Yet another reason EA ruined Star Wars
The Star Wars Universe came to life in many different expressions from many different studios before the dark times, before EA. Now Star Wars’ interactive experiences are held hostage.
Recently, it’s been difficult as a Star Wars fan not to hear of the recent controversies around EA and their sole licensing for making Star Wars video games. (With the slight exceptions of ILM’s virtual reality experiences and the LEGO Star Wars games. ) In short, EA has come under fire for adding in game transactions that, unless the player spends several hundreds of hours playing, locks several key features. The loot box system EA has implemented has also come under fire from governments accusing them of enabling children to gamble. Their worst crime however, was stripping Star Wars’ interactive media of uniqueness and diversity.
Comedic overview of the history of Star Wars in video games
To EA’s credit, them and DICE have done an extremely great job with quality control, and adhering to the canon. Before EA and even Lucasarts, Star Wars licences were given out left and right. That did cause some problems with quality admittedly. Because of this, not every game with the Star Wars brand slapped on it is good, like Star Wars Kinect,the NES version of A New Hope and the hilariously bad Yoda Stories for Windows 95.
But these were just a few of the games made featuring the characters of Star Wars. Before the EA takeover, game developers were able to tell stories in their game that didn’t have to be reviewed by Disney. The most obvious example was the Knights of the Old Republic game series. Bioware developed a whole new era of the Star Wars universe with their game taking place several thousand years before the movies. They recreated the Star Wars universe completely, and told a very compelling story throughout there games. The addition of RPG elements to a Star Wars game made the player’s involvement in the Star Wars universe feel that much more substantial. Unfortunately, based on the portfolio of EA and DICE, it’s now highly unlikely players will ever feel that same connection.
EA and Disney have created very conservative products, and do a great job of bringing the movies to life, but have been very unimaginative beyond that. The LucasArt’s action game Force Unleashed showed great imagination and pushed the boundaries of what was possible in the universe. The plot is simple enough, the player controls Vader’s secret apprentice, and they go around being badass.
I mean, this happens in the game, the main character uses the force to literally bring down an entire star destroyer. How in the world could Star Wars get cooler than that??
The Disney buyout of LucasArts was bittersweet for fans of the franchise. It brought about a movie Renaissance giving fans a glimpse back into a galaxy far, far away. The downside though was it meant the cancellation of several LucasArts projects. the Boba Fett game, 1313, Battlefront 3, Knights of the Old Republic 3, Republic Commando 2, are all games that Disney cancelled when they received the rights to Star Wars games. Instead, all the fans have been left with are two artistically beautiful, but bare and boring rehashes of Battlefront, and incredibly tedious pay-to-win mobile games. The future of Star Wars games under EA looks boring and lacking in the creative freedom, and the franchise is worse of because of it.