Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Lucas*rts: The Empire Stroke Back, who cares? The Jedis are Returning!

These days I took a look around the Monkey related sites ... I read what the corporate entity said about a Monkey sequel (something like by 2018 we will think about it) and it is not only mean and ruthless but self-damaging. To the little tool who said that: I do not know where I'll be by then (if I'm alive, I´ll be breathing adventure), but I´m pretty sure that you won´t be around LucasArts or LucasArts will be no more ... Adventure may or may not suit your tastes but it is the most creative, deep inmersion (deep as in emotional as opossed to "Sith" -reptile mechanic - hand eye coordination) genre computers have given us (yes, I could not pass level 54 in commandos joyturd!).

Gone are the days when everybody and their dog said the Adventure genre was dead. It is peculiar that those days predate the IT is dead .com crash by a few ´millenium bug´months but that´s another story ... or is it? There is much to be written about sw as a business (a ship full of captain pirates in a shark infested archipielago. Where is Guybrush when you need him?). I had the perfect timing to finish U in the crash, but that is another story indeed!

The history of Luke-Lucas and the seeds of SW (not to be confused with software) are now part of folklore. It seems now clear that not much originality can come out of Lucas*rts, be it in the adventure genre or elsewhere. It seems now clear that the creative sparks that had to leave in the crisis are returning. With "Luke" the question is: is Empire Strikes Back a self-fullfilling prophecy? Has not George "Lucas" Skywalker become the one he feared most: Darth "Corporate Tool" Vader ? 

At least Sam and Max escaped alive ... Tim´s new game is clearly Tim´s view of what LucasArts killed (adapted to these no-thinking 3rd generation console years surface and I think the game will be full of deep, creative irony). An older, now lost, Lucasfilm(tm?) would have created Ron´s version of Pirates of the Caribbean years before Disney´s did. I´m afraid we make be shocked this summer to see Indy dying a long sad death too ... Indy´s adventure has been postponed.

It is clearly not the same "Luke" that fought for creative control of his brainchild the one that killed the brainchildren of other Jedis. At least, he let Pixar be ... What has this "Luke" seen in the cave? Well, the Jedis are returning !