A Game Far, Far Away...

So, to the surprise of absolutely no-one and intensely bitter disappointment of absolutely everyone it was announced the other day that Disney have decided to close Lucasarts. At least as a development studio. This has the result that 1313, the most promising Star Wars game in a long time, is now basically dead in the water. There is yet some slim hope, as it was stated that Lucasarts will be turned into some sort of licencing entity. So it's just barely possible that the various titles they had in development may yet be farmed out to other studios. Although I don't really see this as particularly likely. After all, the Star Wars licence is not going to come cheap. How many outfits have both the money to make it happen and the talent to do it well? EA? That'd be like hiring a rabid zombie rottweiler as a babysitter: you've really got no one to blame but yourself when you come home and find all the guts ripped out. Maybe Bethesda if they could get over their fetish for making the menus in everything they've ever published incomprehensibly BAD. And Gearbox certainly owes the world of franchised science fiction games a massive karmic debt. But really that just raises up the spectre of Duke Nukem Forever. A highly anticipated game that eventually had to be bought up by another studio to actually get finished and released. And look how well that went.

I'm here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. And I'm all out of ass.

No, the prospect of ANY game earning the label of "Duke Nukem Forever, Only Star Wars" sends a cold shudder of dread through pretty much any sentient life form. Because although 1313 had lot's of POTENTIAL, the reality of it would probably have been somewhat less impressive. A darker, mature adult orientated game set in the seedy underbelly of wretched hives of scum and villainy sounds like the greatest thing ever. But if we're honest it would probably have been a mediocre cover based shooter with a squandered premise.

Hey, remember that awesome time Luke hid behind a crate? No? SHOCKING THAT.

Fact of the matter is, whilst there have been an awful lot of Star Wars games there have been very few GREAT ones. Oddly this only fuels the demand for more, because if there's one thing pretty much everybody wants it's a Star Wars game that's genuinely good. Hell, half the hype over 1313 was simply that it was coming on the back of Kinect Star Wars. A game who's genre could only be described as "trolling the core audience". I never realized this until I was reading up on the closure announcement, but Kinect Star Wars was actually Lucasarts final game. Just think about that for a minute. HITLER doesn't deserve that on his tombstone, let alone the studio that gave us Dark Forces and Monkey Island.

Now, all this business got me thinking about Star Wars games. Because that's just how my brain works. And since, historically speaking, a lot of Star Wars games have been a bit iffy, I started wondering what it would take to make a really good Star Wars game.

Firstly there's the question of genre. This is of course largely irrelevant. The basic requirement is simply that the game be firstly GOOD, and secondly Star Wars. Indeed, I think a lot of the problems with past Star Wars games is simply that they were trying to be Star Wars before anything else. And just trying to be Star Wars whilst not paying sufficient to the overall quality is not really a wise strategy.

Isn't that right George?

And whilst obviously the style of gameplay will have influence over the kind of story it can tell, as long as the two mesh it doesn't really matter. Now whilst I'm quite sure we're well past due for another X-Wing / TIE Fighter game my own personal preferences point me towards thinking more along the lines of a turn based isometric tactical RPG. Why? Well aside from the simple fact that the phrase "Star Wars turn based tactical RPG" makes me happy in my pants, because we've never really had a proper Star Wars RPG. EVER.

Obviously someone will at this point point out the Knights Of The Old Republic games, and they might almost have point, but not quite. Firstly those games really suffered from not being able to quite decide if they wanted to be an actual RPG (with turns and stats and whatnot) or an FPS (with twitching and reflexes and so on). And then there's the fact that the Old Republic setting is rather removed from the classic setting. Now, I know WHY they went down that route for the setting, as it allowed them a degree of creative freedom that they wouldn't have if they were trying to fit something into the already hopelessly tangled canon surrounding the original trilogy. But really it's the tropes of those movies that define the setting like nothing else. This why 100% of all Star Wars games have at least one level set on Tatooine, 50% include Cloud City and all those that don't will have at least a knock off version of either Hoth or Endor.

