miércoles, 13 de julio de 2011

Star Wars serie: George Lucas tiene ya escritas 50 horas para la versión televisiva de la famosa saga, pero está a la espera de una técnica que reduzc

La nueva serie de 'Star Wars', parada por falta de tecnología

El célebre director de cine George Lucas aseguró que tiene listo el equivalente a 50 horas de su nueva serie basada en "Star Wars", esta vez con actores de carne y hueso, pero se encuentra a la espera de una nueva tecnología que reduzca los costes de producción, según declaró en una entrevista en el programa de la cadena G4 The attack of the show. http://laguerradelasgalaxias-starwars.blogspot.com/

"Ya tengo escritos los guiones para dos temporadas de la nueva serie de 'Star Wars', pero el proyecto está esperando el desarrollo de un tipo diferente de tecnología que podamos utilizar para hacer que sea factible económicamente rodar la serie", dijo el creador de las sagas de Star Wars e Indiana Jones.

A pesar de que Lucas no explicó en qué consistía dicha tecnología, destacó que se trataba de un proceso muy difícil.

El exitoso productor, director y guionista dijo que una producción de televisión debe costar una décima parte de lo que se gasta en una película. "La habilidad para hacer un programa de televisión creíble a un coste tan barato aún no existe".

Una historia que viene de lejos

Lucas ya había confesado en 2007 que quería hacer una serie de televisión ambientada en las películas de La venganza de los Sith (Episodio III) y Una nueva esperanza (Espisodio IV). No especificó nada más. En 2010 el director californiano anunció que planeaba producir una la serie de televisión de acción real que se basaría en dichas películas.

No es el primer trabajo de la franquicia 'Star Wars' para televisión

En 2003, el propio Lucas lanzó una serie de animación ambientada en el segundo y tercer episodio. En 2008, hizo un remake de esta serie y una película combinando la tecnología 3D más avanzada y el género anime japonés que emitió Antena 3 en España. Estas series no se basaban en los personajes principales de las películas, sino en jedis y enemigos más secundarios, algunos creados expresamente para esta serie.

La pregunta que todos los fans se harán es: ¿La serie de acción real narrará la historia de los personajes más conocidos o Lucas se decantará una vez más por una trama completamente nueva? Todo indica que será lo segundo, pero no es la primera vez que George Lucas nos sorprende.

domingo, 10 de julio de 2011

The Old Republic Updated Hands-On Preview Play on Tatooine

http://laguerradelasgalaxias-starwars.blogspot.com/

We played a few sessions as Imperial characters but were advised that Republic characters would land on the planet on the other side, at Anchorhead--just a hop, skip, and a jump from the Dune Sea, a huge tract of open desert and a site for open faction-based player-versus-player (PVP) battles. According to Erickson, the version of Tatooine that appears in the game (which takes place thousands of years before the events of Star Wars: A New Hope and hundreds of years after the events of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic) is sparsely inhabited and even more sparsely governed--so it's not like there are any authorities that are interested in getting involved when a bunch of players from opposing sides decide they want to settle their differences with lightsabers.

Our first session was as a level 26 Sith inquisitor, specialized to the damage-dealing sorcerer profession. This character had a ton of different abilities, and nearly all of them involved dealing damage to enemies either through zapping them with lightning or inflicting some sort of Force-based malaise that would deal damage over time. The inquisitor also possesses a few healing and defensive skills, but for the most part, we were too busy fricasseeing womp rats to explore these to any extent. As it turns out, this particular prebuilt character had a single companion, Xalek--a fledgling Sith who came equipped with damaging lightning-based attacks of his own.

Our second character was a high-level bounty hunter--a profession with which we were extremely familiar, given our previous time with the class, and which was equipped with more-powerful versions of the missile launchers, flamethrowers, and pistol flurries we've already covered. The bounty hunter's companion was still Mako, the chipper young human girl, though her character model had been updated to look a bit more slender and a bit less young. We also noticed that the bounty hunter's basic conceit--the idea of building up "heat" within the character's armor suit, which needs to be vented periodically--seems to have been tweaked so that most of the basic attacks we had equipped generated barely any heat, putting us in no real danger of overheating.

In any case, we made short work of any rills, womp rats, wraids, and Sand People foolish enough to cross our paths with either character--though to be honest, we were moving too fast on our personal speeder to care. As we mentioned in our pre-E3 story, the game will launch with personal speeders and other quick-travel vehicles to help players cover ground quickly, and our own vehicle, an upright hovering contraption that resembled a cross between a hovercraft and a Segway, helped us move at so brisk a clip that we were able to completely duck past most of the clusters of hostile Tatooine wildlife on our way to our destination.

In this case, our character had been sent to Tatooine to investigate the remains of a failed operation by Czerka Corporation, the coldhearted, money-grubbing conglomerate that appeared in the Knights of the Old Republic games. It appears that the company had originally set up excavation operations on Tatooine but abruptly pulled out--so our job was to figure out what it was that Czerka had unearthed that had spooked them so badly. Our first lead was Darth Silthar, a high-ranking Sith lord who had been investigating a legend propagated by the Sand People before mysteriously disappearing. We headed out into the desert in the direction of our clearly marked goal using the game's handy-dandy overlay map (which still goes transparent when superimposed over the world, letting you see where you're going as you go), stopping only to get a side quest from an Imperial officer whose company had been waylaid. It seems that the soldiers had been ambushed by agents from the Exchange--the intergalactic crime cartel that players infiltrated in Knights of the Old Republic--but it also seemed that this would be a "heroic" level quest that would require two or more companions to complete. Since we were on a time limit, we declined this mission and went on with our primary quest.

