Find all previous editions of the PCG Q&A here. Some highlights:
- What game would you put in a time capsule for future generations?
- What's the last game that felt truly next-gen to you?
- What hardware do you regret buying?
EA are no longer the only company with the keys to Star Wars. Ubisoft are working on an open-world Star Wars game, and we've got some ideas about what we'd like from that. But what else would you like to see done with the licence now that it's free of EA's hold?
Should there be more games like Republic Commando? A game about your favorite secondary character? More of the weird shit? Or should they just make Knight of the Old Republic 3 already?
What's your dream Star Wars game?
Here are our answers, plus a few from our forum.
Dave James: I'd love to see something set far into the future from the current Star Wars mythos, something that allows the writers and the game to be free of the constraints of the movie trilogies. And I want to be an alien. I'm sick of Star Wars games always having some bland white boi as the main protagonist when there are a wealth of other sentient beings populating the galaxy.
I still want the Force to play a part in it, and I'd be interested to take the journey of a Force-sensitive youth just discovering some latent powers and having to decide what to do with them without being forced down a particular route because of the narrative. Do you go down the warrior monk route, begging to be apprenticed to some goodie-twelve-shoes (aliens, see), do you go full-on Sith and seek out some dark master, or do you go rogue and try to seek a balance within the Force, within yourself?
And I want a spaceship. Eventually.
Andy Kelly: Red Dead Redemption, but on Tatooine. A blaster instead of a six-shooter; a speeder instead of a horse; spaceports instead of towns. Think that episode of The Mandalorian where Timothy Olyphant plays the sheriff of a small desert town. I wanna drift between settlements, get into adventures, meet shady characters in cantinas, and generally be a space cowboy. A simple man making his way through the galaxy.
The Mandalorian already established that a Star Wars Western both works and kicks ass, so I'd love to see that translated into an open world game with a similar pace and vibe to Red Dead. A Star Wars game set on one planet, where you play as someone who has no desire to leave it. Even though Tatooine is arguably overused as a setting, it's still one of my favourite fictional places, and I'd love to see it from the perspective of someone who isn't a Jedi or on a quest to save the universe.
Graeme Meredith: I thought the story of Star Wars Squadrons was pretty pathetic, but I love jumping online and "shooting the shit" with a friend while we get repeatedly destroyed by far superior players. So, if Motive wanted to do the exact same game again, but with podracing, I'd be pretty stoked. Narrative aside, being able to sit in the cockpit of a custom pod, with those engine sound effects blasting away, playing the whole thing in VR... yeah, I'd make a guilty pleasure of that before you can say "now this is (a superficial but otherwise very enjoyable simulation of) podracing".
Robin Valentine: It's got to be bounty hunting, right? An open world set on a grimy Outer Rim planet rife with crime and corruption and crawling with colourful targets for you to hunt down and capture using an arsenal of fun gadgets and weapons. I'd love if it was really open and systems-driven, maybe even with procedurally-generated targets—part Hitman, part Deus Ex, part Shadow of Mordor—though I think just a safe but slick action-adventure is probably the more realistic hope. Jedis and spaceship battles are all well and good, but we all know the most fun is found in the shadowy corners of the Star Wars universe.
Rich Stanton: Think Robin's nailed it, I'd like to hunt down various galactic miscreants and eventually Jedi/Sith in a co-op bounty hunting team. Set it any time you like but just have the player in the middle of the good vs evil stuff and completely amoral, chasing down and capturing/killing whoever and whatever anyone will pay for. I want it to be about making a living amidst a crazy space conflict, blasting bounties, and using lots of cool gadgets I haven't seen before. What I don't want is yet another game about what Darth Vader or whoever did in a previously unexplored month in the canon.
Christopher Livingston: Death Star simulator. I want to build and manage a Death Star. Manage the budget, research tech (like, how does the Death Star even fly around and stuff?), hire contractors, overwork stormtroopers, force-strangle unproductive officers, threaten planets for resources, torture rebels in holding cells, defend against X-Wing attacks (and maybe a build a screen over the exhaust port?), and endure visits from the Emperor. You could start with a little bitty Death Star that's only the size of Epcot Center and can only blow up small neighborhoods, and add on layers until it's much bigger and can destroy planets.
James Davenport: SCS Software's Jawa Sandcrawler Simulator. Imagine: Roaming Tatooine in that honking thing, picking up droids and breaking them down (functional or not), flipping the parts to nomads to stock up on big-ass hair eggs to keep your Jawas fed. Orange yolk all over the cloaks and the goddamn floor—the smell in that thing would make Vader puke his guts out. Dream game!
Morgan Park: Three words: Death Star Shipbreaker. I want to methodically slice up all of the scrapped steel and electronics from the various Death Stars, just like I've already done for hours in Hardspace: Shipbreaker. It's a dream job, really. Maybe I could find Darth Vader's lightsaber among the wreckage to speed up the cutting process? Oh, and you could send out droids to create piles of scrap automatically or extract an explosive reactor from a safe distance! I have to stop talking about this or I'll get obsessed.
Jody Macgregor: Take the Imperial Agent storyline from The Old Republic. Strip out all of that MMO cruft. Put it into a stealth game with multiple options for approaching each level. Let me play an immersive sim about being a spy for the Empire who might be a double agent, or a triple agent, or so messed-up by brainwashing I don't even know who I'm really working for.
From our forum
drunkpunk: Star Wars Galaxies with a modern UI and control scheme, pre-CU but with JTL. They pretty much nailed not only the best star wars game and world, but also the best MMO mechanics I had ever experienced. The focus on everything else that made the SW universe great that weren't jedi was fantastic, the freedom to mix and match professions added a ton of flexibility, and stuff like player built and driven towns was ahead of its time. They also didn't rely on every iconic star wars character you've seen in the movies to create their experience. To have another Star Wars experience like this is my dream.
Another one would be revisiting the Jedi Knight/Academy games. They had excellent gameplay that I again consider ahead of its time. At least, no studio has seemed to approach it with the same style of gameplay. Instead we get boring stuff like Fallen Order (which wasn't 'even a star wars game originally) or Force Unleashed, which just pales in comparison in regards to gameplay.
Or even a proper successor to X-Wing vs TIE Fighter would be great. Squadrons just isn't it.
LucasArts had such fantastic success with Star Wars games, and I think it was because they focused so much on providing great gameplay, not just cinematic nostalgia trips.
Zloth: Star Wars: Rebellion 2 (see the first entry on the weird list). Just go ahead and make it turn based this time instead of time-limited turns. For combat, see if you can do something like Battlestar Galactica Deadlock's space combat system. If that can't be done, do it Homeworld style.
badman: A proper successor for X-Wing Alliance. Yeah, we got Squadrons, but it's not really like the old X-Wing and Tie-Fighter games. I mean: a spacecombatgame with a fixed battlefield in a SP campaign???
A new Jedi Knight game would be great. Lightsaber combat was superb in Jedi Academy, but what we really need is the fantastic levels from the previous Jedi games: Dark Forces 1/2 and Jedi Outcast. Those were the best of the best. I still haven't found all the secrets in those games, let alone explored every inch. Masterfully put together.
Pifanjr: I would really like to play a Star Wars game that's like Mass Effect...
I should really get around playing KotOR some time.
Greyfoxcal: Something like a modern KotoR (never played it, but I trust it's good) + the combat from Fallen order would be great.
Just gimme a ship to potter about in!
Also, let me walk around the ship while it's moving, ala Mace Griffin Bounty Hunter
