X-Wing Alliance, the last proper space sim set in the Star Wars universe, was released in 1999. The 20th century. The chances of us getting another one are approximately 3722 to 1. But that’s OK! We can always dream. And hope that this indie game actually gets made.
This is STAR FORCE. It’s a space shooter for the PC, built on Unreal Engine 4, that’s still very early in development. But already, I love it. Not just for how good it looks, but for the dance its creator, Vladimir Milosevic, is dancing to avoid a lawsuit.
This is a Star Wars spin-off project. Since we are never going to see (and play) remakes or sequels to the famous SW series of space simulations like Tie Fighter and X-Wing, I wanted to do my own version of them. My goal was to make it exactly as if you would play the SW (the original) movies. Very similar in lighting, style and general atmosphere. The game is set in universe similar to the SW as it is artistically inspired by it. This universe could be a sort of parallel SW universe if you will. So, ships, fighters, vehicles and sociopolitical setting could be similar as well…but not quite the same.
If you think things look a little bare, that’s because they are. Vladimir describes this as footage of a “pre-pre-pre-alpha testing WIP stage”, something he cooked up just to get a feel for the flight and the look of the lighting and effects.
It’s so far from being finished it’s ridiculous. He even had to fall back on actual sound effects and music from Star Wars. But still, taking that into account… watch this video and tell me it doesn’t get you excited, even just a little. Whether for this or just any kind of Star Wars space shooter that looks like it was actually made in the 21st century.
This is the part, now, where I start to dream. That unlike most other fan projects/mods/whatever of this ilk, Milosevic can actually stick with this and release something playable somewhere down the line.
Comments
12 responses to “What A New X-Wing, Tie Fighter Could Look Like”
Christ I hope some part of EA is hard at work on a Star Wars space fighter sim.
I can see it now – Fly the fabled X-Wings, Y-Wings and A-Wings through your training missions after which you’re restricted to a Z-95 Headhunter until you get pass the micro transaction paywall.
I feel like there’s an outside chance they actually might be. I mean, any exec with their eye on the market can’t have failed to notice the insane amount of money behind Star Citizen…
Probably not going to happen though.
So stupid that these overpaid DIsney executives have no fucking idea how to tap the new IP they’ve purchased short of taking old software that by now should be freeware and releasing it for $10 a piece on GoG and Steam.
Cancelling 1313 is pretty indicative of their lack of insight into the landscape they are entering.
I got the impression that 1313 probably wasn’t going to turn out well anyway. Lucasarts hadn’t put out a really good game in ages and all they actually had was an interesting idea and a flashy tech demo.
And there’s still the outside chance that parts of that game ended up with EA on whatever Amy Hennig was hired to work on, we just don’t know what that is yet.
Exactly. I wanted 1313 to be good but at the same time pretty every good looking LucasArts game in the past, what? 15 years? Has ended up being more focused on being a tech milestone than being fun to play. The Force Unleashed was brilliant yet somehow shallow and weirdly uninspired.
Also on the subject of Disney fucking things up. We’re getting Battlefront 3. That’s something Disney are 100% responsible for. The game probably won’t be perfect, it probably won’t live up to the rumors we’ve heard about previous attempts, although no Darth Obi-Wan is a good thing in my book and we never actually saw ground to space flights 100% working, but the game is happening and it’s because Disney took over.
Will we get X-Wing vs TIE Fighter this generation? Possibly. That’s a huge upgrade from LucasArts outright no. Frankly it seems outright probable that Disney will push a Rogue Squadron/X-Wing vs TIE Fighter style game at some point. They brought Star Wars as a long term investment so I think they’ll avoid going too hard on this stuff to begin with, but the thing about Disney is that they’re actually pretty good at this stuff.
Yeah, if anything Disney have shown themselves to be more interested in Lucasarts own stuff than Lucasarts ever were – it’s how we’ve seen Grim Fandango remastered and re-released, Day of the Tentacle being revisited, and finally getting X-Wing & TIE Fighter onto digital distribution (TIE Fighter was apparently GOG’s white whale, they’d been trying to get hold of it for years but no one at Lucasarts was interested)
Not to mention tying it into the hype surrounding Ep. VII…
Looks cool. Nothing would please me more than a current/next-gen TIE Fighter game. Hope he’s able to see it through without a) losing interest or b) getting sued.
EA should do a Star Wars / Wing Commander crossover. You know it makes sense.
They can call it Freespace 3!
please please pretty please?