I might well be the only MMORPG player on the blog, but I know I'm far from the only Star Wars fan, so I present the new trailer for the Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO being worked on by Bioware for your viewing pleasure. For those unfamiliar with the lore, the "Empire" mentioned in the trailer is the ancient Sith Empire, not the Empire from the original trilogy.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
SW:TOR Trailer
Posted by Ward at 5:37 PM
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6 comments:
wow!
It is interesting to see how much the TV and Video Game branches of Star Wars are diverging. TV becomes less and less realistic, more and more candy-coated. Video Games become more and more gritty, less and less optimistic.
I wonder how long until the two properties are in a culture clash?
That's a good observation. Though to be fair, the only new branching we've seen of the franchise into TV was specifically meant to be more of a kid's movie/show, versus the gaming industry for whom young adults are now the primary demographic. A funny thread of discussion has come up on quite a few forums from gamers that if they SW animated show had looked anything like this trailer, they would watch it in a heartbeat.
In some ways I blame Lucas. Convenient, I know. But still...The original trilogy had hopefulness and uplifting moments but they were dark. When you really consider what is going on in them, they were dark. I know we had Ewoks, but I still feel like even RoTJ was much more 'adult' themed than any of the prequels.
The prequel trilogy attempted to main the dark subject matter with the story of Vader's creation, but failed so badly because of Lucas' ADD-like addiction to shiny things and absurd over-the-top characters. The prequels just feel more like a kid's series to me. So in a lot of ways, I think he enabled such a dichotomy by veering so much all over the place over the course of six films.
Part of the dichotomy is maintained by the "3 levels of canon" maintained by Lucas.
Level 1: True Canon - The movies, and the Clone Wars TV shows
Level 2: Semi-Canon (Monitored by Lucas) - Authorized books - Timothy Zahn, etc.
Level 3: Quasi-Canon (Anything goes, popular stuff is incorporated into 2 or 1) - Video games, comics, etc.
(Fan-made stories, books made before Zahn, etc. are considered non-canon.)
So, Lucas allows almost complete freedom at Level 3, moderate freedom at Level 2 - no contradiction with L1 is allowed, and NO freedom at Level 1.
So, they can experiment with stories that are against George's vision in L3 Canon and simply make them deniable in the official universe.
I still think eventually they'll build two VERY different fanbases, which will clash more than they do today. But that may not be a bad thing, entirely. It allows for experimentation, growth, and more merchandising.
I don't disagree with you in general, but just for the record, Bioware is working hand-in-hand with Lucas Arts on this game. Everything that shows up here has the Lucas stamp of approval for canon on par with the books and so on. Of course, he might choose to change that at some point in the future, knowing his record.
The same was true with games like Dark Forces. They retained some aspects of those as L2 canon - the main character became a Jedi in the books - but dropped other aspects like the Dark Troopers. Just because they're working with Lucas Arts, doesn't mean they're "approved" on the same level as when you work directly with George himself.
Then again, this is a whole new era, so it is possible they are being more open since it is unlikely to impinge upon the Movie era.
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