Dear Star Wars, Time for a Break

Dear Star Wars,

For the past few months, I have found myself holding out for things to be different, but I am realizing that may not happen anytime soon. I think it is time for us to take a break. My heart can only take so much, and now I realize I need to protect it more carefully than I have been. I know, you probably think I am being unreasonable, but hear me out.

I just need some space.

I know you think I am too tough on you, but I hold you to high standards because I care. I want you to excel and make something of yourself. You have so much potential and I have always hoped you would stand out, especially after making your big comeback. My hope was for you to really make your mark on the world, not join in with the crowd and become mediocre like many of your peers. I always held you in high esteem, for as long as I can remember. However, since you left home I cannot condone the person you have become. I still believe you have the potential for greatness, but right now you are on a path that makes me cautious. What a fool I would be if I were to hope for too much only to be let down again.

Also, maybe you see something in them I do not, but I fail to see why you continue putting up with that one friend of yours. What was their name again? Easton? Eamon? (I just remember it was Ea..., something or other.) They obviously have no respect for you, or anyone else for that matter.

When the time is right, I hope our relationship will have a better dynamic. I will cherish the memories we have made up until now, and I hope that we can create new ones in the future. Perhaps this is just a rough patch and things will be different down the road. For now, however, I think it is best if we go our separate ways.

May the force be with you,

Your Hopeful Fan

Star Wars Battlefront II is a Disgrace

Where do I even begin? (I will only touch on a few issues in detail here considering this blog post would be extremely lengthy to cover everything that has come out about the game in the past few weeks.)

Star Wars is my favorite franchise. Star Wars games make up a large portion of my video game collection. The future of Star Wars games no longer seems promising. I hope Disney will seriously consider pulling EA's license for the Star Wars franchise. This is the problem with monopolies. They have too much power and can get away with absurd business practices because they have no competition. (If you also support the idea that Disney should cut ties with EA, consider signing this petition.)

Battlefront II (EA, 2017) is full of a lot of empty promises and greedy business practices to accompany its beautiful facade. I have been following the development of the game for a long time now and it seems that for every promise that has been kept there are 2-3 promises that were empty or led to underwhelming results.

Who is to blame, EA or Dice? A little of both? EA pushes for all the micro-transactions and disgusting business model, while Dice gives in and plays ball? Dice has done an incredible job with the aesthetics of this franchise, hands down. I don't think many people would argue that point. However, they really missed the bar with content.

I don't play online multiplayer for multiple reasons. I don't have a subscription to Xbox Live or Playstation Plus, internet speed and connection are unreliable, etc. My preference has always been (and probably always will be) offline, single-player content. EA/Dice have been talking up the single player content for a long time now, promising it would be an improvement over Battlefront (EA, 2015). To their credit, we are getting a single player campaign that does seem very intriguing. Yet many reports this week are indicating the campaign is rather predictable and lackluster overall. A one-and-done experience? Perhaps. Hard to say until I play it or hear more from someone who has finished it.

Skirmish mode was added as an update to Battlefront (EA, 2015) several months after launch. This mode was reportedly a pet project put together by just two developers at Dice in their spare time. Skirmish was what I was looking for along. Only disappointment was that you could only play Walker Assault or Fighter Squadron on a handful of maps. Battlefront II (EA, 2017) has been in development for at least 2 years (since the last game was released) and "Arcade" mode is more bare bones than Skirmish mode in Battlefront (EA, 2015). When the developers were asked about this mode in today's Reddit AMA their response was as follows:

As for more Arcade, just like every mode in our game, we want to look for ways to expand it going forward. Unfortunately at this point we don't have anything to share right now, but know that we care about Offline modes.

(To see the original comment and full response, click here. Another related non-answer here.)

Yeah, right. Bottom-line is EA's bottom-line. Offline players likely make them little to no money beyond the initial sale of the game so it gets pushed off to the side.

