'LucasArts Sucks'

[tredlow]

Do people still think LucasArts sucks (Not the adventure games, but the company because they canceled several adventure games)? I remember hating it for a few years, though maybe that's just me, but more recently, with MI1&2:SE and TOMI, I haven't really complained much about them anymore.

[Farlander]

Do people still think LucasArts sucks (Not the adventure games, but the company because they canceled several adventure games)? I remember hating it for a few years, though maybe that's just me, but more recently, with MI1&2:SE and TOMI, I haven't really complained much about them anymore.

Well... I wasn't entirely happy with the decision to cancel adventure games and stop making them. On the other hand, they did release as a publisher/developer some great games during that period (most of them Star Wars, though): Armed & Dangerous, Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb, Star Wars: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Star Wars: Republic Commando, so there really was no reason for me to hate the company or to think it sucked.

[Hayden]

[...]I remember hating it for a few years, though maybe that's just me, but more recently, with MI1&2:SE and TOMI, I haven't really complained much about them anymore.

I think we can thank Rodriguez for that brief purple patch. Now that he's gone, though, I haven't really got high hopes for the future.

[taumel]

I don't hate them but considering several business decisions and their software portfolio they just went from beeing awesome to lame. Other companies are making great games now. I still like their logo, although it's kind of weird, because it reminds me of a great time. They have some yummy IP though.

[Origami]

Lucas Arts sucks. Long time since they made a decent game. Can only remember Knights of the Old Republic.

[JedExodus]

Yeah Lucas sucks, all their best games are made by outside studios really. bar Lucidity which I heard was pretty good

[tredlow]

I only recently realized that their logos, old and new, are both a man and an eye. That's kinda cool.

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT6L3KLuZ4LEyKLO30Dr_FFlqJh5zjsB ue2qi3xkeUAMB7jH27_

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTvk_1sC28AAo8_7iZnhif8o2NVcDGjG CduaMwsQHIwZb_Fq7Wq

I remember liking Armed and Dangerous, despite it being rushed to release(at least, that's what I heard), and could have been better.

[Meta Ray Mek]

Lucas Arts sucks. Long time since they made a decent game. Can only remember Knights of the Old Republic.

BioWare made Knights of the Old Republic. Lucas Arts was the publisher.

Anyhow, LucasArts sucks because they made not just The Farce Unleashed, but also The Farce Unleashed 2: Gary Stu Harder.

However, they also made Shadows of the Empire, which is one of my top 5 favorite N64 games. Hnnnn.

[taumel]

I especially like this one...

http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/1403/thedig.png

[Rather Dashing]

Tales and the Special Editions have shifted LucasArts from "Abject Hatred" to "mild distaste". I certainly don't LIKE the company.

[Irishmile]

I still like LA... sure they put out some real crap... but I am still rooting for them to get their sheets in order.

[holmja]

My nostalgic feelings for all the SCUMM and GrimE adventure games means I've never hated Lucas Arts, but I haven't bought a new Lucas Arts game since Telltale added Monkey Island 1 to their store. I'd still like to buy MI2, but Telltale, sadly, isn't selling it.

[Irishmile]

You could always get it on steam or PS3 or something.

[holmja]

You could always get it on steam or PS3 or something.

I was hoping to get both MIs from the same place. I like Telltale, and I would prefer to give them my money but, yes, I figure I'll end up buying them both on steam eventually.

[Elvenmonk]

Tales and the Special Editions have shifted LucasArts from "Abject Hatred" to "mild distaste". I certainly don't LIKE the company.

This really.

[monkeyhead234]

Lucas arts isn't who you all should be hating it Jim Ward. Jim took over the company and cancelled all the adventure games.

[jp-30]

No he didn't.

Sam & Max was cancelled by Mike Nelson, and I have no idea who cancelled Full Throttle 2, possibly Simon Jeffrey.

By the time Ward took over, there were no Adventure Games being developed.

[coolsome]

No he didn't.

Sam & Max was cancelled by Mike Nelson, and I have no idea who cancelled Full Throttle 2, possibly Simon Jeffrey.

By the time Ward took over, there were no Adventure Games being developed.

I thought you ment the MST3K Mike Nelson XP

[Ash735]

I think we can thank Rodriguez for that brief purple patch.

I really do thank him, for that short time he was around he managed to breath new life back into Monkey Island to revamp the original two games, the first outing being rather good but then the company completely smashing it for Monkey Island 2.

Just for that time he was there we now have at least a Trilogy of 2D Point and Click Monkey Island games that feature the same cast in all three!

