Holy Hell... I'm officially excited for this game now...

Jedi Knight II!

--Dave

What I'd like to know is how Gamesfirst got the first screenshots of the game? How'd they pull that rabbit out of the hat?

I dunno, but I find it odd that the screenshots they have aren't from anything I didn't see while standing in the Lucasarts booth. You'd think exclusive screenshots would have something... exclusive in them.

Nah, those are the excact same screenshots they sent us for our E3 coverage. I think they sent that set of shots to all the mags for their E3 coverage, and they leaked out.

That explains it. Why would Lucasarts want to give all the mags exclusive screens, though? Usually exclusives go to just one mag, don't they?

I was only wondering because I couldn't dig up any screens for the Jedi 2 preview we're doing for this place. I assumed that one of the mags was getting a cover story on the game and Lucasarts wasn't giving screens to anyone.

"Why would Lucasarts want to give all the mags exclusive screens, though? Usually exclusives go to just one mag, don't they?"

Not when it's Star Wars. Remember back with... hmmm, was it Force Commander's announcement? Anyway, there was a month a while ago where LucasArts had cover stories in all three magazines.

Has anyone else accomplished that before.
-Andrew

"Not when it's Star Wars. Remember back with... hmmm, was it Force Commander's announcement? Anyway, there was a month a while ago where LucasArts had cover stories in all three magazines."

That wasn't for one game, but for all the Episode 1 games. I can't imagine Lucasarts is getting simultaneus covers stories for Jedi Knight.

They probably have three cover stories to broker -- Jedi Knight, Galaxies, and the Bioware RPG.

The thing that really gets me is that they're going with Raven instead of doing it in house. Mind you, this isn't a good or bad thing necessarily, but it seems Lucasarts is outsourcing much more than they ever have in the past. Kind of reminds me of Sierra in some ways.

- Alan

Lucasarts lost a lot of their good people to startups.

X-Wing was "outsourced" to Totally Games.

"X-Wing was "outsourced" to Totally Games"

Yeah, so was Rebellion and Force Commander...

To be honest, I'm not certain Raven can do something as deep as a follow up to JK. Elite Force and SoF were pretty cheesy.

And Mark, you're right that was the Episode One games, same cover story for all three mags though. It wasn't like each mag got a different Episode One clunker to preview.

-Andrew

They're not "exclusive" shots, though. They're the "magazines all have E3 issues, you can all have the same six shots" stuff.

I'm sure someone has a cover deal or is about to get one, and they'll have all kinds of screens that nobody else does. Probably showing a lot more diversity of environments and stuff.

>I'm not certain Raven can do something as deep as a follow up to JK. Elite Force and SoF were pretty cheesy.

Eh, they were appropriate for what they were supposed to be, I thought. EF could have held it's interesting elements longer, though...fell apart in the last third.

Regardless, I think much of the overall design is happening at Lucas, and Raven is turning that design into a game. I don't know how much of the high-level production and planning Lucas is doing, but if it's significant, that can really make the difference. The timetable DOES appear pretty tight, though.

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Quote:

"X-Wing was "outsourced" to Totally Games"

Yeah, so was Rebellion and Force Commander...

To be honest, I'm not certain Raven can do something as deep as a follow up to JK. Elite Force and SoF were pretty
cheesy.

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JK2 with the Quake 3 engine...sounds good. Though all the Q3 engine games I've played (HMF2, ST:EF, Alice) have all been a tad short...I hope the game doesn't come out like those games. I hate a full priced game that plays for less than a weekend.

etc

About the only "in-house" stuff they do now is console. I mean, they lost most of the their PC crew to new companies, or to companies like Totally Games that drifted away from previous close relationships. I think it's very very good they are going with Raven, Verant, BioWare, and Ensemble for development support for their key titles.

"...Ensemble for development support for their key titles."

Gotta (sorta) correct you here.
The most surreal E3 moment for me was being in the LucasArts booth with Ensemble (Shelley and the rest) and watching them look at Galactic Battlegrounds for the FIRST time. The spin gave me the impression they were co-developing the game... not so.

It was plain that all LucasArts got from Ensemble was the engine and an instruction manual.

-Andrew

Yeah, I know that--but even getting that much from Ensemble is better than what LucasArts has been able to do in the past with strategy games. I'd call an engine and a manual "development support," anyhow, eh? :-)

Dunno,
The game looked very much like a simple AOE2 mod to me. Not at all unlike those old Star Wars Civ2 mods that were floating around.

What I mean is... I found the gameplay pretty unconvincing and a bit too literal a translation of the AOE2 game. They could use a bit of Ensemble's creativity and inspiration on top of their engine, I think.

Still, it beats Force Commander....

>>The spin gave me the impression they were co-developing the game... not so.

Not at all. The early announcements made it quite clear it was being done in-house, with Ensemble supplying tech and consulting on the game's balance.

It looked ok. The palette sucked, and the explosions were ooky, but the game looked like it could be fun at least. Unlike Force Commander .

Note the use of the highly specialized computer game journalist jargon, "ooky" (we all say things like that when we don't want the readers to know what insider stuff we're talking about, right? ;)