"Along with improved graphics, we’ve added exciting features like the lightsaber toggle and new playable characters."

What was behind the decision to bring back Star Wars: Episode I: Jedi Power Battles this long after its release?

Aspyr has a long-running relationship with Lucasfilm Games, which has allowed us to bring a variety of Star Wars games to players over the years, including our most recent release, Star Wars: Bounty Hunter.

Jedi Power Battles is a classic from 2000 and a fan favorite among those who love the Star Wars galaxy. When we saw an opportunity to reintroduce this beloved game, we knew we wanted to enhance the experience for both long-time fans and a new generation of players. Along with improved graphics, we’ve added exciting features like the lightsaber toggle and new playable characters.

What can you tell us about the new, modern control scheme and how it differs from the original game?

The modern control scheme in Jedi Power Battles features updated button mapping, designed to offer a smoother transition for players new to the game. For example, classic controls use the B button to jump and modern controls use the B button to attack.

For those who appreciate the nostalgia of the original setup, the classic control scheme is also available, allowing players to seamlessly switch between modern and classic options. This flexibility ensures the game feels fresh and approachable for newcomers while honoring its legacy for longtime fans.

"For those who appreciate the nostalgia of the original setup, the classic control scheme is also available, allowing players to seamlessly switch between modern and classic options."

What are the biggest gameplay improvements and quality-of-life additions that players should look forward to?

We’ve had a blast playtesting the revamped controls and can’t wait for you to experience it with newly playable characters! You’ll be able to jump into the action as the Rifle Droid, Staff Tusken Raider, Ishi Tib, and many more. The addition of ranged and melee attacks brings a whole new dimension to combat, while the lightsaber color toggle lets you personalize your Jedi experience. With personalization features added and new ways to force power, we’re really looking forward to how players take advantage of these additions.

If you’ve seen the trailer for the newest God of War, then you’re probably wondering what exactly inspired SIE Santa Monica Studio to pursue a father-son dynamic for Kratos. As it turns out, speaking to VentureBeat, director Cory Balrog was inspired by scripts for LucasArts’ cancelled live-action Star Wars show while working for the company. The tone of the show would influence God of War, which faced “a lot of pushback initially” since it featured Kratos being something more than a rage-fueled warrior.

Regarding the Star Wars show, Balrog said, “It was the most mind-blowing thing I’d ever experienced. I cared about the Emperor. They made the Emperor a sympathetic figure who was wronged by this f**king heartless woman. She’s this hardcore gangster, and she just totally destroyed him as a person. I almost cried while reading this. This is the Emperor, the lightning out of the fingers Emperor. That’s something magical.”

You can still expect plenty of violence but today’s market is allowing for more meaningful character development. “I saw that people were accepting bigger games that didn’t have to shout all the time. I thought this was an opportunity for us. It’s cool to get in and be able to tell stories in a much more diverse emotional palette. We were always kind of, ‘RAAARGH!'”

Pitching the idea wasn’t easy since many already had a pre-conceived notion of the ex-God of War and had a hard time imagining this fatherly connection. “But you start thinking about it a little bit. How would he deal with that? Just saying, ‘Oh, Kratos wants redemption’ is selfish. It’s old Kratos. It’s self-centered. It has no purpose. But this idea – something beyond him is motivating him to change. He’s known for a long time that he needs to change. But the change is coming from not wanting to repeat the mistakes of his past.”

God of War will be releasing for PlayStation 4 though a release date is still uncertain.

Lucas Arts is staging a comeback of sorts – it announced Star Wars: Trials on Tatooine VR in association with Industrial Light and Magic Lab, a VR “experiment” that’s in development for HTC Vive. Check out the short video for the same below.

Announced at GDC 2016 (as per Polygon), Trials on Tatooine VR appears to allow players to experience combat on the desolate planet against Stormtroopers while also throwing in the Lightsaber for good measure. It looks interesting though more details would certainly be appreciated at this point.

Thus far this appears to be only one of Valve’s VR announcements. The developer will also be showcasing a collection of VR “experiments” in The Lab, which is rumoured to include Portal VR (no Half-Life 3, as usual. Sorry fans). Stay tuned for more information from GDC 2016 and let us know what you think of Star Wars: Trials on Tatooine VR in the comments below.

Star Wars Battlefront may be the big Star Wars project coming from EA that is anticipated, but it’s not the only Star Wars game the publishing giant is working on; another Star Wars game is in development at Dead Space developer Visceral. That has been known for a while now, but what has not been known is just what the game is like, or what it will be about.

