I assume by now you have all seen the screen shots from Rogue Squadron III over at Gamers.com.
I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little sad. I mean, it's Hoth...again. Now they say that they will have us doing things on Hoth that we have never done before and that may very well be the case. Although there was never very much on Hoth in the first place so it's hard to imagine I haven't seen it all by now. I can see from one of the screenshots that you can apparently ride a Tauntaun...so that's cool. I also see some shots that show Endor as seen from the seat of a speeder bike.
Obviously there must be something pretty huge that they aren't telling us as we have done all this stuff before in countless other Star Wars games. It's not even that I doubt they will wow us with whatever new gimmick they have come up with. I'm sure it will be fucking awesome. Maybe you can raise Tauntaun now and then do battle with other Tauntaun online or something. I don't really know. No matter what it is I am sure I will love it. My main beef is that they are ignoring so many good game opportunities in the expanded universe.
Now I can hear you telling me that you think the New Jedi Order stuff is just to weird for a main stream SW game. Fine. How about the twenty or so X-Wing books out there? I mean, there is actually an extremely well done story out there that details the adventures of Rogue Squadron for the next thirteen fucking years after Return of the Jedi. This isn't freaky aliens form the unknown region either, this is the Empire vs. the Rebels type shit. This is X-Wings and TIE Fighters, Star Destroyers and A-Wings. The only difference is that it takes place on some planets that aren't Hoth, AND it tells a great fucking story about the Characters everyone loves like Luke, Wedge and Han. While introducing new fan favorites like Corran and Jaina.
Whatever Factor 5 does I am sure it will be great. I'll have to buy it the day it comes out and I'm sure it will be fun. But I would love a straight answer from someone at LucasArts about why they are essentially ignoring years and years of fantastic stories in the expanded universe.
-Gabe out
