So, the Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection has been released and is, by all accounts, a disappointing mess. Why does this keep happening, and why does it seem to happen more to Star Wars titles than other franchises?
It really seems like the Star Wars franchise is split in two. On one hand, we get the odd original, high-quality story, like Andor and the Jedi video game series. On the other, we get a steady stream of poorly constructed nostalgia plays, like Ahsoka, The Bad Batch, and now this new Battlefront collection.
This fragmentation isn’t new. Actually, it’s always been like this, even in the 90s, when Star Wars was kept on life support through novels and computer games. There was a Crystal Star for every Thrawn trilogy, and for every TIE Fighter, there was a Rebel Assault. These products all existed in balance, like some kind of unseen energy force.
When Star Wars slammed back into the mainstream with the prequel trilogy, the balance was maintained, and this era produced two of the best games ever made: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and its sequel. You can play those games right now, and you should, but you have to be careful how you play them.
Aspyr Media is a video game developer that specializes in updating classic games for modern systems. The quality of their output is inconsistent—they just put out a really great remaster of the original Tomb Raider trilogy—but their track record with Star Wars games isn’t great.
Aspyr is responsible for the Switch release of my beloved Knights of the Old Republic. It’s fine, I guess, but it has some bizarre problems, like a giant COMBAT MODE ENGAGED text box at the top of the screen. The Knights of the Old Republic 2 re-release had a game-breaking bug that made it impossible to finish, and while Aspyr initially promised to release some cut content as DLC, that never happened.
This was around the same time Aspyr was removed from the long-gestating KOTOR reboot project, which honestly is for the best. I’m not sure I want KOTOR to be rebooted at all; it’s perfectly playable right now, but if it has to happen, I’d prefer it to be in more capable hands. Basically, I want something closer to Final Fantasy VII Remake than Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
I don’t want to dump on Aspyr. Employee reviews on Glassdoor point the finger at management, who seem to be more focused on growth than quality. After all, Aspyr is owned by Embracer Group, a megacorp that has bought up a lot of game developers in the last five years and then closed them or laid off a ton of their staff.
Why hasn’t Embracer closed Aspyr if it keeps releasing bad products people hate? Embracer is one of the more baldly capitalist companies in video games—which is really saying something—so someone must be buying their stuff. The question is, why do we keep paying for our nostalgia? And why is Star Wars such a consistently lucrative target?
It’s not like we’re starved for Star Wars content. A Disney+ subscription gets you access to all 11 major movies, 5 live-action TV series, 9 animated shows, a game show, vehicle flythroughs, biomes, soundscapes, 16 Lego Star Wars things, and some kind of Baby Yoda / Studio Ghibli crossover short. That’s got nothing on the literally hundreds of comics and novels, both canon and non-canon, cluttering comic shops and used bookstores, or the dozens of video games out there.
Nostalgia is also baked right into the product. Star Wars was originally created as a celebration of the adventure serials George Lucas loved as a kid. The original trilogy has nostalgia for the long-gone days of the Republic, and the sequel trilogy has nostalgia not only for the days of the Rebellion but also for the original trilogy itself, a capitalist ouroboros if there ever was one.
I’m not saying we’re responsible for what a company does, but we are responsible for what we spend our money on. And I’m definitely not saying that remakes or re-releases are valueless or that Star Wars games should stay in the past—Nightdive, the king of remasters, released a Star Wars Dark Forces remaster like two weeks ago and it’s amazing!
What we need to do is believe in our taste and respect our time. If we don’t, who will?
Published: Mar 18, 2024 09:42 am