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Factor 5 president details canceled Star Wars projects
Factor 5 earned plenty of goodwill from Star Wars fans with its Rogue Leader series across the Nintendo 64 and GameCube, but the studio planned to do more with the universe beyond those games. During an episode of IGN's Nintendo Voice Chat, former Factor 5 president Julian Eggebrecht detailed the team's attempts to bring their Star Wars prowess to the Xbox, Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii. Factor 5's lost efforts included a Rogue Leader trilogy collection for the original Xbox, complete with online multiplayer. Management at LucasArts was rapidly changing at the time, resulting in the project being canceled, though Eggebrecht doesn't remember specifically why. Factor 5 then moved on to a launch title for the Xbox 360 called "Rogue Squadron: X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter," which had players working as the Rebels' Red squadron in cooperative multiplayer fighting against Imperial forces. LucasArts' management wasn't sure if launch titles made sense for them at that time however, and the project was eventually canceled. Sony President Shu Yoshida contacted Factor 5 shortly after, but he was more interested in an internal PS3 launch project than the studio's work on Rogue Leader. The result was Lair, which Eggebrecht described as a "pretty big mistake" due to the PS3's complex architecture and the project's unreasonable ambitions for a launch title. When Factor 5's exclusivity window with Sony ended in 2007, the studio's gaze was set on the Wii. They reworked the Rogue Squadron trilogy project originally built for Xbox and added optional play styles (you could steer an X-Wing with the Wii wheel and manage its pedals with the Balance Board, for example). Beyond piloting ships, Factor 5's "Rogue Leaders" used the Wii Motion Plus for 1:1 lightsaber battles between 20 characters, complete with force powers. Rogue Leaders essentially ran on Lair's graphics engine at 60 frames-per-second and featured ducking and dodging beyond what's found in Wii Sports Resort.
Factor 5 loves pretty graphics, pointing
You'll know the story by now. Factor 5 scoffed at the Wii for not having the technical grunt of other consoles, only for the Wii to suddenly start selling by the truckload. Suddenly, Factor 5 decided that it quite liked the console after all, and announced they were making a GameCube 1.5, sorry, Wii game. We welcomed them back, while reserving the right to compose smug opening paragraphs to blog posts.But hey, just because Factor 5 may have changed its tune on the Wii, don't expect it to change its approach to development. The company is famed for squeezing every last drop of power from hardware -- see the Rogue Squadron games on the GameCube -- and company president Julian Eggebrecht says things will be no different when it comes to Factor 5's mysterious Wii project.You can't fault the man for ambition, either. Speaking to IGN, Eggebrecht promised that Factor 5 was aiming to "outdo everything else on the platform, the same as we did for the Star Wars games back on the GameCube." We're certainly not opposed to the idea of a game that's prettier than Super Mario Galaxy, but that is one very tall order.In the same interview, Eggebrecht also admitted to loving the pointing aspect of the Wiimote, and revealed that this was "probably the biggest innovation which we're working on right now." So there you go. Pretty graphics. Pointing. We're still no clearer on what Factor 5's game is. Though we know what we'd like it to be.
Lair control fix may be in the works
The shoddy SIXAXIS controls may not be Lair's only problem, but it's certainly the one that's taken the brunt of the criticisms pointed at the game. Throughout it all developer Factor 5 has insisted that motion-controlled dragons were the only way to go, but it seems that they may finally be softening. Recently, the company's president, Julian Eggebrecht, told IGN "If we find a chance in the future that would bring Lair to the audience which didn't get any access, that would be fantastic," he said. "I can't say anything quite yet, but there might be something in the works there. We might have a chance yet to bring those back to the table and hopefully, if that should happen, they would give the game a second chance." Now, as much as we'd like to see a patch, we get the sneaking suspicion he's hinting at a sequel. What does it sound like to you?[Update: More of Eggebrecht's quote added.][Via PS3F]
High-res Turrican coming to PSN? It's possible
In a recent sit-down chat with Gamasutra, Factor 5's outspoken Julian Eggebrecht gave his impressions on the new DualShock 3, and answered a few questions that would interest those with a gaming history longer than ten years. About the new controller, Julian seemed pleased and wouldn't mind going back and implementing it in Lair. "I'd love to do a patch for Lair, to get the rumble in there. It just about didn't work out for us for Lair, because this is basically one OS past the one that we shipped with, which I think is a shame, because it's a natural fit, especially when you're ramming into other characters."Eggebrecht was also quizzed about the classic Turrican titles, whether a hi-res remake of any of the old games would make their way onto the PlayStation Network or XBLA. Surprisingly, he seemed to have an answer prepared. " Yeah absolutely, both for XBLA and PSN, it'd be fantastic. I think that probably a high-res Turrican more based on the Amiga Turricans would be great on those platforms. We obviously have the Virtual Console out there on the Nintendo side, and that'd obviously work well for the Genesis and Super Nintendo Turricans. So yeah, we're talking!" We hope these talks turn to actions, as we'd love to see those games revived in HD, as we feel HD sprites are the sexiest things alive. With multiple exceptions.
Factor 5 wants to rock you like a Turrican
As we've previously mentioned, the Metroid-inspired Commodore 64 game Turrican might be making a return to systems, courtesy of original developer Factor 5. In yet another interview, this time with Gamasutra, president Julian Eggebrecht mentioned that they are still exploring ways to bring this series back. He's particularly intrigued with the way that Metroid Prime helped relaunch that franchise, turning it from a sidescroller into 3D, and wants to do the same with Turrican. Maybe without looking so much like Metroid this time around. The trouble is, any time you roll your character up into a ball, people are going to scream Metroid ... so get to work on fixing that, Factor 5.
