XvT still holds up today as multiplayer heaven for any SW fan or anyone who enjoyed the Xwing/Tie Fighter games (and if you didn’t shame on you). While the regular version gave you basic missions and campaigns to play along with your buddies, the Balance of Power addon provided you with two in depth sagas one for imperials and one for the rebels complete with cutscenes and storylines just like the previous games… With, of course, the added bonus of playing co-operatively with friends. (and a nice super stardestroyer to take down)
Anyone who hasn’t played in a good game of XvT BOP is really missing out. Having one man take a-Wings and provide cover while another takes an Xwing intercepting Tie Bombers while two other guys take B-wings and unleashes havoc on the imperial convoy line. It’s an amazing feeling when a plan comes together.
Imagine now if the graphics are updated, the netcode improved and the missions even more engaging with 10, 16, 32? people online playing both on the rebel and imperial side each attempting to accomplish their goals, complete with branching storylines so if the imperials or rebels lose the battle, it doesn’t mean they have lost the war.
I think they moved the space sim line to the Gamecube with the ‘arcadey’ Rebel Assault. I’d like to see an updated Xwing/Tie Fighter … and finally it could beat Freespace 2?!?
It would be a coup for Xbox Live. I’d prefer it on PC, but MS really should consider hiring Totally Games to do it to enhance Xbox Live - with broadband and microphones.
Even Julian Eggbeater from Factor 5 said that he’d like to see something like that for their next SW game. Unfortunately I don’t think it would have the same scope as I envision or even what XvT was.
Space sims have been murdered, even star wars based games. Starwars Starfighter was supposed to be X-Wing 2, before lucas arts forced them to dumb it down to a crappy arcade game.
If there was a god, we’d have a Freespace 3, and XvT2, etc. But unfortunately, I think the number of people who enjoy these games is around 12, and so they leave us out in the cold, wanting.
I tried to get into XWA multi but it wasn’t the same for me. The missions aren’t as well crafted as the ones in BOP and well, they’re just single missions as opposed to campaigns. In fact I never beat XWA at all. Something about the engine didn’t jive with me as much as the other games. Still a good game tho overall.
“Playing XvT: BOP coop with another player, at the highest difficulty level, was perhaps the most fun I’ve ever had playing a computer game.”
It’s even more fun when you’ve got 4 buddies on your side with voice comm. I’d imagine it’d be even more exciting with imp v. rebel league battles. The game gets very touchy when you have more then 4 players though. All the more reason to get an update.
Actually, I really like the Rogue Squadron games on the consoles. They suit the consoles really well. Rogue Leader was a lot of fun, but it isn’t very sim-like, I admit.
That said, I would LOVE to have an update to XvT, which I preferred over X:A. The latter had more plot and such and better networking code, but the former was just more stylish. You could jump into all sorts of missions, playing as either side. I had a blast in that game, especially in multiplayer. I hope they don’t forget about the original trilogy. The newer movies don’t have the cool space battles (so far) so they don’t translate well into sim-style games.
Part of the problem with a BOP-style multiplayer campaign is that it is very hard to balance, and very expensive to develop. Throughout development, you need a large test staff to be exclusively testing multiplayer (XvT supported up to 8 players? or was it 16?) – this gets expensive very, very quickly. Balancing is also very time-consuming – you’re talking at least several hours turnaround on changes in order to get feedback on how multiplayer is affected. This is the main reason why you don’t see other people doing this, IMO. (The Freespace campaigns were not particularly balanced for multiplayer, and did not let you play from the opposite side or in teams, so I don’t think they’re really a good point of comparison.)
That being said, it really would be nice to see an update to those old games/an entirely new game in the series.
