Pixelate:Issue 6/Design Corner
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Design Corner - Gaiiden@hotmail.com
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Can LucasArts Pull It Off?
Well the time of reckoning has come yet again – LucasArts is getting prepped to release its third real-time strategy title set in the Star Wars Universe, entitled Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. Well, we can only hope and pray that this time the folks over at LucasArts have learned from their past mistakes and come through for all the Star Wars gamer fans, because the last two attempts were anything but masterful.
The First Attempt
Two years ago…. Um, wait that’s what it says here in the review. Ooops, you weren’t supposed to know I was reading from a review, cause um – I’m not. Dammit.
Counts on fingers
Three years ago, LucasArts was hyping up the release of its very first real-time strategy Star Wars game. Huzzah. The fans were psyched, the industry was on its toes, and the popcorn was popped. You have to have popcorn you know. Anyways the game was released, trumpets were blared and out came Star Wars Rebellion, strutting its stuff down the stairs and to the red carpet, where it promptly tripped, fell flat on its face and yelled
“Help me! I can’t get up!!”
How sad. But that’s exactly what happened. And once it was down, the reviewers came in and sliced it to ribbons. Confetti rained down over at the LucasArts headquarters and that was that – the game wasn’t all that great.
There were a lot of issues that affected the way Rebellion was perceived by the gaming public. Since I (was fortunate enough to) never have played the game, I shall resort to a few choice words from my esteemed friend and colleague (um, he doesn’t read this newsletter does he? Ok, good), Thomas Liam McDonald:
Buried somewhere inside Rebellion is an interesting, albeit familiar, game. But along the way, things break down, and conquering the galaxy becomes an exercise in tedium.
- T. Liam McDonald (GameSpot Review) And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. We really can’t blame LucasArts too much in this endeavor, because the actual developer was in fact Coolhand Interactive, whereas LucasArts’ role in all this was probably no more than making sure everything stayed true to the Star Wars setting. So of course when this title bombed out it probably made LucasArts think they could do better on their own so they said “We’ll try and make our own RTS game, and make it better than Rebellion”. Unfortunately no one in the offices happened to listen to a small, green creature with long ears saying, “Do or do not, there is no try.” The Second Attempt Well when LucasArts decided to do their very own RTS game, they decided they wanted to do it BIG. So they made their first mistake – building their own 3D engine. It didn’t seem like such a bad idea at first – they could reuse the engine for other 3D games and they would build a nice engine to make their game look smashing (baby). However, a few months into development things went sour, and the engine had to be scrapped and totally redone. Now that hurts. According to LucasArts there were just a lot of things that weren’t working out the way they wanted, and it wasn’t meeting their standards. The only problem with this is that for 3D RTS games – they have no standards!
So the engine was redone and the hype started to build again. This is a game where I can actually relate, since I was following this since day one (translation: the first day I heard about it – ha). I kept jabbering on to my friends, who really didn’t care, how awesome it was going to be and how cool it looked and how amazing it would play and… then they told me to shut up. Oh well. But anyways the hype was definitely there, the industry was back on its toes waiting to see what would happen, and the popcorn was popped yet again.
Crunch, munch, crunch, munch
Then on the day of release the trumpets blared and out came Star Wars: Force Commander. I snatched my copy from the shelf and rushed home to play it, all excited and bubbling with anticipation. Two days later the CD was back in its jewel case, gathering dust and wasting space on my CD rack.
What happened?
Basically, LucasArts didn’t do any better than Coolhand. Confetti rained down over the heads of LucasArts employees once again as the game got sliced and diced by the reviewers. Since I’ve actually played the game I can relate a little better to the design issues that plagued it. First of all, the interface was very obstructive - the UI took up half the screen when it was visible. I guess LA figured that since you could minimize it to nothing (like in SimCity 3000), having take up half the screen when it was open was ok. Nuh uh. I had to keep opening and closing, opening and closing so I could get a better view of my units and control more at once. In SC3K, I never closed the interface unless I wanted to just sit back and look at my city. The option to close it was there, the difference was that it was an option – you didn’t really need to use it to see that much more screen space. Force Commander’s interface could have been easily shrunken down to something more manageable. I guess the guys at LA thought we were all blind as bats.