So it is that I arrive at the first two rules of making a new Star Wars game.

1 - It must be set around the original trilogy.

Anytime from just before the beginning of A New Hope to before the end of Return Of The Jedi is ideal. There are thing that Star Wars just kinda needs. An evil Empire, heroic Rebels, Scum & Villainy in the middle. Lots and lots of Stormtroopers to fight. And a visual look that is dirty and lived in, not clean and computer generated. Nothing feels more like Star Wars than the original Star Wars, and that's not something that's really been exploited to it's full potential.

2 - It must NOT try to be canon.

If anything this is even more important than the first rule. The major failing of Star Wars as a franchise is in trying to squeeze all the games in to the official canon. Games are not movies or books. They have a different grammar and unique requirements. Is it cool to have Kyle Katarn pop up in a book somewhere? Sure. But it does rather raise the question of why everybody doesn't have personal shields and carry all the guns. Similarly stealing the Death Star plans is always a fun device, but not EVERYONE can do it at the same time.

But what if we were to steal EVERY COPY?

So yeah, the primary thing the game should concern itself with is providing the player with a good story and excellent gameplay, and leave trying to fit the plot in with everything else to those of us with far too much free time on our hands and an internet connection.

Having said all that there is one other thing that I'd want to see in order to improve the games storyline.

3 - Established characters should be avoided wherever possible.

Let me tell you a little story about Death Troopers. I'd been rather intrigued by the premise for some time, and eventually I acquired a copy of the audiobook to listen to whilst I was at work. And I fucking LOVED it. It did a great job of building it's world and maintaining the feel of Star Wars, albeit in an overtly horror themed version. It was all going fantastically. There was a real sense of tension, that you never quite knew if one of the main characters was going to come through the next encounter or not. And then, halfway through....

Han & Chewie randomly show up. And just like that all that narrative tension instantly disappeared. Because you know full well that they'll be absolutely fine and save the day for at least some of the survivors. Similarly when a main character shows up in a game you know full well that you're not going to be able to do anything that effects them in the slightest. After all, do you honestly think any studio has the balls to make a game where you kill Han Solo in a bar fight and take over his ship? Or that they'd be allowed to even if they did? Despite that being the best pitch for a Star Wars game you've ever heard in your life?

No. Not gonna happen. So to avoid such jarring, and to enable the games story to stand on it's own I think that the major players should be largely avoided. Obviously some references are just fine. Mentions of Vader & Palpatine are going to be a natural part of life in the Empire. And you're not going to go for too long on Tatooine without encountering Jabbas organisation. But if you're ever at the point where Vader is showing up as a boss you might want to rethink things a little. We want the player to be moving adjacent to the existing lore, rather than smacking into it. Unless you've somehow actually convinced Disney to let us do Star Wars Infinities The Video Game, in which case the player will be bulldozing through lore with such reckless abandon that everything I've said up to this point becomes entirely irrelevant.

The only proof that god exists that I will ever accept.

3b - Yes, that includes Boba Fett. AND Mandalorians.

Boba Fett sucks. Deal with it. His movie appearances are an almost comedic display of rank incompetence, and his appearances in the expanded media are, let's face it, fans wildly overcompensating for that fact. Similarly the whole of Mandalorian history is just Boba Fett fan fiction trying to give a bit player in the movies more significance than he ever actually warranted. Besides which they weren't around in the period we're setting our game in. Having said all that I am willing to concede that one thing that should absolutely be in the game is Mandalorian armour. It was, after all, the only thing about Fett that could ever be considered cool.

