LucasArts possibly making new adventure games
 

LucasArts possibly making new adventure games

From: http://kotaku.com/5549234/monkey-isl...from-lucasarts

Some quotes:

This is exciting and the departure from point and click (thank god) makes it sound that their games will be modern in graphics, controls & UI, should they choose to make AGs again.


Their AGs were really good, with an innovative UI, engine and superb graphics for their time. I hope they will bring the spirit of those games to the modern gaming era, of course revamping everything to today’s standards.

F yeah!

"WE" meaning "people of whom no one has worked at LucasArts in the past 10 years"?

There's nothing left of the old LucasArts in LucasArts except the IPs. If the new team wants to reinvent the genre, their ambition doesn't mean to me anything more than of some random studio I know nothing about.

^Agreed

I sadly second Ascovel's feelings.

Lucasarts should start by un-canceling Sam and Max: Freelance Police. :)

Not necessarily, LucasArts has allot more funds than a random studio and also has much more expertise in making games than a random studio. They can get good writers, artists & programmers.

Also, the old guys were affiliated with Monkey SE remake and if their contribution turns out to be necessary, LucasArts can always pay them.

Should they choose to do so, LucasArts creating new AGs could really revive the genre.

Of course this is all partly hypothetical, no games have been announced, no art has leaked and no information on which team(s) will be doing it is available, just an interview at kotaku.

hopefully it's not another game like Lucidity, it looks good but i'm not really fond of the gameplay :P

It goes without saying that I and many others would love anything adventuresome that LucasArts would care to do (but I'll say it anyway.)

Well, I'd love it if any developer chose to produce adventures in the future. LucasArts sure has a long tradition in our beloved genre, one that they neglected for quite some time, so it would be a good sign if they started developing adventures or adventure-y games again, games with emphasis on non-violent problem solving, story, characters and exploration.

But yeah, I'm not terribly excited about it either. I don't know what great talent is still left at LucasArts. There may be quite a lot of adventure fans there, but all LucasArts did in the past years were action games. So they still have to prove their talent with adventures.

I read this article yesterday and sadly came to the same conclusion as most. I very much doubt we'll see any original adventure games from Lucas Arts again.

I don't think it matters tbh. Lucas Arts jumpstarted adventure games with great classics. But now there are scores and scores of games, some good, some bad, most of which are technically streets ahead of where Lucas Arts left off. About the only thing missing from todays games is the humour Lucas Arts had. Their scripts were funny. Most of todays scripts are poor.

This could work, especially if LA mines some of its franchises. A new Monkey Island produced with the kind of budget they have at their disposal would shit all over ToMi. The same talent is no longer there, but I'd bet the company's populated by rabid fans of the classics. Still, MI's probably not the way to go, for fear of oversaturation at this point. Bringing back Full Throttle, on the other hand.. Or, Indy could get back to his roots.

please, I'm trying to pretend they made no Indy games after Atlantis and no movies after Last Crusade
a Full Throttle sequel would be nice, or maybe a sequel to one of the classics like Loom or Zak McKraken, but to be honest I'd really like to see them try something new. sequels are all well and good, but without the writers of the originals on board it's less likely to work out well

Im sick of companies thinking they can reinvent the wheel, it never turns out good.

Quite.

However, what makes me somewhat excited about this is that it might actually mean a change for more bigger budget games. Even if they don't have the same people as they used to, that budget should still mean that they get people who know their trade well enough to make high quality. Even if the games are not that wondertabulous in the end, at least it's a change to the always-so-low budgets :D Unless of course they dump it to some corner-cubicle development team...

Sorry, double post

Why do you care either way? I thought you hated adventure games?

Not quite, Dreamfall, Fahrenheit were rather cool. I expect AGs to have the same level of craft that exists in other genres these days, eg. RPGs & Action games. AGs used to have top graphics, competent developer teams and were trying to embrace new technologies.

Unfortunately not the same standards apply to the majority of recent AGs. Companies like LucasArts are exactly the type of company which can revive the genre and bring it in line with modern standards. I’m all for AGs that are on par with e.g. Dreamfall in story, graphics, world design, voice acting, music etc.

Lucas has the potential to create such games, I hope they actually deliver something unique but only time can tell.

