New Star Wars Slate
Last week LucasArts announced that it has signed up Baldur's Gate developer BioWare to help build a new Star Wars role-playing game.  Planned for release in 2002, the game will take place in the time period before the first Star Wars movie and use a modified version of BioWare's Neverwinter Nights engine.  At first glance, the idea of one of the best RPG developers working with the Star Wars license sounds like something very special.  And let's hope it is.

However, this announcement comes on the heels of similar ones from LucasArts regarding upcoming Star Wars games, including a planned Star Wars online game from EverQuest developer Verant and Star Wars: Demolition, developed by Vigilante 8 developer Luxoflux.   While there's certainly nothing wrong with the idea of signing up the best developers in certain genres to build Star Wars games, there's also the concern these games might begin to lack the consistent LucasArts feel we have come to expect from the company.  With so many disparate developers working with the Star Wars universe, it remains unclear just how involved LucasArts will be in the actual production of these titles. 

Ultimately, I can't wait to see what companies like BioWare and Verant do with Star Wars.  Yet it remains to be seen how well these companies can deal with the Star Wars license and the commensurate expectations from gamers.