So, with Kotaku finally reporting what has been in the minds of a lot of people since the buyout of LucasFilms (and LucasArts was part of the deal). Unsurprisingly, people have gone to the net to grumble, complain, threaten people and typical fanboy-fangirl the heck out because “Disney killed off Star Wars”.
Now here’s the thing, I for one am actually okay if not happy that Disney finally decided to let go of the LucasArts Studio. Of course my heart goes out to all the people who lost their jobs but I am not referring to the jobs here but with the way the studio has been run. Consider this, what game did LucasArts develop that was any good lately? Yes, you have Force Unleashed but that was back in 2008, 5 years ago.
Majority of the hit games that carried the LucasArts license were developed outside the studio. For example, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was developed by Bioware and well the other notable title, Star Wars: Battlefront was developed by Pandemic. Even the latest Tales of Monkey Island was developed by Telltale games, not LucasArts. So if you think about it, it would be a bad investment for Disney to even have LucasArts Studios run with it’s track record of hits and misses this past decade.
I’m sad of the closure because LucasArts has been home to a lot of memorable non Star Wars titles such as Grim Fandango and The Curse of Monkey Island series. But ever since the studio decided to focus on Star Wars titles, things started to fall apart since then.
Does this mean that there won’t be any Star War titles any time soon? No, according to the Kotaku article, the name would still be retained as a licensing entity but the studio’s kaput. What I’m actually excited about is that new developers can finally take a swing at the Star Wars title and hopefully bring something new to the whole universe, since the brand really needs be revitalized.
As me and my friend talked about it, here’s what he had to say:
While childhood nostalgia was good and all that, but I want to remember LucasArts as the studio that WAS than the studio that IT HAS BECOME.
So what are your thoughts about it?
4 Comments
Even though everyone’s been bitching about it, they most probably already expect that this would happen sooner or later.
yeah true pero alam mo naman people online, can’t avoid not saying anything at all
what happens to monkey island now?? hope some studio like double fine picks it up
So far LucasArts has evolved into a licensing entity – so they can still license titles out under the LA banner, Monkey Island included.