Now, thanks to industry veteran voice actor Nolan North, we know a teensy bit more about it. Speaking to the audience in a Q&A panel at MetroCon, North said, “If you’re a big fan of [former Naughty Dog developer] Amy Hennig and her style of story, she’s gone to EA and is going to reboot a brand new Star Wars franchise in the style of Uncharted. I happen to know a lot about it and it’s going to be awesome.”

Hennig, of course, quit Naughty Dog some time back amidst a cloud of speculation and controversy- if she is working on the new Star Wars game, it of course makes sense that it would have the DNA of the series that she helped plot to such an extent.

However, Uncharted is not the only thing this game will take inspiration from, apparently- when asked about the promising looking Star Wars 1313, a third person shooter that was in development at LucasArts right before the developer was forced to shut down, North also confirmed that Visceral’s game is “along the same lines.”

It certainly sounds intriguing, and is personally something I am more interested in seeing than Battlefront. Hopefully, we get to see it in action soon. When that happens, we will let you know. Stay tuned.

At its time, Grim Fandango was hailed as a masterpiece. Sales were less than encouraging however due to a downturn in the adventure game genre but it didn’t simply fade away. The bizarre, under-stated lunacy lived on in the hearts and minds of its devoted fans until eventually, it made little sense to not bring it back.

Thus we have Grim Fandango Remastered, which follows the saga of Manuel Calavera who functions as a travel agent for the Department of Death. As a Grim Reaper-esque figure, Manny’s job is to escort departed souls into the afterlife, known as the Ninth Underworld, and determine whether they get an express ticket or undertake the long, four year journey through the Land of the Dead on foot. Manny’s quest begins when he has to escort one Mercedes Colomar, thus uncovering a deep web of corruption that dictates who gets the premium tickets to the Ninth Underworld.

"Unlike many modern adventure titles, you'll rely on a point and click interface to decide where to go. The controls aren't difficult to pick up at all, which is a good thing considering the gameplay."

And really, that’s all you really should know about Grim Fandango going in. Words can’t properly describe the sheer mesh of ideas on display here (though the art style is certainly up to the task). The game’s departed souls are portrayed as calaca-like skeletons in the style of Mexico’s Day of the Dead. Backgrounds are pre-rendered  but collide with film-noir, 1930s Art Deco, Spanish folklore and a myriad of other influences. That’s not even touching on some of the crazier characters – such as the one armed man on a unicycle – or the set pieces like the live poetry reading. Grim Fandango may be pre-occupied with the dead but it’s bursting with soul in virtually every aspect, from its voice acting to its score.

Unlike many modern adventure titles, you’ll rely on a point and click interface to decide where to go. The controls aren’t difficult to pick up at all, which is a good thing considering the gameplay. Grim Fandango relies on the old-school adventure genre style of throwing you into the story, letting you experience all the insanity for yourself…and then leaving you clueless on how to combine items together or solve the seemingly cryptic puzzles before you.

This isn’t to say that the puzzles are impossible and there’s certainly a fair bit of satisfaction when the light bulb in your head finally goes off. But players used to being carried through such situations – or even provided hints – will find themselves in trouble.

"The tale of Manny and Meche is one that deserves to be experienced at least once in every gamer's life, regardless of genre or preferred aesthetic."

That you can nearly ignore all those issues is a testament to the brilliance of Grim Fandango’s story-telling, art design, atmosphere and characterization. If you really want to experience the game in its original glory, you’ll have the option of switching back to the older graphical style throughout. The remastered graphics serve to clean things up slightly, making it less rough and more presentable while still maintaining the key art style that made the game so recognizable. That’s it when it comes to special visual options though – and no, there isn’t even an option for 16:9 aspect ratio. The soundtrack is as loveable as ever though and it’s now fully orchestrated.

Further topping off the additional features of the remaster are the commentary tracks from various designers on the project. You can enable the commentary right off the bat and you’ll learn even more about the game, along with Schafer’s motivations and humorous stories throughout its lifespan, thus leading to a more well-rounded understanding of Grim Fandango as a whole. It’s not a feature that can be included in every single remastered game but it just adds so much more to the experience here.

Even when it released back in 1998, Grim Fandango wasn’t for everyone. It could be needlessly obtuse at times and required a good memory or copious notes to get by on occasion. That’s still the case today though there are numerous walkthroughs available to help guide you. However, even if you need outside hints throughout the entire game, its well worth your time and money.