Quick history to know before reading on: Battlefront 2 (released in 2005) was developed by Pandemic Studios. They were later acquired by EA and shut down in 2009. EA has a history of doing this and its latest victim was Visceral Games who was working on a single player Star Wars game that had a lot of potential and promise. Rumors are they were shut down when EA was displeased with the lack of micro-transactions and related money-making features currently included in the game. Greed really does seem to be the modus operandi of that company.

The gaming community (and more specifically the community interested in single player content) have essentially been asking for Skirmish mode as currently found in Battlefront (EA, 2015) to carry over into Battlefront II (EA, 2017) and then get updated to make use of the new locations and game modes designed for the new game. Is that really too much to ask?

Battlefront 2 (Pandemic, 2005) is still beloved by fans and had this available day one, at launch. I have owned the game since it first came out and in that time I played maybe 2 matches online. Meanwhile I have spent hours and hours of time (more than I probably care to admit) playing that game by myself or with family and friends offline. The current state of Battlefront II's (EA, 2017) offline content hardly compares to what I can get out of a game I already own which is 12 years old.

Improved and more abundant offline content could still come out in the future as part of an update, I know. But I'm not holding my breath any more. If they really cared about "listening to feedback" and implementing what I'm seeing in dozens of posts and comments all over various parts of the Internet, I would expect them to have included a meatier offline experience at launch, or at the very least release some kind of statement saying something to the effect of, "Rest assured, we're working on it. It will be released in the near future once we have completed its development." That would appease my concerns and get me more excited about the future prospects of the game as a whole. So far it's just been non-answer after non-answer.

The loot box controversy is probably the biggest story surrounding the game right now. I think it is a terrible business practice that seeks to monetize the impatience and frustration of gamers. Some countries are reportedly investigating the situation to classify the concept of, and interaction with, loot boxes as gambling and I am fully on board with that position.

I really want to be able to praise this game and love it as much, if not more than Battlefront 2 (Pandemic, 2005). Sadly the stars are not aligning. I rarely buy video games at full price any more, but I was willing to make an exception for this game and have been setting money aside for the past few months in anticipation of its release. But enough is enough. EA's grubby fingerprints are all over this game and I want no part of it anymore. The fact they have the exclusive rights to making videos games for the Star Wars franchise is incredibly disappointing.

Unless improvements are made, I'll stick to playing Battlefront (and sadly, Star Wars games in general) when it was (they were) good, "before the dark times, before the [EA] empire".

Movie Hype in the 21st Century

Remember when you had to stand in line for 2 hours to get tickets for the next big blockbuster only to be sorely disappointed when you finally got to the window and learned that all showings had been sold out for the weekend? Yeah, me neither.

We are so spoiled when it comes to buying movie tickets these days! The scenario I described to open this post was inspired by the stories I have heard in documentaries about the initial release of Star Wars in 1977. I remember someone saying they saw the movie for the first time during opening weekend and immediately got back in line and waited 2 hours to buy tickets to see it a second time. When I was younger I recall standing in line to get tickets to a few movies here and there, but none of my experiences were anything like those of moviegoers when Star Wars first came out. Nowadays, we can order our tickets well in advance and even reserve the exact seats we will be in to enjoy the movie (rather than taking our chances in the "first come, first serve" battle for good seats). 

Fast forward to the year 2015 and chances are you knew about Star Wars: The Force Awakens long before it was released. Whether you knew a lot about it (i.e., the plot, names of the new characters, etc.), or only a little, you still knew it was coming. The hype that builds up before modern blockbusters is amazing to think about when you compare it to the hype that preceded older movies. Believe it or not, Star Wars (1977) was not very well known by the public at the time of its release. Its success was due in large part to word of mouth after the premiere. 

Unlike moviegoers who had to wait hours to see the original Star Wars, I purchased tickets for my family and I to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens on October 19th, 2015, almost a full 2 months before it was even released! I knew that if we waited any longer than opening weekend to see the movie that spoilers would be all over Facebook and YouTube, so I made it a point to get tickets as early as possible. The night I went to get tickets was the same night they were first made available. Even then, all the "good" seats for the showing we ended up going to were already claimed by the time I got to the theater. I had initially hoped to get tickets for the "Tightwad Tuesday" after release, but that particular showing was already sold out!