The next leg of our mission lay in the deep desert, specifically in the dusty pockets of the Sand People, whom we butchered mercilessly to eventually discover the missing Sith lord's compass. After we equipped and used this quest item, the next step in our journey was revealed--the missing Sith lord was holed up in a nearby desert cave filled with Sand People, whom we obliterated by patiently tackling each small cluster of foes, rather than charging in headfirst. When we located our target, we found him to be an old man who lay dying, but who was still convinced of an ancient legend of a mythical being in a white room--a being revered by the Sand People. We grew tired of listening to his prattling, especially when we were given a dialogue option to gain either light side points or dark side points, and immediately chose to draw our lightsaber and finish him off. However, the old man's last words indicated that clues to our quest were scribed on a Sand People mural deeper in the cave, which we briefly inspected and then immediately set aflame--again, to gain more dark side points.

We then returned to the Sith base of operations on Tatooine to report our findings to the presiding officer and took every opportunity to unsentimentally point out that the foolish old Sith was dead, dead, and dead. However, our conversation was punctuated by a brief cinematic sequence that showed other crew members of the Sith expedition being electrocuted by their archeological equipment, causing them to rise once again, this time shambling slowly and speaking in tongues. It seems that they have been possessed by the spirit of a being known as The Imprisoned One, who seeks to take control of all living beings and eventually, the planet. We killed off these possessed grunts and then regrouped with the commanding officer to try to get some sense of what happened. While the flustered soldier had no idea where this being came from, he was very clear that we could not allow its influence to spread, particularly to outlying settlements where some Tatooine inhabitants possessed conventional levels of technology--possible vectors through which the being could replicate itself. We were all ready to set out to contain the threat when the demonstration came to an end.

Tatooine's real charm hasn't yet revealed itself to us--we didn't get a chance to explore the huge world to any appreciable extent, or to engage in an open PVP battle. Still, now that we've had more time with higher-level characters, particularly ones specialized using the game's advanced profession system, we're gaining more of an appreciation for just how powerful a character in The Old Republic can be. As we've mentioned previously, the game will offer a huge story-based experience for each of its eight professions, along with PVP, raiding, crafting, romanceable companions, housing (in the form of your character's persistent ship), and space combat, so The Old Republic will have a ton of stuff to offer when the game launches later this year. Stay tuned to GameSpot for more updates.

martes, 5 de julio de 2011

tar Wars Galaxies has been slated for termination

Not from the game - just awesome.

If you felt a disturbance in the Force this weekend, like thousands of voices cried out for an instant and were then silenced, it’s because Star Wars Galaxies has been slated for termination. The move comes after rounds of talks between Sony and Lucas Arts, the company that owns and maintains pretty much every element of the Star Wars franchise. It’s not completely out of the blue, by the way, as their contract was slated to end in 2012 anyway. Perhaps there was always a chance that they could come to some kind of agreement and extend the life of the contract, but with a new Star Wars MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game – sometimes called MMOs for short) coming out in 2012 from Lucas Arts, it was decided that the end of 2011 was a good time to wind down the game. http://laguerradelasgalaxias-starwars.blogspot.com/

The game is going into “soft shutdown” mode. Starting last week, 3, 6, and 12 month subscriptions were disabled. The game also spawned an associated trading card game, the ecommerce software for which has also been turned off. In an attempt to keep current players inside the Sony family of online entertainment options, Sony is offering users access to a network of other MMOs including DC Universe Online. Maybe these wayward Jedi can find solace keeping the citizens of Gotham safe at night.

Sony has come out as apologetic but pragmatic when unveiling the news:

“The shutdown of SWG is a very difficult decision, but SOE and LucasArts have mutually agreed that the end of 2011 is the appropriate time to end the game. During the last week that SWG is available…we’re going to end with a bang and we want the final chapter of the galaxy to be written in part by the dedicated and passionate SWG community. Details will be announced at a later date.”

Combined with the access to those other MMOs, this could be a great way to turn the shutdown into a win for the company and the users. MMOs like Star Wars Galaxy, World of Warcraft, and everyone else (who secretly or not-so-secretly wants to be WoW) regularly engage in giant world/galaxy/universe-changing events to introduce new features or world alterations and make the players feel like they are part of something bigger than themselves. Turning a loss into a gain is a lesson that all online businesses, from Sony to an independent retailer running their own shop with simple ecommerce software can learn from.

Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley reiterated that the closure was a business decision and not driven by any of Sony’s recent hacking problems which may have resulted in a breach of credit card information used on its ecommerce software and other delicate information stored on its servers. Whatever the real reasons, Star Wars fans are getting one last hurrah with their favorite MMO and a few free months at the end there, before going out with a bang.

viernes, 1 de julio de 2011

Japan Does Star Wars

In 1987, Namco released Star Wars in Japan for the Famicom, a title that took more than a few liberties with the movie trilogy's storyline. Sounds outrageous, but one look at the game's manual art and everything was suddenly OK.

Why? Because the lizards, scorpions and pterodactyls you're fighting—and that aren't exactly canon —are so damn cute, that's why. As is cute little 80's anime Luke, cute little 80's anime Han Solo (and his GIANT EYEBROWS) and, best of all, a handy galactic map that I'm sure many of you are already hastily pointing out is totally WRONG.