4 - Keep it simple

Star Wars is, at heart, a fairly simple morality tale. Things are fairly black and white. The Empire is bad. The Rebel are good. I mean, even the whole redemption of Darth Vader subplot is no more complicated than "He's evil for most of it, then he's good for about 5 minutes, then he's dead.". It doesn't dwell on the aftermath particularly. Once the Death Star Mk2 is destroyed everyone in the galaxy is suddenly casting of their shackles. Similarly the films structures are fairly straightforward, with one thing leading on to another in a fairly direct way until something large explodes in space. Compare Episode 4 to Episode 1 to get a sense of what I mean here. In Episode 4 you go from droid to Obi-Wan to Han to the Death Star to the Rebels if a fairly straightforward progression, whereas in Episode 1 the plot is so over the place that even the characters barely have any idea of what the hell they've meant to be doing. We're trying to reinvent the medium here, just tell a good story.
Obviously the structures of a game are different, but things should still flow in a fairly direct fashion. Note that direct does not necessarily mean linear. Player choice should absolutely have an influence but it should be fairly clear and direct. Some games will give you the illusion of choice whilst actually being remarkably linear, others will remove a decision so far from a result that you only find out you got the bad ending for not doing something 6 hours ago when you look it up on the wiki afterwards. Not that I'm saying everything should be predictable, but the player should be able to clearly trace the path taken thus far and at least make an informed decision. Speaking of player choice...

5 - Light Side & Dark Side? Sure, why not?

Simplistic morality systems in games are an anathema to anyone with the slightest grasp of how reality actually works, boiling down as it usually does to either saving a busload of orphaned nuns or raping a box of kittens to death with an electric egg whisk. And as much I'd like to say that we should ditch the whole thing I have to admit that the Light side / Dark side trope is so firmly entrenched I'd feel like we're missing something if we removed it. The trick is in implementing it a suitable way, where it means more than simply doing the bad thing because you want Force Lightning. Subtlety is called for. Though this may sound like it contradicts my previous point over keeping things simple I don't think it necessarily should. Think of the structure of a game like a many branching flowchart. On one side we have a fairly direct Light side path, on the opposite a fairly direct Dark side path and in the middle a fairly neutral one. And these paths are, at every step connected all the way down. There will be choke points in the plot where certain things need to happen, but then diverge again. And there may well be multiple versions of these choke points depending on how far to one side or another you are, leading on to still different outcomes. But all that complexity is going on behind the scenes. The real problem is in making Dark side options that are narratively valid and not just cartoonish villainy for the hell of it. But to be fair it's not like the films even had a particularly firm grip on the whole Light / Dark thing. Indeed, thinking of the story in strictly those terms is a mistake anyway. Trying to make everything into a binary choice between two extremes will always fall flat. As I said, subtlety is called for, nudging the tone in particular directions in response to the players actions.

Thinking about it Light & Dark should only be one metric among several for establishing story path. Imperial or Rebel sympathies could be included entirely separately. After all it's quite possible to have Rebel extremist trying to blow everyone up or an Imperial Officer who really is trying to improve things. This also opens up the possibility of multiple endings in a new way. Rather than the standard good or bad ending you could have a good & bad ending for each faction depending the players actions and allegiances. Considering these factional choices separately from the Light / Dark choices could well give the necessary depth to make such a system actually interesting.

6 - The Force should be rare and special.

This is again a function of the era in which we're choosing to set ourselves. The few Jedi that are left are all in hiding from the Empire, waiting for the day when a tidal wave of thinly veiled fan fiction will wash through galaxy and removing the question of what exactly is they've been doing with their lives for past 30 years whilst everything went to hell. Seriously though, we're not doing the Force Unleashed here. We don't need to. The Force Unleashed already did that. By all means we should have Force Sensitivity as an option or perhaps even requirement for character generation. But in the actual game finding someone to even teach you how to use the force should be a major quest line in itself, let alone acquiring a Lightsaber. In terms of force using NPCs there should maybe be one bad guy (because evil force user is such an established trope it would feel weird if there wasn't) and one good one (so the player character can get some force training if they want it) but not really much more than that. Remember, in A New Hope the Jedi are referred to as an extinct religion. It'd be fun to play that up a little, have a world where few people really believe in the Force. And then when you have someone turn up and wreck the place with telekinesis it'll have a lot more impact.