I have been interested in seeing Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice for some time now and the latest trailer got me fairly excited about it. Yesterday I was going to make the trip over to the Megaplex at Geneva to buy a ticket for a showing on the first "Tightwad Tuesday" after the movie is released. Before I left to go to the theater, I decided I should probably check the theater's website to see if tickets were available yet. When I saw that advanced tickets are scheduled to go on sale starting Monday, the 29th, I was actually disappointed. The movie will not even be released for another month! After feeling disappointed for a minute, I realized how silly it was for me to even think that way. This experience made me reflect on just how much the times have changed and how different the movie-going experience is now compared to what it was like for our parents and grandparents. 

So next time you go see a blockbuster movie with a pre-purchased ticket (and there will be a number of them this year alone), take a minute to think about how awesome it is that your seats were reserved so you did not have to sit up in the miserable front row, or how you were able to walk right in and not wait in line for an hour or 2. And as advantageous as technology has become in revolutionizing the theater industry and our experience as viewers, PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CELL PHONE! (Haha, just thought I would throw that out there.) Enjoy the movie!

Next Star Wars Movie to be Rated R?

RUMOR WARNING: This post contains rumors! Almost any article that discusses something about a movie that has not been released yet seems to contain a spoiler warning. Isn't it about time that rumor warnings became a thing too? Anyway, consider yourself warned.

Now that the Force has awakened, most, if not all, sites featuring production news and rumors for upcoming Star Wars movies have shifted their attention to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which is scheduled to be released in theaters December 16th, 2016. (If you thought this post was going to be about Episode VIII, sorry to disappoint.)

I opened Facebook on my phone the other day to check the details of an activity and at the top of my feed was an article titled, "Darth Vader's Scenes in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Described As Brutal". My curiosity was piqued so I decided to see what it had to say. (Click here to read the article for yourself)

I remember reading an article a few months back that said Rogue One would set itself apart from other Star Wars movies by not having any Force-using/lightsaber wielding characters. The original concept of this movie, as described in early reports after it was first announced, was for it to be a gritty, more militarized story set in the Star Wars universe. However, over the past month or two I have seen more and more articles popping up about the possibility of Darth Vader showing up in the new film. Since he has been considered one of the most formidable film villains of all time, I think it would be a great idea to work him into the movie!

What really intrigued me about the article I read was the possibility of Darth Vader being portrayed as ruthless in Rogue One, and the potential display of violence that would accompany any scenes with him. One possible example of his unyielding behavior could include using bodies on the battleground as human shields. According to the original report on this rumor, the concept art depicts possible scenes in the upcoming movie as "more violent than what we’ve seen Darth Vader do on screen before."

The original trilogy was released before my time, so I would love to see Darth Vader in action on the big screen! Sure, the iconic suit showed up at the end of Revenge of the Sith, but he did little more than stand around for a brief amount of screen time. I think it would be awesome to see a new portrayal that gives the character more gravitas as the ultimate bad guy (and potentially re-establishes him as the greatest movie villain).

At the end of the article I saw on Facebook, the author said if these rumors of a more violent version of Darth Vader turn out to be true and these scenes are included in Rogue One, "there's a good chance that the standalone film could get a Rated-R rating, but I highly doubt they'd show something violent enough to get that rating." I highly doubt this as well. Star Wars has always been a franchise made with kids in mind (just look up any of the plethora of the interviews available online where George Lucas makes this point). With that being said, Darth Vader can still show up as a force to be reckoned with while keeping the violence and gore to a minimum.

I consider the portrayal of The Joker (RIP, Heath Ledger) in The Dark Knight to be one of the greatest movie villain performances ever. The Joker was a rather violent character but a lot of his more disturbing actions happened off-screen (such as "Let's put a smile on that face"). Darth Vader could easily be portrayed as a merciless character in Rogue One by implying a lot of his cruel behavior rather than showing it explicitly on screen. 

In conclusion, a question for anyone who reads this post: Do you consider off-screen violence to be as bad as on-screen violence?