Board Thread:Star Wars/@comment-4935956-20180610145716

I'm a bit bored and there's been a lot of stuff happening with Star Wars lately so I figured I'd make a thread for everyone to express their opinions.

In this thread, I'll be discussing Solo: A Star Wars Story (not spoilers, though I will make a spoilers discussion thread if people are interested) and the resulting fallout from its box office fail, as well as the new Star Wars gaming announcements made at EA Play yesterday.

Solo: A Star Wars Story

Solo released on May 24. I went to see it opening night and thought it was alright, but definitely the weakest of the four films produced since Disney bought Lucasfilm. Its overall performance at the theater seems to be reflecting this as well. The film has made roughly $165 million in the United States so far, and $301 million in total worldwide. This might sound good for a film, however Solo is a Star Wars film with a production budget of $250 million. After two weeks, the film has not made its production budget back yet in the US, which I believe all Star Wars films have done so relatively quickly, possibly even in their opening weekend. There's been some fallout over this, with blame being thrown around at marketing, producers, and executives at Lucasfilm. Personally, I'm not sure who's to blame. I definitely do think the film had poor marketing, but it's only one of many aspects that led to the film's poor performance.

Jedi: Fallen Order

Yesterday at EA Play, it was announced that Respawn Entertainment, the developers of Titanfall and Titanfall 2, are working on a new Star Wars action-adventure game titled Jedi: Fallen Order. Not much is known about the game so far, as it isn't slated to release until holiday (October-December) 2019. What is known about the game is that it is set shortly after Revenge of the Sith, during the time of the Jedi Purge. The player will play as a Jedi Padawan who survived Order 66, and fight against enemies with a lightsaber. I'm personally excited to see where this game goes, as it sounds very much like the old Jedi Knight games from the early 2000s. I wouldn't expect much to be announced about the game over the next year, but we'll probably get a trailer and maybe even a gameplay demo at EA Play 2019.

Star Wars Battlefront II

Battlefront II was also discussed yesterday at EA Play. The DICE developers admitted that they messed up with the launch of the game and discussed how they have spent the months since then fixing and overhauling the game. I was actually surprised, and also respected, that DICE owned up to their mistakes and made an effort to fix them. More fixes were announced, such as an overhauled squad system coming later this summer. In terms of new content, a new gamemode similar to Heroes vs. Villains, in which players will fight a 4v4 using only hero starships, as well as a new gamemode similar to Conquest from the original Battlefront II, will be coming later this summer. In fall 2018, a large batch of Clone Wars content will be added to the game. Geonosis will be added as a new planet, with Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker as new heroes, and General Grievous and Count Dooku as new villains. I'm personally excited for this, as the Clone Wars has always been my favorite Star Wars era to battle in. I assume Obi-Wan and Anakin will have their late TCW/Revenge of the Sith skins as default, however I'm hoping they have alternate skins from earlier in TCW or even from Attack of the Clones.

It's nice to see how the fan backlash against Battlefront II at launch seems to have dealt a major blow to lootboxes. "No lootboxes" was a major theme promoted at EA Play this year, in new games such as Anthem and Battlefield V. It seems EA is instead opting to sell customization options as microtransactions, which will likely be much better than lootboxes.

I'd like to hear everyone else's opinions on these topics. Please share below if you have any. 