There's a new Star Wars game called Star Wars 1313, and it just might be the game that gets me interested in Star Wars again. Details are very, very scant, and we’ll be waiting for E3 for any kind of blockbuster reveals, but here’s what we know so far: it’s a third-person action adventure game where you play a bounty hunter that makes his kills with gadgets and weapons rather than any “force nonsense.” People have speculated that it might star Boba Fett, and this has neither been confirmed nor denied.
And, most interestingly, it’s shooting for an “M” rating, according to Kotaku.
Star Wars has always been a clean world. The original, kid-friendly movies have set the tone for an entire universe that rarely strays too far from the PG-13 – sex is mostly represented through innuendo, laser weapons make blood a rare occurrence, morality is always binary, and so forth.
Which makes 1313’s decision to go for M exciting. Jedi are cool, don’t get me wrong. They move stuff with their minds and have lightsabers – these are things I can get behind. But the mythic, spiritual soldiers at the center of the Star Wars universe never interested me as much as the dirtier elements around the outside – smugglers, bounty hunters, crime lords, gas miners and the like.
Could this be the game that shows us the nastier gray areas in between the red and blue that define the Star Wars universe? Maybe in addition to blasters, the bounty hunter will slip good old-fashioned knives and fists into the mix somewhere.
Star Wars has built a world and a franchise on approachability and openness to fans of all ages. That’s a wonderful thing. But Lucas was also one of the first people to play with the idea of “used future –“ the idea that even in the future, stuff was just as grimy as it is in the present. Star Wars is a broad franchise established across so many books, movies, TV shows and games that it’s impossible to keep track – with all that room to play, I’m glad to see someone is finally upping the grit a little bit on these titles.
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