Bad news about KOTOR 3...

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2004-08-13 04:52pm

LucasArts undergoing "major restructuring"

Star Wars games publisher confirms laying off staff and moving Episode III development off-site. KOTOR 3 development stalled.

Responding to yesterday's reports that it had laid off staff, LucasArts today said in a statement that it was undergoing "a major restructuring of its development studio." A notice on the company's Web site outlined some of the restructuring's details, including layoffs of 31 staffers and the appointment of Peter Hirschmann as vice president of product development. Hirschmann, a two-year LucasArts vet and former Electronic Arts producer, had been managing the development of Star Wars: Battlefront and Star Wars: Mercenaries.

The restructuring is the first major change to be officially announced by LucasArts since Jim Ward took over as its president. “Since joining LucasArts in early May, I’ve taken a hard, critical look at our business," he said in the statement. "I’ve come to the conclusion that to make LucasArts thrive, and to position ourselves for the long-term future, we need to make some fundamental changes.”

Today, LucasArts began to outline what exactly said changes would entail. Firstly, in-house development will be scaled way back, because "the company will be concentrating on fewer titles," read the statement. While Star Wars: Battlefront and Star Wars Republic Commando remain at LucasArts, the publisher has farmed out development on its as-yet-untitled Episode III game to The Collective. The Southern California studio has developed several titles for LucasArts, including Wrath Unleashed and Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb.

On the project front, an informed industry source said the team attached to the early stages of development on Knights of the Old Republic 3 was let go in yesterday's layoff.

Post by **Ghost Rider** » 2004-08-13 04:53pm

Here's hoping Number 2 kicks butt.

Seriously I didn't even think they had anything beyond the inkling of a thought for KoTOR 3.

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2004-08-13 04:54pm

Isn't a different team doing KOTOR 2 anyway?

neoolong · Post by **neoolong** » 2004-08-13 04:58pm

If the decision is to make KOTOR 3 with another company, then not keeping the development team makes sense.

Though it seems a little weird why they would fire them, instead of reassigning them to different projects.

That and it seems a little weird to say you're going to make fewer games, and then layoff people. With that you could end up having just as few staffers to each game as before.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2004-08-13 05:04pm

The further from Bioware the better, I say.

Post by **Ghost Rider** » 2004-08-13 05:10pm

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:The further from Bioware the better, I say.

How so?

Given they may not have given a spectacular accurate game, they have produced a hit on both X-Box and PC and proven themselves a name which people will go around and trust, on multiple games.

Personally the very fact that a SW RPG actually garnered praise beyond "It's another lackluster SW game in the tradition of Force Commander and Rebellion....yippee" from the mindless critic horde is actually one of the few reason I say Bioware should still do the damn game.

Or are you just spouting it because they weren't 100% accurate to what is given on the offical level...if so point to a game that doesn't show glaring errors in history and story to skew because they aren't so anal to check everything in minuta.

Dartzap · Post by **Dartzap** » 2004-08-13 05:12pm

im hoping that Obsidian will do a decent job..

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2004-08-13 05:18pm

Ghost Rider wrote:Or are you just spouting it because they weren't 100% accurate to what is given on the offical level...if so point to a game that doesn't show glaring errors in history and story to skew because they aren't so anal to check everything in minuta.

A little of that, but 90% because the story was lame and fucking sucked. It was just another Bioware D&D game, story-wise.

And it wasn't just little continuity errors, but massive contradictions and anachronisms, almost going counter to the Tales of the Jedi stories and future ones.

Another thing, is that Uts likes the game, but having virtually every alien speak Huttese almost drove him mad. Even the damn Jawas.

But the primary reason is because the story sucked.

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2004-08-13 05:25pm

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:Another thing, is that Uts likes the game, but having virtually every alien speak Huttese almost drove him mad. Even the damn Jawas.

I didn't notice that. It all sounded like alien gibberish to me.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2004-08-13 05:27pm

Well, Huttese gets really old really fast.

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2004-08-13 05:30pm

Frankly, I prefer aliens to speak with subtitled gibberish of any type to prequel-style pidgin English.

In that sense, I found KOTOR extremely refreshing.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2004-08-13 05:33pm

Not when all each character has no more than 30 seconds of dialogue that's randomly chopped up and repeated ad-nauseum...

I hate just listening to it, I can't imagine how bad it is to hear it while playing...

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2004-08-13 05:35pm

True, the repetition got annoying.

BlkbrryTheGreat · Post by **BlkbrryTheGreat** » 2004-08-13 08:34pm

Galvatron wrote:True, the repetition got annoying.

You must admit though, it WAS a clever way to get everyone to "talk" in the game.

Post by **Ghost Rider** » 2004-08-13 08:37pm

The huttese got old really fast, but your reasoning is "I didn't like it."

Then why, Spanky, respond with an old spam like post of "As long as away from Bioware" that you so despise from people like Evilcat4000 and others is why I literally dislike how you expressed it.

No different and just as annoying.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2004-08-13 08:40pm

Apologies. In hindsight, I should have combined my first and second post into a single entry.

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2004-08-13 08:56pm

BlkbrryTheGreat wrote:You must admit though, it WAS a clever way to get everyone to "talk" in the game.

You mean having a main character that could understand any alien language without having the aliens speak Basic?

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2004-08-13 09:25pm

And having to take up disc space and recording studio time recording all the thousands of lines of dialogue, which is the main constraint.

Or do you like the idea of a game that comes on so many CDs it makes the later Zork floppy games look light?

Post by **Vympel** » 2004-08-13 09:45pm

There will be a KOTOR 3, obviously.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2004-08-13 11:39pm

Vendetta wrote:Or do you like the idea of a game that comes on so many CDs it makes the later Zork floppy games look light?

I'd rather play a game that required me to put a Disc 2 or 3 in at some point than listen to the same fucking dialouge every single time I talk to an alien character.

Drooling Iguana · Post by **Drooling Iguana** » 2004-08-14 12:44am

BlkbrryTheGreat wrote:
Galvatron wrote:True, the repetition got annoying.
You must admit though, it WAS a clever way to get everyone to "talk" in the game.

If you consider copying what the people who made Nomad did a decade before to be clever.

Except that Nomad had a different language for each race, and instead of just being random gibberish the voice clips were spliced togeather is such a way that you could get a sense of what a character was saying without reading the translation (at least, to the point where you could tell if an alien was agreeing to a trade or telling a story by listening.)

Typhonis 1 · Post by **Typhonis 1** » 2004-08-14 06:32pm

one part that slowed the game down was moving possesiions into storage on the Hawk. You could only move one item at a time. Shoot in Final Fanatsy 2((japan 5)) you could move a whole category t one time

neoolong · Post by **neoolong** » 2004-08-14 06:39pm

Typhonis 1 wrote:one part that slowed the game down was moving possesiions into storage on the Hawk. You could only move one item at a time. Shoot in Final Fanatsy 2((japan 5)) you could move a whole category t one time

The whole thing with the inventory was annoying. Especially trying to find one thing out of hundreds.