I would say when it comes to standards, storytelling is at a low across all games (with the exclusion of a few titles here and there). Sorry to go briefly off topic - couldn't help myself :D

Agreed, most games aren't worth their $ anyhow. Still a couple of good ones, which combine storytelling+high level of craft, come out per year.
I'd be interested if one top quality AG -"mass effect quality"- came out every 2 years and LA could potentially provide that.

I think this news is incredibly exciting. LA has a virtually flawless record on adventure games over many years and many different people at the helm. It has that legacy. Even if certain specific individuals are long gone, AGs are still part of the company's history and assets and insider knowledge, it would have a unique insight and advantage in revisiting them. Not to mention the budget and audience. They know how to make killer adventures, even if that means just hiring the right people.

A mass-effect quality AG is overwhelming to even think about. Obviously our hopes shouldn't be THAT high, but man I hope someday they get to that level.

The fact that anyone is considering making adventuregames are a good thing in my book (I couldn't care less about the size of a games' budget though).

Yeah this is a fair enough point. I've read quite a few articles recently that talk about adventures, whether they are 'not dead', and whether they are coming up stronger nowadays. It's very promosing just to be hearing conversation on adventures in these kinds of magazines and sites again at least.

Great news! :)
Good to hear that the adventure genre isn't dead and buried at Lucasarts now that Darrel Rodriguez resigned.

100%.

LucasArts should comission indies to make their adventure games. They've put off making original adventures for almost 20 years, so when they say "we should get back into it" it makes me think they keep getting asked by office juniors (who probably later leave) why they haven't kept up their tradition.

Sadly they have lost it though. It's nice to get their old games again in multi-pack or whatever, but there are more indies now that I'd be more willing to bet on a great creative point and click.

But the quotes say it themselves, LucasArts won't be making point & clicks, no, they'll be making action adventures like the later Broken Sword.

So it's baited breath for nothing really :/

To me it's like the original Space Invaders team saying, we're coming back, we're making new space invadery type games! To which I'd say - forget it, other people are doing it better than you right now, stick to your day job. I'm surprised people think any new LucasArts adventure is going to be "amazing". There's been no evidence whatsoever that they've been capable of creating a decent point & click for 17 years or so. I'm sure they can get the money together to do it but it's the passion they've been lacking...well, since Full Throttle really :/

I'm semi-excited, but only because it makes me laugh every time I hear "LucasArts is coming back!" like it's the Elvis of the adventure industry. The more they say "we" and stuff does annoy me, it's like they don't recognise all the changes there have been in the company since 95, which makes it feel much more faceless to me.

If they were to say, "We are going to employ some people we trust are great at making original adventure games" then I would be excited. If they said "Hey, we're going to try and get Tim, Ron or Hal to make us another adventure!" I would trust & feel they actually cared about their adventure fan-base. Even if they just admitted they have sucked at contributing to the point & click scene for the last 15 years or so I'd feel sympathetic to any of their new ideas. But not when they say "WE are going to make new adventures". They have dismissed everything that has brought them back round to the oppurtunity to hype up their new motives. Nice info though, thanks for sharing :)

EDIT. Sorry if I confuse point & click with adventure game in general. I don't think they can do a decent point & click any more but I'm sure they could create quite a good "adventure". Emporers Tomb was one of the last ones I played and really quite liked, but even then, it was action adventure. Not outright adventure/point & click, which is what I fell in love with them for.

from an older interview http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/...etro-remakes/1

Looks like they are confident they can involve some old guys, should they need to.

Agreed.

I hope it's a new ip if they're going to do a new adventure game. Leave Sam & Max to Telltale, they're doing a fine job with the franchise.

Truth to be told, I don't give a two-bit-rat's-pieces-of-nut-crucking-sheesh-kebab-shiny-polished-skewers if Lucas Arts intends to make adventure games, or not. Like there isn't enough of adventure making companies out there already. Companies seriously devoted to quality, and not only to ciphers on annual budget reports... Or whatever.

No, there are not.

I think it was sarcasm

Haha...my mistake if it was then...:).

Reading the post again I'm not so sure though...