[doodo!]

My fondest memories of Lucas Arts are from when I was a child but I'm not going to say they flat out suck now.

[Chyron8472]

I think people have a tendency to compound both "LucasArts sucks" and "George Lucas sucks" together. Can't say I blame them.

LucasArts engenders spite from people by foregoing any and all development of adventure games in favor of more Star Wars shovelware *grr*. The recent MI:SE's and ToMI do only enough to slightly lessen the effect, considering that the background art in SOMI:SE is woefully incomplete in places, and that the music in classic mode for LCR:SE sucks.

George Lucas is an idiot who has very little concept of good storytelling anymore, as evidenced by the suckfest that is the Star Wars:SE's and prequel trilogy. Adywan's fan edit of A New Hope (http://fanedit.org/517/) (and upcoming Empire Strikes Back) are hands down better than the SE versions.

[LuigiHann]

Ron Gilbert, on his Twitter, made a reference to the Ship of Theseus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus) a while back. While he was referencing a sports team at the time, I feel like the same idea (the question of whether or not an entity remains "itself" after each of its parts has been replaced) could easily apply to companies like LucasArts. Some game companies, like Nintendo, maintain the same "feel" over huge amounts of time, probably because a lot of the people there have been there for decades (and the new people work with them to strive for the same standard, I guess), whereas a company like Atari has virtually no relation at all to the original Atari aside from ownership of that name. LucasArts is probably somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, but they do seem to have had a lot of abrupt, major personnel changes in both the workforce and the upper management. So you could say that the LucasArts that pioneered adventure games, the LucasArts that canned them, and the LucasArts that participated in their revival are effectively different companies carrying the same name and licenses.

[Hassat Hunter]

They got in my bad book with their threatment of KOTOR2... :(

[mitchel440]

well I can remember when anything that Lucasarts put out was cause for a celebration. it just doesnt seem like that anymore. I know companies change, policies change, and people change, but it just seems like they have lost site of what made them great. Games like x-wing, dark forces, the adventure games and such is what made people love Lucasarts. Its a shame that to me their best games are the ones from the past. Im sure im not the only one who would love a new x-wing game, dott, even a new indy adventure game.

[wefeelgroove]

I just wish they'd rerelease more of their old games. What happened with that? I want to finish Grim Fandango but I need a version that's compatible with XP without jumping through lots of hoops first. :(

[Hayden]

They got in my bad book with their treatment of KOTOR2... :(

Yes, same here. That could have been one of the greatest RPGs of all time had the team been given a reasonable amount of time. But no, LucasArts would rather rush an unfinished game out the door in time for Christmas simply so that they could rake in the dollars off of increased sales. That was the perfect indication to show that LucasArts now cares about money more than actually making good games. And when a company prioritizes money over the quality of their product, you know things are operating the wrong way.

What perhaps annoyed me even more, however, was the fact that LucasArts disallowed Obsidian from making a patch for the game when the company was more than willing to do so. So, not only do LucasArts rush the game, causing it to be buggy and incomplete, they also prevent it from being fixed. Do they really care that little about their games and products?

So yeah, LucasArts do suck.

[Farlander]

Guys. Let's face it. Obsidian has awesome ideas and stories, but regardless of the publisher they worked with, the result was buggy, partly dreadful and whatnot. Knights of the Old Republic 2 (LucasArts), Neverwinter Nights 2 (Atari; NWN2 was WORSE than KotOR2, though the following add-ons kind of made up for it), Fallout: New Vegas (Bethesda), Alpha Protocol (Sega; the only game which wasn't a sequel and, AFAIK, more in Obsidian's control, but it still managed to mess up somewhat). I didn't play Fallout: New Vegas yet but I understand that it's the best work Obsidian has done yet, but it's still both buggy and not totally complete, patches are still rolling.

Five years ago I would've been with you on this one. That LucasArts folks were bastards because they haven't let Obsidian to do their job properly. But now that we see Obsidian's other work, WOULD have they done it properly, really? Where's the guarantee?

[Hassat Hunter]

Maybe not bugless (but mods can get rid of that, as Wesp shows with bloodlines and we (the TSLRCM team) with KOTOR2), but at least in a far more complete state...

[Meta Ray Mek]

Aside from the fact that I felt KOTOR2 was weaksauce in comparison to KOTOR, all bugs aside, I agree... shame on LucasArts for rushing the game out the door so quickly.

