It hurts to watch
I have to admit that the rise of Remakes in this modern age of trends has certainly spoken more to me than I'm comfortable admitting. I mean come on: Metal Gear Solid 3 and Knights of the Old Republic? My number 1 and 2 most favourite games of all time? Who could have ever predicted such a wild turn of events? Certainly not I, I'll tell you that one for free. And god was I excited about KOTOR when that remake was announced! Even knowing that the thing would be coming to the Playstation consoles first, just the promise of seeing a job as loving as the Final Fantasy VII remake visited upon my beloved standalone Star Wars adventure- oh, it just gave me chills to think about! And rumour has it that KOTOR II was being primed for a follow up remake soon after- presumably followed by a KOTOR 3 that would do away with the horrible butchering of Revan that The Old Republic perpetrated! Ecstatic didn't even being to describe my feverish state.
Which is why I took it so damn hard when the game vanished from everyone's radar and become a ghost. Even knowing what the portents held, I'm no rube afterall; it still hurt to hear the news that Aspyr dropped the project to another developer. Unofficial news, of course; because keeping customers in the loop is an absolute forbidden sin. Since then we've heard a little more speculation to fill the massive void of actually confirmed information out there. Now it's said that Playstation killed off the project even whilst Lucas Films was impressed, simply because they didn't think the game was cinematic enough, and thus did not fit their first party mandate. Clearly they got the same visions of that this game could be that I did after playing FFVII! Still, at least the Remake wouldn't go and get itself cancelled entirely whilst someone else works on it... even if they'll be working from scratch... and they still have nothing to show for their work... we're never getting this remake, are we?
KOTOR Remake really was going to be Aspyr's big chance to show off what they were capable of, and I'd imagine it was going to be the staging ground for a massive growth for the company too. Still, at least they could frolic in their current mantle as the fair harbingers of the Star Wars games of old. High quality ports and support when no one else could be bothered to- heck, they even promised to bring the massively popular fan mod for KOTOR 2, the Restored Content Patch, into their Switch port for free! A massive win for the modding community and a quiet prayer for all those excited Switch players who have no idea how painfully unbalanced that mod becomes in it's most ramshackle twilight hours. That finale is an utter mess as this mod tries to cram every half-finished idea that Obsidian ever had in there. Still that was going to be a new experience for those fans to enjoy!
And they screwed that up too. This one really did shock the heck out of me, because as with a great many other pundits and onlookers out there, it makes no logical sense. Everyone knew the devs were having some trouble from the way they missed the set deadline for the DLC and gave no updates on new prospective dates; radio silence is maintained for only the most difficult scenarios. But now they've turned around and declared the DLC officially cancelled and shrugged their shoulder about the whole affair. If I'm to guess, I'm assuming they ran into the CTD problem on Dxun and just gave up like I nearly did over three straight days of frustrated trouble shooting. It's literally one missing file guys, just verify the cache a few times, it'll work out!
Here's the thing, as much as I really desperately wanted a remake of KOTOR; that wasn't all I was excited for when that product was announced. I was most excited that Aspyr was getting a chance to solidify itself as a serious game developer after years of picking up the slack for lacklustre Star Wars game maintenance on behalf of Disney and EA. Aspyr were about to be rocketed into the leagues of a AAA developer with that KOTOR project, and a new fresh faced high quality developer who specialises in Star Wars products and, in this instance, RPGs... man, it was crushing to seem them stripped of the project. No one outside of the studio wanted them to succeed as much as I did, and every misfortune from here on out feels like a further rubbing of the wound.
The general sentiment around Aspyr is that of indignation and anger; people are rightly upset about this breech of trust and more so about Aspyr's attempt to correct the situation by offering access to one of their other Star Wars ports for free, all of which are cheap games that most of these fans probably already own. Personally I just feel bad for Aspyr. Clearly they most have been effected pretty badly once the project of a lifetime was forcibly ripped from their hands and if the company can't even manage to get this DLC out for KOTOR 2, I see that as confirmation that something seriously bad must be going on behind closed doors. It's not as though working on that DLC was a herculean undertaking for any decent staffed studio, which leads me to believe Aspyr might be facing something of a crisis of staff and capability.
Star Wars has really let the ball down in it's gaming division ever since Disney seized control of the reigns, and for a time it seemed like Aspyr was the only champion for us old school fans who just wanted to see life out of their favourite franchise in the gaming space. Even before I knew their name I'd hear about patches coming to years old games and smile about the fact that someone out there cared enough, someone out here was in the game for the right reason- to facilitate a great experience for the player. I won't dogpile on Aspyr, not when I can send out my heartfelt wishes that they whether their difficulties and build themselves back up so theirs is a name that the Star Wars franchise can still count on in the future. Maybe not as the saviours who revived KOTOR, like they wished- but as the museum curators who manage pristine exhibits.
No comments:
Post a Comment