EA wants to go nonRPG Star Wars

EA would love to clone the playstyle from Arkham series in new SW games:
http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/03/25/ea-plans-to-model-star-wars-games-on-batman-arkham-series

When I was a kid (yea, before Jesus lived) I really adored SW movie trilogy. In time it was obvious that SW can be used as a base to any kind of (SINGLEPLAYER!) RPG ruleset and kotor and it's sequel proved it right.

But then dunno what else but greedyness made SW MMO and three pretty much "whatta joke" movie prequels.

Looking back, it's pretty much obvious that EA never really understood RPG genre. Even in cases of starting right, somehow, they make it bad in the end. I bet you don't expect reading this from anyone, especially not me - Sims Medieval is actually RPG, but while it starts very interesting, loses it's course and appeal in the midgame and is simply done wrong and will never get a sequel or another DLC.

In the end I won't say this is a bad news. Honestly, since it's EA, maybe it's better they don't make SW RPG but some other genre entry.

The way in which they describe wanting to go the way of the Arkham games actually has me more optomistic than the headlines would:

“What Warner Bros. did with Batman was take the core roots of that IP and manifest that inside the walls of Gotham City and delivered an interactive experience that had real ties to what you would see in the films and what you had read in the comics, while having its own life because it could provide such deep and more immersive storylines,” EA CEO Andrew Wilson told Fortune Tech. “When we look at the Star Wars properties that’s how we’re looking at it. We’re not trying to build a game that replicates the storyline of any particular film.”

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This approach in general actually describes the best of the Lucas Arts and Bioware Star Wars games and stands in contrast to the idea of direct movie tie-ins - which are almost always shit. Of the games they have announced or discussed, one does sound like an arkham-city style game (open world story-driven action game).

The optomist in me would emphasize that their elaboration on what they mean by games like the arkham games does not preclude a star wars RPG. Focus on world interactivity and story would seem to go rather nicely with an RPG, and they do have the Dragon Age: Inquisition team cutting their teeth on a more open world entry into that series.

I would say whether or not a Star Wars RPG could be a possibility would depend a lot on how well Dragon Age: Inquisition turns out and to some extent how The Witcher 3 does as well. If does extremely well then they'll see they do have a team capable of doing a story-focused semi-open RPG and think to themselves "An excellent semi-open Star Wars RPG could be as big as Skyrim and raking in a billion dollars would be nice." If, at the same time, Witcher 3 makes a boatload of money they would see this as demonstrating that the demand for an good open/semi-open story -driven action RPG is still very high.

If Inquisition does poorly or is crap - even if it does "ok" - they may conclude that they do not have an effective way of developing such a game with their current stable of developers. If The Witcher 3 makes a billion dollars in the face of their own studio's failure, this might incline them to considering a third party developer but TW3 would have to pretty much demonstrate that the market still contains the potential to allow for another Skyrim-sized money-volcano. If The Witcher 3 only does "alright" and Inquisition does not do anything close to "alright", then I wouldn't think the prospects for big-budget RPGs coming out of EA would look very good at all for years to come, let alone ones attached to the valuable Star Wars license.

I like the idea - in general.

I do not see anything alarming in what EA is saying, most Star Wars games have been FPS games or movie-ties in. I don't see why suddenly they should be doing only RPGs.

jhwisner said:

This approach in general actually describes the best of the Lucas Arts and Bioware Star Wars games and stands in contrast to the idea of direct movie tie-ins - which are almost always shit..

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Amen. I can't name even a single movie tie-in game that I thought was good.

Not really news as they posted job openings for a new open world Star Wars game already. It will probably be out in a few years. I wont deny I want a new RPG though.

JDR13 said:

Amen. I can't name even a single movie tie-in game that I thought was good.

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Did you Play Star Wars Starfighter ? I liked this game a lot. A very fun game, imho.

I never came to play any console title, though.