, ( i met him when he was in between jobs moving from lucasarts to google) He had worked on the force unleashed 2 and said i was the only person he had met who had finished the game :) Anyway, i remember him saying the management at lucasarts was horrendous, they were all just a bunch of money men who didn't give a shit about the games.

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I've seen a lot of rumors about management infighting at Lucas Arts, it seems to have effectively paralyzed that company for most of the last decade.

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2) LucasArts may possibly get restructured or at least management changed and get a fire lit under its ass to start producing quality video games again.

I thought Force Unleashed and Star Wars 1313 are supposed to be fairly good games?

I've not played them, but you can PhysX doors open, and they're all like side-stories instead of just re-telling the movies again. It sounds like they're puttin a good effort in with games.

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Did not play the second one, but Force Unleashed was a pretty interesting game. Some parts were seriously broken, but the premise was there, it had a cool vibe that actually felt Star Warsian and heck, it even tied into the main plot. Oh shoot I just revealed that part of me still actually likes the damn thing >_<;;

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I liked Force Unleashed quite a bit, but an unimpressive demo and toxic critical reception made me steer clear of FU2. I'm hopeful for 1313 though, i'm all for Star Wars games poking into new corners of that universe.

Mostly though, i just really don't want to see any more prequel-era games unless it's Republic Commando 2.

Star Wars games used to be so incredible, i miss awesome Star Wars games.

I want another Dark Forces/Jedi Knight game. I would also settle for a new Rogue Squadron or X-Wing/Tie Fighter game.

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Jedi knight and the mara jade expansion were my favourite games back then. I remember the first time I played that Jedi knight demo blow my fucking mind. I had never witnessed levels on that scale before. All the force running and jumping. Totes amaze!

I also played the shit out of X wing alliance, I totally flew the kettle run in less then five parsnips

Ever since seeing that cancled starwars battlefront game. I'm totally obsessed with the idea of seamlessly being a dude on a planet, getting in an spaceship, flying it in to space, docking in a mother ship then getting out and being a dude. One day i'll get to do this, even if I have to crudely do it myself using flash

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Jedi knight and the mara jade expansion were my favourite games back then. I remember the first time I played that Jedi knight demo blow my fucking mind. I had never witnessed levels on that scale before. All the force running and jumping. Totes amaze!

Yes, absolutely! JK:DF2 and JK:MOTS are two of my most favorite games.

I think people make a mistake when they approach those games for the lightsaber combat, which was relatively impressive at the time, but still very primitive. They're definitely better shooters than they are melee games.

Just, yeah though, the absolutely enormous levels and all of the force abilities and cool weapons, such great games. You know, and Kyle Katarn is pretty awesome too. heh.

I wish they weren't such a pain to get running on a modern PC.

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They're not a pain to get running on modern PCs at all! Just download from Steam and play. I just played through Dark Forces 2 a few months ago. Worked just fine.

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They're not a pain to get running on modern PCs at all! Just download from Steam and play. I just played through Dark Forces 2 a few months ago. Worked just fine.

I had no luck the last time i tried getting those games running. Much more recently, when i looked into it again, there were still tons of problems being reported for getting them running on a modern machine, glitches and frequent ctds and the like. (Notably, i understand that it's very difficult to get the games running in their hardware accelerated modes.) The Steam versions being just the original games repackaged, the same problems were being reported with those. People were pretty angry about it and LucasArts ended up making a statement about them not being able to update the games because the source code had been lost.

I don't know what would have changed, outside of Windows 7 maybe being better for compatibility, and maybe that's it. That's what you played on, i assume?

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Yeah, Windows 7. I don't think it crashed at all or had any glitches aside from the FMV cutscenes being tiny because they played at their original resolution.

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Manny the demonic talking skull would be an amazing cameo....in fact make him one of the many side characters

Murray_The_Demonic_Skull_by_8bf.gif mawahahahahhaha

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Jedi Knight is pretty fucking cool. Playing that game always made me wish it was a bit less Doom. I wanted to talk to people. I felt like I was in Star Wars, even if the architecture was unlikely.

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I watched a load of the jedi knight fmv's this morning. Nostalgia overload.

I loved how it had a good and a bad ending, but instead of making it a choice right at the end of the game like Dues ex:HR or Bastion (save the world Yes/No blah blah) It made you choose a couple of levels before the end. And even though the game played exactly the same it felt completely different. One felt like a single man up against the odds to save the galaxy/avenge father, the other felt like a full on assault to hunt down the bad guy and steal his power.

Jerec captures Ors and offers Katarn the decision to execute her or die. The choice Katarn makes here depends on the player's actions within the game up to this point. If Katarn falls to the dark side he kills Ors, but if he remains true to the light path he spares her. With both paths, Katarn has a final confrontation with Jerec in the Valley of the Jedi's core. If the player chose the dark path, the game ends with Katarn becoming the new Emperor; if the player chose the light side, the game concludes with Katarn being reunited with Ors and carving a monument to his dead father.

And it was the first game that i ever played where i applied my own rules, i did a play through where i only used the lightsaber and force powers. Role playing a jedi. The only other time i can think of when i have done this is recently playing through dishonoured, i refused to upgrade/use the rat swarm and whirlwind abilities as i felt they had no place existing in the game world

Katarn was a boss!

KyleBryar.jpg

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I loved how JK:DF2 had a subtle little morality system, there were events in the levels that would push you towards the light or the dark side. You could save people in little scripted events or run around recklessly killing civilian npc's. We might hate binary morality systems now, but that was literally one of the first times i had ever seen anything like that done. (Additionally, finding level secrets got you more force stars for upgrades.)

I don't believe you ever actually make an explicit choice, do you? The game branches near the end, but it's dictated by Katarn's mindset at that point in the game, as you've established from all the smaller preceding actions. (It's been a long time since i played, so i'm willing to be wrong.)

Kyle Katarn is also probably my favorite expanded universe character, and i say that as somebody who is at least formerly a huge fan of Star Wars. (Did you know he showed up in novels set after the games and was a major badass there too?)

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I don't believe you ever actually make an explicit choice, do you? The game branches near the end, but it's dictated by Katarn's mindset at that point in the game, as you've established from all the smaller preceding actions. (It's been a long time since i played, so i'm willing to be wrong.)

I did a little research when I was writing that post and actually I think the light/dark decision is based on where the majority of your force points were spent, if you we're running around shooting lighting out of your fingers and choking fools you'd get the bad ending

I haven't read any of the extended universe stuff with katarn, might have to track some down. Although I have read the the thrawn trilogy and thought it was naff

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Oh oh, as a formerly huge fan of Star Wars, I'm super curious to know what exactly he does in these books.

And yea, the point spending thing is correct. Although, when your family droid gives you your lightsaber, if you hit it enough times with said weapon, he'd explode and you'd instantly be 100% darkside. :D

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Ok, how you chose your powers, that's right. Still, I definitely remember that there were a lot of little incidental things that affected your alignment on top of how you spent your points.

As for the books Katarn shows up in, i don't know if they're actually any good, heh.

His Wookieepedia page!

Although I have read the the thrawn trilogy and thought it was naff

The Thrawn trilogy is often held as the high water mark for the Star Wars expanded universe novels, so... I unno.

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