My ears were ready to beat me over the head with a silly stick cause the music in the game was definitely not up to my level of Star Wars. I love listening to John Williams’s tracks – how hard is it to compose those tracks for games nowadays? Who cares if it’s the same old music! People are comfortable listening to that music, they know it’s Star Wars and that immediately creates the correct play environment. LA, in its infinite wisdom, chose to shake things up a bit with techno tracks and rehashed pieces that sounded the same but slightly different. Even worse, none of the music meshed cleanly. The main menu would be belting out techno while the in game menus would mellow out and the actual game music was somewhere in between. It kept hopping every which way and just didn’t sound like Star Wars!
Throws hands up in the air
What can I say? The music really killed me, it did. But back to the design issues – the 3D interface was rather clunky. I can’t fault LA that bad since this is their first 3D strategy game, but there have been others, and LA could have done a bit more research into the camera controls. I had trouble moving around the map and orienting myself in the correct direction. Not only that, LA had originally said they would do away with the Fog of War on the map but of course they didn’t.
I’ll wrap by saying that the level design, AI and pathfinding also suck rather badly. I’ve had units stand around while their buddies are getting shot to pieces by an AT-ST. Climbing up hills and getting around objects basically consists of
1. Bump into object 2. Spend a minute negotiating around object 3. Repeat process
It was inane I tell you! Then of course there was the famous do-si-do where units would circle around each other and go nowhere. The level design wasn’t too bad, actually – what made it bad was the unit balancing. It takes AT-STs around 4 shots to kill a Trooper – are you kidding me? A Heavy Trooper is even worse – it could possibly take the AT-ST out! So as you can see battles were never the highlight of the game and since that’s what it was all about – there were no highlights.
About the only kudos I can give to Force Commander was that the story was excellent and carried out nicely, and that the graphics effects were very well done. I wish I could say more.
The Third Attempt
And here we are, in the present day. What is LucasArts pulling out of its hat this time around? Well you know what they say – third time’s the charm. Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds is scheduled to be released in November and brings with it a lot of excitement and anticipation by fans and industry experts (sound familiar?). This time, however, LucasArts (who is making this game in-house) has made a very bright, ingenious decision that shows they have infinite wisdom after all (I knew it was there somewhere). I guess after Force Commander flopped LA realized what a pain it is to build your own engine from the ground up. I personally thought everyone knew it was a pain. So after hacking out Force Commander they wised up and chose to go the easy way - licensing. And what better engine to license than the…
Drum roll
Age of Empires II engine!! Throw confetti (not of shredded Force Commander game boxes) and blow horns
AoEII is the most popular RTS game of its time, and its engine rocks. Since LA now has a kickass engine to work with, the possibility of success has risen dramatically. Now they can focus on other aspects of the game rather than spending most of the development time just working on the engine. There will be more races, more campaigns, more units, more everything than there was in Force Commander. And it will stay true to the AoEII style of play much of the time, even using the same keystrokes, so many players will easily fall into playing this game.
Not only that but as a result of the engine, LA is also releasing a map editor. Finally the Star Wars community can use this top recreate battles from the books, comics and movies. Within days famous Star Wars battles will begin popping up over the net, I guarantee it. This kind of community support will help any game get better sales anywhere.
I’ve played the demo of Galactic Battlegrounds but I am going to hold off all comment until the game is actually released. I will say that I am excited once again, and hopefully those guys over at LucasArts won’t let me down again.
The End
No, doofus, don’t stop reading; I still have a bit more jabbering to do. Well I hope you enjoyed this brief report on the history of Star Wars RTS gaming. It really is sad that they couldn’t get it right the first time, but you gotta live and learn, and if they haven’t learned anything by now I don’t think they’re gonna anytime soon. I’ll probably be reviewing Galactic Battlegrounds when it comes out. Not here, mind you, but over in the reviews section (duh). So if you’ll just have a look over there for a sec…
Slips wallet back in your pocket
Ah yeah, there we go. Wonderful doing business with you people yet again! Um, don’t read into that too much. I’ll see you all next time, same place, different content. Until then!
Drew Sikora (AKA Gaiiden) is a college student who likes to write, bug people, think up outrageous game ideas, and a whole bunch of other stuff. He spent two hours writing this column for you and doesn’t want to write anymore. If you are not satisfied by the content herein, you may contact him at Gaiiden@hotmail.com so he can tell you to buzz off.
