See The Boba Fett Video Game You’ll Never Get To Play
Star Wars fans want to play this game!
This article is more than 2 years old
Gaming titles come and go; some live through short bursts of popularity before drifting to oblivion. Others remain popular gaming titles for decades after their release, but the saddest type is the games that were never released. From Legacy of Kain: Dead Sun to the alleged Prince of Persia title, the only proof of their existence are leaked or shared videos on social media, which only drive the gamers’ desire and desperation for their long-awaited but never released gaming titles. The perfect example is the newest gameplay video for the canceled Boba Fett game, called Star Wars 1313.
The new gaming video of the Boba Fett game was shared by The Vault, a YouTube channel dedicated to gameplay content of the original Battlefront 3, in celebration of the channel’s 6th anniversary. The gameplay video showcases Boba Fett walking through an underground market on the all-city planet of Coruscant, with NPCs and numerous assets, both finished and work-in-progress, decorating the in-game environment. The video then switches to a chase scene, which is largely unfinished, lacking texture detailing. However, everything plays out exactly how you would expect from a 2012 video game, complete with the sketchy physics behind climbing, hanging, sliding, and swinging.
You can’t really blame the developers for such in-game physics — it was the best video games of the time had. And please keep in mind that we’re talking about massive improvements in gameplay quality, especially compared to the game that made it all possible, the 1998’s Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Still, the gameplay video for Boba Fett game ends with the iconic bounty hunter tackling his mark before he can escape. Ten years have passed since LucasArts first announced Star Wars 1313, and the gaming series’ fans are still wondering what the game could’ve been. Would it receive a next-gen remake like GTA and many other modern games do?
The Boba Fett game was originally announced in 2012 by LucasArts, a gaming studio founded in May 1982 by George Lucas himself. However, the game’s announcement and its early development came a year prior to Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm and all of its subsidiaries, including LucasArts. Next year, in 2013, Disney announced the shuttering of LucasArts, including all ongoing projects, in all but name. Instead, it was kept as a license-handling division for Lucasfilm properties, giving out licenses to third-party developers, primarily Electronic Arts. So, the game was shut down by Disney themselves, who, at the time, had their own internal gaming studios.
Many Star Wars games appeared over the decade, as EA Games tried to get the most out of the gaming segment of the franchise, matching Disney’s milking of the franchise through cinematic and television releases. However, for every Star Wars game EA released, they canceled another, and the general consensus among the gaming community states that there are as many canceled Star Wars games as there are released ones, the Boba Fett game included.
In the meantime, it took Disney a decade to realize the massive demand for Star Wars games and the limitations imposed on the franchise by constricting its gaming releases to a single development and publishing studio. And they also wanted to earn more money. Admittedly, the three-minute gameplay video doesn’t have all that much to show, but it’s hard not to think about all the possible direction it would’ve taken the franchise, were it not for Disney’s and EA Games’ money-mongering tactics.