The tale of Manny and Meche is one that deserves to be experienced at least once in every gamer’s life, regardless of genre or preferred aesthetic. Even if Double Fine could have done a bit more to bring Grim Fandango up to date, the result is still arguably the greatest adventure game available today.

This game was reviewed on the PC.

Obsidian Entertainment’s Josh Sawyer recently spoke to IGN about wanting to get back on Fallout and how an online version of the franchise would be great but he also talked about the studio’s stance on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic or KOTOR, especially whether there would be a third one. KOTOR was one of the better action RPGs of the early 2000’s and arguably became the framework for Bioware’s Mass Effect series (Obsidian worked on the sequel).

“I think there are a lot of the people at the studio that would like to do Knights of the Old Republic 3.”

Of course, when Lucas Arts still possessed the license, it was “focused on what they considered to be extreme, extreme blockbusters.” And KOTOR wasn’t one of them. “[I]t just never seemed like something that was going to happen at that time. Having said that, a lot of time has passed. I know there are a lot of people at the studio who are really interested in doing a project like that.”

Producer Brandon Adler also said that there aren’t any formal plans for the game as such. “It’s something that comes up every three to six months. We bring it up and talk about it. Not anything terribly serious, but we just say, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if?’ and just develop some ideas for what we’d do with that stuff.”

Given Disney’s acquisition of the franchise and its deal with EA, it doesn’t seem likely that KOTOR will return. What are your thoughts on a third title though? Let us know in the comments.

Is there a chance that EA could resurrect the game after signing a multi-year deal with Disney to develop and publish Star Wars games for next-gen consoles? It’s not impossible but it’s safe to say that the overall product would be far different from what Lucas Arts intended. Then again, going by the quality of past Star Wars titles from the defunct dev, that’s probably a good thing.

What are your thoughts on what Star Wars 1313 could’ve been? Let us know below.

Namely, just how many Star Wars games that Lucas Arts had in mind, which never came to fruition. The screenshot above shows just that, and there are names as diverse as Rebel Jedi and Jedi Rebel, intriguing like Han Solo and Darth Maul, outright baffling like Rebel Scum, Underworld and Scum and Villainy, and outright hits like Episode VII: Shadows of the Sith that could’ve been.

Alas, they weren’t, for whatever reason. Even before Lucas Arts was bought by Disney, the studio ceased interest in making many original Star Wars games. Nonetheless, the legacy lives on as games like Star Wars: Battlefront, developed by DICE, will be out in the near future.

Ron Gilbert who co-created Monkey Island along with Tim Shafer, has revealed that he wishes he owned the rights to the IP. The games in the Monkey Island series were quite popular and was known to provide great humour and most people remember it from their childhood.

Disney owns those rights now because they acquired Lucas Arts last week. It’s something that is a byproduct of every deal, where the IPs go into the hands of the buyer. However, Ron Gilbert is not satisfied.

“I would find it hard to believe that Disney would do anything with them, just because I think they just have a lot more important things that will make them a lot more money. Star Wars, for example, just to throw out one thing,” he told PC Gamer.

“And they’ve even said—even when they announced this thing—they said they’re really focused on mobile games. They’re just not doing PC games, they’re not doing console games, it’s just not their focus. So, I kind of don’t think they’re really going to do anything, and I think this probably wasn’t even on their radar when they bought Lucasfilm either.

He was adamant and said that Disney is not really going to use the IP and it should belong to the creators. They have already announced a new Star Wars movie which shocked a lot of people and we may even see a bunch of games if Disney is interested.

“It’s kind of sad in a way. Yeah, I wish I owned Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion, you know? The fact that Lucasfilm owned them, I guess I was kind of OK with that, right? Because I made them there. But now that they’re owned by someone else–that kind of sits weird with me. It’s like, ‘Well, if someone else is going to own Monkey Island, it should be me that owns Monkey Island.’

:My only fear with Disney is that they don’t need the money. It’s not like I could ever offer them enough money to make it worth their while for them. They just seem to be a company that hoards IP, and that kind of worries me. If it had been anyone else but Disney that bought them, I would try to go put together some money and buy them back. But because it’s Disney, maybe not. But we’ll see, you never know.”

It would have been nice if these guys owned the IP, but as they say, deal is a deal.

Developed by Lucas Arts, the game seems to be quite ambitious and something that will truly start next-gen truly with a bang. Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

Thanks, IGN.