Not that it would have changed much of anything so far as Obsidian's awesome, award-winning game testing goes... but still. Ouch.

[Rather Dashing]

Not that it would have changed much of anything so far as Obsidian's awesome, award-winning game testing goes... but still. Ouch.
Bugs I'll give you, fine. All the same, generally Obsidian releases a game with the final, oh, quarter of the game intact in some at least mostly playable fashion. This was not the case for KOTOR II, which is an insult to Avellone's writing. Once again, Chris Avellone wrote one of the best, most engaging scripts in a video game, and that vision deserved to be fulfilled.

[RAnthonyMahan]

I'll always love the adventure games LucasArts has done in the past, but as a present-day company, they just flat out suck.

To start, they rarely actually make games anymore. They mostly exist just to loan the Star Wars license out to other developers. I think the only games they've actually developed recently have been the Monkey Island Special Editions (which I don't quite count since they're remakes) and The Force Unleashed games, which are still more damn Star Wars. (I personally hate Star Wars and believe it was never good, so I'm somewhat biased.)

There was a brief hope spot with Rodriguez commissioning Tales of Monkey Island and the special editions. It seemed like they might return to adventure gaming after all, but we know how that worked out.

I'm at least grateful that most of "The Cleverness Division" is still active in gaming. Tim Schafer's done Psychonauts and Brutal Legend with some other projects in the works. Ron Gilbert released Deathspank fairly recently. And Dave Grossman, Chuck Jordan, Michael Stemmle, and a whole bunch of others went on to work for some company you probably haven't heard of. :p

[KuroShiro]

George Lucas is an idiot who has very little concept of good storytelling anymore, as evidenced by the suckfest that is the Star Wars:SE's and prequel trilogy. Adywan's fan edit of A New Hope (http://fanedit.org/517/) (and upcoming Empire Strikes Back) are hands down better than the SE versions.

George Lucas has never had a concept of good story-telling. He has great *ideas*, but it's important to note that he did not write the screenplay for any of the original Star Wars trilogy, Indiana Jones, etc. Sadly, the spirit of creativity and originality that drove Lucasfilm and Lucasarts' biggest successes is now non-existent. They are simply another big publisher.

[jannar85]

With the special editions and that they lend their MI-license to Telltale, gives them a huge plus in my book. I mean, they could just have been like the SW-days, where they decide to not release anything adventure-related at all.

[Rather Dashing]

With the special editions and that they lend their MI-license to Telltale, gives them a huge plus in my book. I mean, they could just have been like the SW-days, where they decide to not release anything adventure-related at all.
Right. It's nothing like "the Star Wars days" now, where they only made things using an old license and farmed out original game development to external studios!

[TryWhistlingThis]

Lucasarts lost me after 1999/2000 which is pretty much when they were done with graphic adventures. Grim Fandango was the exclamation point (or the bookend) to the legendary decade in the history of Lucasarts. For me, the final insult was Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings on Nintendo DS.


I didn't like the direction of it's two predecessors, though I have to admit The Emperor's Tomb was something of an improvement. If you're a fan of The Staff Of Kings i'd probably stop reading here because I honesty just need to express my disappointment as to how bad it was. I'm not the sort to make whinge threads but this is an exception, I really hated this game and more than ever, it demands that Lucasarts take the Indy gaming franchise in a new direction - fast.

The first thing I should admit is that the last IJ game I enjoyed was FOA. Yes, I realise that's a typical fan-boy type response, but I just can't dispute how timeless that game was. After playing The Staff of Kings, I was really disgusted by the gameplay experience. The controls were unreasonably awkward, the physics of the combat were the worst i've played on the DS and the graphics were appalling. For a Lucasarts title, I expected so much more.

Since the games went on the third person action/adventure route, at best they've been IJ themed imitations of Tomb Raider. I'd caution Lucasarts in going further down this road in future as it still doesn't work, especially after seeing how perfectly the Unchartered series is doing it.

As a positive, I did actually enjoy the story and the telling of it. The graphic novel was brilliant. While the story lacked some depth, there were some brilliant ideas there. My suggestion to Lucasarts is that they need to go back to the classic style. Already by doing that they would achieve more immersive gameplay, an improved treatment to a well intended story and overall capturing the spirit of the films. Never has IJ been about just action, the action was used to move the plot along to heighten tension. Ever since The Infernal Machine, the action has been the narrator. When there was action in Fate of Atlantis, it was an extention of the player's decision as Indiana Jones as to how events unfolded. With the contemporary games, all the games do is benchmark the player's reaction to AI.