In 2013, patron of the arts Disney killed two Star Wars games when it bought and subsequently shuttered LucasArts. Alongside the infamous cancellation of action adventure 1313 (“infamous” in that I thought it looked cool and extrapolated that to lots of people caring about it) was First Assault, a multiplayer FPS where you’d team up as either rebels or stormtroopers and shoot lasers at each other, as seen in the hit film Star Wars.
Now, if some fairly convincing footage doing the rounds on YouTube is to be believed, First Assault is playable online, with a public Discord available for anyone who wants to join in. The slice is from the originally planned beta tests, which along with the Discord suggests a team of modders have been working for a while now to get the thing playable. It also suggests they either have reason to believe they’re legally in the clear, or are else posturing one of the all time great come-at-me-bro’s, since Disney now own the license.
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The game itself looks a bit juddery, but with some chunky, grounded combat and an impressive rendition of Tatooine’s sandy streets. Ships take off in the background, the dense structures make for some interesting layouts, and the footage shows off a few different classes and weapons. And, yes, it’s all very Battlefront.
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This isn’t the first footage of the game that’s done the rounds. There’s been clips of the beta in the wild since 2015 (Eurogamer, via Time Extension). It is, however, the first time real people have been able to log on and throw thermal detonators at each other over the internet. Either way, it’s not too surprising that the project is as polished as it is—according to designer Patrick Wren, the game was killed “less than 24 hours before [the announcement] was supposed to happen” (via Wookiepedia). “I loved that we were months away from launching a Star Wars game that would have just made them money since dev costs were done.”
While I’ll never be able to forgive LucasArts for the balls-hard Super Star Wars games, which left my self esteem in such tatters as a small child that my crushing inability to recover eventually resulted in me writing about videogames for a living, Disney shutting down so many promising games still stings. It’s nice to see Wren and the team’s work live on, even in force ghost form.
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