Silver Patriot said:
Someone tell me this. What does this mean for Republic Commando 2 and Battlefront 3?
LucasArts has made very little I care about and I already gave up hope for KotOR3.
Lucasarts didn't make KOTOR. Bioware did. And they're releasing The Old Republic, an MMO with allegedly several times more content than KOTOR. I'd like to know where Republic Commando 2 is myself, though, given the original is one of the best things to come out of Lucasarts in a long time, if entirely too short.
Still, on a more general note I find myself feeling rather ambivalent about this. On one hand new management always signals change, and change is scary. The last change Lucasarts made was
entirely for the worse, with the company strangling itself creatively with its reorganization. It was a new boss in town coming in, tightening up the ol' belt and going "it's time to start taking this seriously;" never a good sign in the business of fun. Here we see that all over again, complete with a mass firing.
On the other hand, who's getting fired, and why? Let's face it, it isn't like they
have a cleverness department to axe. Right now we're looking at the same Lucasarts that gave us
The Force Unleashed and
Revenge of the Sith: The Game, which weren't exactly gems. I mean, honestly? Much as I had fun with
Unleashed myself, I wouldn't have been the least bit shocked if it had gotten less than a 60 on Metacritic. If it weren't for the Star Wars license attached to it, it would've deserved it, rife as it was with technical issues, design problems, general lack of polish, and lousy storytelling (can't tell a STORY! If we did that we couldn't sell the comics or the novels!). It doesn't suggest to me that they had the best dogs pulling the sled, if you get what I mean... much as I hate to see folks fired in an industry where getting a job is already a battle, it might've been a mass-axing for the better if they cleared out the creative team responsible for these kinds of projects. Like their boss said a few months back, we fans have been AWFULLY forgiving, and maybe it's high time they were held accountable and started legitimately shaping themselves up.
On still yet ANOTHER hand (we can use an N64 controller now!), that was 2008, and The Force Unleashed is really the first and only chance that particular team has had to really grow.
The Force Unleashed 2 is due out in October and we still have no idea whether they improved or not. I can't imagine that more of
The Force Unleashed could be any kind of creative renaissance for this team, but it could at least be a step forward--a more polished, more acceptable product, as the second in a series often is.
So, I gotta wonder if they're jumping the gun here, or if there's something the upper management knows about this that we don't. Call me nuts, but if they're firing 30% of the company
before [/i]The Force Unleashed 2[/i]'s reception and sales numbers come in, that can't mean good things...