VIDEO Concerns with EA

Is it just me, or are some of you a bit concerned for Star Wars video games? I feel like EA will not give the fans what they want (with the exception of Battlefront). IDK, maybe I am just a bit paranoid because we haven't gotten a good Star Wars game in so long and EA botches some of their well known titles.

 

I dunno. Can't be any worse than LucasArts. And for what its worth, I do think EA treats its licences better than Activision.

 

One thing I find odd is that EA get blamed when the games aren't as good as expected. They are only a publisher after all and not the ones making them. Lethal Alliance was pretty good, though it did come out in 2006. First Assault and 1313 looked to be great games before they were cancelled. I think the most important thing isn't the company that publishes the games but the company making them. EA co-published Titanfall, which was amazing from the day it came out, and they published Dragon Age and Mass Effect too, both franchises were really good too. In the end, with the right studios developing the games they could be the best Star Wars games ever. Just because EA is publishing them doesn't cause me any concern.

 

You make valid points, but I was under the impression that they do both; development and publishing. They have bought many studios over the years, after all. What are they using all those talents on? I thought they still do use in-house talent for the odd game now and then.

While I agree that the brunt of the blame belongs to the developers when a game is poorly made, the publisher has a responsibility for quality control as well for what is allowed to be sold under their banner, so to speak.

But in any event, my post was mostly about how the publishers in question handle licensed properties, like Star Wars, James Bond, Spider-Man and so on. All in all, I think EA has had a better track record with their handling of licenced franchises than LucasArts and Activision.

 

Battlefront was terrible, though. I've no idea why people like it, but then again I don't hate women or play Call of Duty.

 

To each his own. Why do you think it was terrible though?

 

Pretty say they have a say in when the game will be published

Which is the reason why the ending of Mass Effect 3 was terrible.

 

There's no depth to it. It's just running around shooting stuff. We had KOTOR 1 and 2 just before it, so it's unpardonably superficial.

 

KOTOR was a different type of game though. They were both great in their respective ways.

 

Anyone familiar with the C&C series? Good games, very good graphics for their time period and great story lines. Westwood Studies made them, but they got bought out by EA, and since then, it's been outdated graphics, horrible storylines, releasing unfinished games, and not giving a crap about the existing fan base, instead investing into attracting a whole new fan base (even going as far as using time travel to erase the events of the prior games and start fresh). In other words, I have dire expectations for EA Star wars games.

 

It depends which of EA's game studios makes them.

Maybe Disney gave licensing to EA because it sees something of itself in them - a studio which owns other big studios & controls many franchises, but limits interference to stuff like setting release times rather than throwing its weight around and making decisions about story & whatnot (most of the time).

I know that the way EA handles DLC has been criticised before, but overall I'm not too worried about SW games. Bioware has a decent record already in its RPGs & has made one great & one OK game in the SW franchise already

 

EA will either smash it out the park, or strike out with Star Wars; no in between. I hope it is the former.

 

I hope they don't try to rip our pockets with DLC. Rockstar is doing it right by doing free DLC. However, I hope EA puts their best teams on these future Star Wars games. Get it done!

 

Never saw why so many people had a problem with EA. Sure, they overcharge on the DLC and sometimes the games, as well as botch the occasional game, but never have they done anything downright terrible. Can't ever recall one of their games being massively downgraded, for example, or not having enough content for the type of game it is [Battlefront/Battlefield are primarily multiplayer games, therefore they don't need much in the way of singleplayer and any such form of singleplayer comes as a bonus].
So no, not really a concern with EA. Just a concern that they can do the games justice. After all, matching the quality of some of the higher-end LucasArts published games might become a tall order.

 

My bias comes from what they did to C&C. They're good with franchises they invent themselves and when they make something that's part of a far greater franchise, but when they have full control over a franchise/universe they didn't invent, everything gets messed up.

 

Yeah, what EA did to Westwood Studios and Pandemic Studios is the only problem I would have with EA, besides Origin.

 

Let's not forget the descent of the Need for Speed franchise into the sad depths of perpetual mediocrity. That series' evolution into the multi-branching tree that it is today happened right at the time when EA was growing into a giant, and it displayed all the growing pains of a series being milked to the last ounce of profit potential. More often than not with mediocre to poor results. Thankfully, the frequency of releases has dropped in recent years, which has helped the quality of the individual games. I suppose the burden of iteration fatigue has been passed on to the Battlefield franchise these days. EA's new golden goose.

 

The way the Command & Conquer franchise was handled is another one of the most heavily criticized things EA has done. As Meyerm and I alluded to with our C&C and Westwood Studios comments, EA poorly handled the Command & Conquer franchise after acquiring Westwood Studios, especially by the time they got around to doing Tiberium Wars, with Tiberium Twilight and Generals 2 being rock bottom. Tiberian Sun and Generals, especially the Zero Hour expansion, were rushed, but not enough to ruin them. There was something very fishy going on when EA pulled the plug on Generals 2. It is going to take a concerted effort on EA's part to really bring back C&C, which appeared to be happening with Generals 2.

 

I'm just concerned EA is not going to put their maximum effort into Star Wars because they have a lot of other titles like Madden, FIFA, MLB, UFC, and Battlefield.

 

Now that GOG has all the good Star Wars games on it - those released before 2001, excepting KOTOR which was excellent despite coming out after TPM - you should go play them. So you can see what good SW games look like (Hint: not Farce Unleashed or Battlefront)

 

Yes, and those titles have other teams working on them.

 

Don't you dare! Take that back lol

And Force Unleashed 1 was actually pretty good.

 

Hopefully they will always assign their best teams on future SW titles.

 

I was more worried by Disney taking over rather than handing EA the gaming rights but so far that has proven unfounded. I was imagining a host of crappy games being released at Disney's say so for every little new bit of universe they create.

At this point it doesn't look too bad, Disney contract it out to EA who in turn contract it out to their studios of which their are nearly 30 different ones. While DICE have earned themselves a bit of a rep with their Battlefield releases being rushed out and buggy they are still some of the best FPS around and probably the best hands for Battlefront to be in. No doubt they have learnt from their errors and I doubt they will be afforded a repeat of the BF4 launch plus Battlefront is the only major FPS they are working on this year so it wont clash with Battlefield.

Visceral seem to be doing things well too, they took over 1313 before it got canned and probably have some good material from that plus they have hired one of the best writers around. Not much else to say about that really but there is a reason to get the hopes up for a solid game.

Then of course there is Bioware, nobody really questions them on their output. They have been plugging away at The Old Republic and seem like a natural fit for another release although I don't think aside from a dodgy wiki entry there is any info to suggest they are working on anything.
That said they did just drop Shadow Realms and are going to concentrate on Mass Effect, A new IP and TOR expansions, the only question I have here is Frostbite is supposed to be powering all SW releases so does that men an Old Republic move to Frostbite?