My thoughts on the re-release situation

[RadioactivePepsi]

To be perfectly honest, I'm not actually against the classic collection, mainly because of the circumstances of its development and what it actually represents. It's the first Star Wars release in a while to not be handled by the likes of Warner Bros (who published the Lego SW games on Steam). or EA, and EA's license with LucasFilm expires in just over a month from now (April 14, 2024).

This is a remaster of an older game with a huge engine upgrade, new content, and extensive modernization, developed and distributed by a studio mostly known for doing remasters and ports. Despite the existence of mods that contain features of this remaster, Aspyr did the work themselves here, and for that, they deserve to get paid. Considering this collection comes with both Battlefront 1 and 2, that's $15 per game, making it actually a pretty good deal for what it is.

And to me, I suspect that's largely the point: To me, this is an attempt on the part of LucasFilm to test the waters for Star Wars games again after the disastrous Jedi Survivor, and a low-risk, relatively cheap project like this seems like a good first step given that EA is about to lose the license so it's going to have to go to someone else anyway.

And honestly speaking? There's advantages to a fresh release. Just from my own experiences, i tend to be wary about buying Steam games from the 2000s to early 2010s, because they tend to be sold at full price yet completely unoptimized out of the box.

They don't support modern resolutions, sometimes don't even support modern controllers (as I found out the hard way with Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition as a teenager), tend to not have proper windowed mode/borderless support, sometimes have ancient DRM like Games For Windows Live still gumming it up after 10+ years. And it's on you to figure out what random patches and mods you need to install to get this game you bought on a modern storefront in 2024 at full price to work properly.

Sometimes they don't work at all and no patches or mods can fix it (GTA III was basically a defective product as far as my PC was concerned). I'm actually proficient with installing mods and patches and know where to go, and it's still a crapshoot whether a game from this era can even be fixed (X: Beyond the Frontier is from 1999 and I still can't get the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing to work properly because no-one released any mods for it).

So if *I'm* already suspicious of any niche retro PC game being sold in its original release on a modern storefront, what do you think the average person, the newbies and casuals, are going to think? That's *probably* why this game's classic version doesn't exactly have a very thriving community.

A new release, to those trying to get into it for the first time, is probably going to be a relief, because now they get to buy a product that works out of the box and has decent, modern online support without any issues, while preserving the original gameplay. And it even comes with new stuff. This collection may in fact attract a boatload of new players and give this game's multiplayer scene a much-needed shot in the arm.

Of course, it could also release in a dreadful, unplayable state like several recent remasters and half of all new game launches, while also leaving the original games delisted in an attempt to force you to buy it. flopping immediately and completely destroying any goodwill people had left.

I suppose we'll see in three days.

[JayBiggsGaming]

"and extensive modernization"

I'd be interested in seeing a source for this. I just tried BF2 classic online and there was a lot of stuff that just didn't feel right and I'm wondering if any of it will be improved in this release

[ellyeet]

Disastrous? Besides some performance issues, I thought that Survivor did exactly what I wanted it to do, which was give me more Cal gameplay.