Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic has finally gone PC gold (available Nov. 18). Seeing as I don’t own an Xbox (which was the only platform this game was available on), I’ve been waiting to try out what sounds like a fantastic game. Bioware is the developer, who also brought us the very enjoyable Neverwinter Nights.
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Yeah– friggin Lucas(arts). It had to go gold in PRESALE in order for them to ship. Although I could be wrong, I’ve never heard of this before. It’s amazing to me the ways in which the strange, twisted genius of Lucas’ marketing machine works (the Clone Wars cartoons are supposedly going to be released as TWO separate 30min. DVDs– probably at $15.00 each– they are pretty rad, though). Star Wars has been ruined by the sheer enormousness of the Lucas greed, and I for one am not going to take it anymore….
I pre-ordered my copy the first day I could.
Yeah, because an hour worth of footage won’t fit on one DVD. Right?
Right?
[cue crickets chirping]
I’m not a big fan of Lucas(arts) per se, although when they actually let *other* people do stuff w/ the Star Wars universe (the cartoons, games), sometimes it turns out cool. And I think Bioware is a really impressive company thus far…
Do you know if there will be multiplayer modes?
Right now, no. No multiplayer. That’s for the sequel, of course. And you’re totally right about them loaning the license– the best parts of the Star Wars universe have come from outside contractors (recently at least). I’m thinking particularly of KOTOR (which rocks on teh XBox), Rogue Squadron (Cube) and the animated shorts. Oh and R2D2 Behind the Dome which, to my knowledge, had very little to do with Lucas himself (at least that’s the way I view it).
This, of course, brings us to larger issues of creator’s license to ruin a franchise. It takes some real courage, however, to do it in such a broad forum. Many think that the Matrix franchise is ruined because of directors choices. Same with Star Wars. The interesting thing about this is that if these have supplanted out grand-narratives, who do they really belong to? Is mythology the property of its creator of the populace who embraces it? This discussion could be applied to all art, I suppose, but it seems only really relevant to me from the standpoint of our cultural narratives. I’m not saying that the receivers of this myth should somehow have a hand in creating them(although I have read MANY scripts that kick the hell out of The Phantom Menace) but rather, I guess I’m commenting on the way in which cultures (at least Americanized cultures) have mechanisms which seem to dictate the points at which myth and creator become separate entities.
Reagrdless, KOTOR will be my myth for the next couple of months (sadly at the expense of the rest of my responsibilities).