I think the thing people are forgetting is, those amazing talents that created all of those early games had to have the right place to harness their talents and turn their ideas into the classic adventures we hark back to (all too often). There is absolutely no reason to assume that LucasArts won't be able to harness new talent and deliver the modern equivalent of those masterpieces. Is it really no wonder that so many brilliant game developers came out of that house? It's a house philosophy that made those games so consistently innovative and entertaining. It's not really too far a stretch of the imagination to think that a new development team could give us something akin to what the old guys gave us. Only, you know, new.

Agreed. What the worst the could happen? Even if the result is a pretentious awful game we could always not buy it. It's not like they are making great games now (TFU fans might disagree) and are changing focus to work only (bad) adventure games.

I have been aware of this for a while. I have been involved in support for some projects to update and upgrade some classic LA titles. LA has taken up the task and we have seen a number of their fine titles re released.

LucasArts is like any game development company a sum of both the past and the present in terms of staff, vision, resources and titles..and the future is based on both. I am very excited about this and other moves that LA has been making including re releasing some of the classics upgraded for modern systems. They are been taking careful steps to study and learn about the current feeling for adventure games, as many of us know the public and the fans for Adventure games have never gone away, just some of the marketeers and the minions who try to direct things to their own likes and dislikes took over the control of new development for some ten years and we have seen an unending stream of terrible and abysmal junk games full of violence, anger and hyperactivity cloaked in Next Gen graphics and bells and whistles.

The creators and originators of some of the best LA series are still around and still easily available to help, and I have no doubt they have already been part of some of it.

Well LA is not stupid, they are good people with good intentions, and have some of the strongest IP in the game universe with the Star Wars franchise and the other series they have developed. I have total confidence in them for the promise of the future. We all know that adventure games are one of the strongest directions for games and always has been.

I look forward to continued developments.

Whatever philosophy fueled Lucasfilm Games/LucasArts of old, it's long since gone. There was a time when Lucasfilm/LucasArts was renown for barely releasing a single flop of a game. Look at their portfolio today and compare that to their titles from 1985 to ca. 1998. I'm not merely talking about the games we're now refering to as LucasArts adventure games - that this place was fueled by an unique ethos was apparent from its very early releases like "Rescue on Fractalus!"

It all started to change mid-way through the 90s (Afterlife, Indy Jones Desktop Adventures) and gained momentum once the re-release of the original Star Wars trilogy was due, with more and more movie tie-ins being produced to cash-in on Lucas' most reknown in-house license. By the time "The Phanom Menace" was about to disappoint millions of movie goers, 90% of LucasArts' portfolio was a farce, an endless list of mostly mediocre merchandising tie-ins pretending to be something it barely qualified as. Interestingly, X-Wing had been the first Star Wars game developed by LucasArts itself. That was in 1993, nine years after Ballblazer had hit shops.

New CEOs and business plans have come and gone, but LA is still playing catch-up to the rest of the industry giants it once was able to toy around with. It speaks volumes that the best games that carried the LucasArts logo during the last decade weren't even developed in-house. It's kind of like with Atari, the brand recognition is still being capitalized on, but it's standing for something so radically different they could as well dump it altogether. So, even considering that the humans who made these games of old have long since left, there are other reasons for not being all that thrilled about this. However, that doesn't mean that this new company behind this popular brand is doomed to be recognized for being a medium profile publisher and mediocre at best development studio of video games forever. Because that's what it is in a nutshell, even if we tend to get all warm and fuzzy inside about their new-found respect to their heritage. By all means though: Probably as good an opportunity to turn that trend around as any.

I am sorry to see posts that offer praise cloaking a stab in the back so much here, LucasArts as much as any company has been responsible for the advances in story, technique and technology that have made the Game genres of all kinds possible. They have not only a fine traddition from the past but a fine current staff and leadership and I look forward very much to their efforts as they continue. I do not ascribe or support the negative approach to issues to cloak opinion as fact...the fact remains that they are one of the pillars of the game universe and they have as good a chance as anyone to help contribute to the continuance of the adventure game genre into a bright future.

The facts, past and present, in terms of effort and results are present for any to see. I look forward to the future.

What a great, inspiring post. 100% agree here! Why be so pessimistic - every team has an equal chance of brining new stories and adventures to life.

I'm excited to see what's in store.