So, okay, maybe a hint of The Force Unleashed.

7 - Scum & Villainy is the way to go.

 Wretched hives of scum & villainy are where it's at in Star Wars. Death Stars and forest moons are all well and nice, but it's the Mos Eisley Cantina and Jabbas Palace that stick in your head. It's this area laying between the opposing forces of the Empire & Rebellion that provides the most fertile ground for telling an interesting story. I mean, the basic plot for a Rebel is always going to be "Stop the Empire". And the main mission for any Imperial is "Stop the Rebels". But there's a lot of potential for interesting stories outside of these two viewpoints. Undoubtedly the place to start a Star Wars RPG is there, on the streets Mos Eisley or Nar Shadda, just trying to get by. It also gives more scope for the player. You want to join the Rebels? Sure. go out and find them. Or maybe they'll find you. The way I see the setup going the player character starts out as a down on their luck type who, after a suitable period of thinly veiled tutorial, gets caught up in some evil scheme of the Empire. Maybe they witness something clandestine, or steal a vital part of some new weapon or whatever in what was supposed to be a simple robbery. Whatever it is specifically you then have the Empire after you. And after the Empire will come the Bounty Hunters chasing you for the reward, and the Rebels after whatever it is they think you have for their own ends. Indeed, whether or not the character has the Mcguffin is less important than the various interested parties believing he does. Crime lords who want it for their own ends, backstabbing Imperial officers trying one up each other in the eyes of their superiors and shift the blame for losing it in the first place, paranoid Rebel terrorists..... All kinds of opportunities immediately present themselves. I mean, I'm just now thinking of a dark side plot wherein the player can try to get the Empire off their back by going straight to the Sith middle management and performing a hostile takeover via lightsaber duel. And that's awesome. But whether or not the player wants to join or destroy whichever side for whatever reason they should definitely start outside of either system entirely.

8 - Space is a wonderful place.

One final point I think. If we're doing Star Wars then we'll inevitably be going to a few different planets over the course of the game. But to regard our Starship as simply a bus would be a mistake. They way I'm thinking sometime in the first quarter or so of the game you'd acquire a ship, which would certainly function as a link between different locations, as well as a main base for the player and his party. You know, provide storage and other facilities, be upgradeable in various ways etc. But to miss out on actual space combat would be a huge mistake. And don't tell me you can't do space combat in a turn based game. Fantasy Flight Games would rather like to prove you wrong. Keep the system basics similar but tune the details towards the expanded scope. Full 3 dimensional movement and ship performance dictated by the crew manning it. Different NPCs in the party give you different options in space as well as on the ground. If you upgrade your Astromech you can escape combat more easily. Some part members will be better pilots, gunners or technicians than others. Eventually some of them may even get their own ships. Make sure the combat is fun, and use the space sections appropriately. It shouldn't be something that's only done once in the whole game, but nor should it be some trial you need to go through every time you need to leave a planet. And have some open ended exploration with random encounters going on as well. Sure, it's not like they'll have infinite maps for space, but they really don't need to be. We're all aware we're playing a game and that the battle grids can't go on forever. We don't mind as long as whatever we're up to in our confined little corner of space is fun. And really, who's going to complain about realism in space combat in a Star Wars game?

In space no one can hear you VVVVVVVVVVVRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Outside of these points I'm not sure what else to say that's specific to Star Wars and not just games in general. Although I'll probably think of something later. That's always the way with these things. Since this particular post has already gone on way longer than anticipated that's probably a good thing. But as the possibility of seeing ANY new Star Wars game diminishes it's fun to think of what might have been.

Actually, wait. Apparently 1313 was being retooled to be about Boba Fett? Okay, I take back everything I just said. Maybe Disney DOES know what it's doing. Fucking dodged a bullet there didn't we?