Halo is the New Star Wars

Halo Waypoint was released in the past week.  You’ll find it in the Game Marketplace on Xbox Live, but it’s not so much a game as it is a service.  From one place, you can track your progress on Halo series achievements, see how many of your friends are playing a Halo game, and view all kinds of interviews, including full episodes from the upcoming Halo Legends DVD.

People love to pick on the Halo franchise, and admittedly, for good reason.  The games come across as mindless bullet slingers, and with Halo merchandise available in all forms from action figures to WETA statues to Mega Blocks to men’s underwear, it can be easy to get sick of the franchise.  Unfortunately for those who don’t delve into the games and the fiction surrounding them, there is a wealth of complexity in the Halo universe.  The games have surprising complexity in their mechanics, the multiplayer is active and intense (it’s easy to see why so many gamers picked up Halo 3 just for multiplayer), and–in the novels and comic books–one finds deep examinations of the nature of heroism and a gut-checking view of warfare from a grunt’s point-of-view.  It’s deep stuff, really; you just have to give it a chance.

After all, Halo is not the first franchise to be everywhere at all times.  You might recall a huge entertainment franchise that was kind of a big deal for thirty years, until its creator all but destroyed it for some untold reason: Star Wars.  At the height of its popularity (meaning: before it became a kids franchise–not that that’s a bad thing, just saying), Star Wars was everywhere.  Toys, video games, approximately 1 bazillion books and comics, and oh yeah–the movies.  There were those as well; let’s not forget about those.  Nobody seemed to care though.  There were those who liked Star Wars and those who didn’t, but nobody really complained about the omnipresence of the franchise.  People who didn’t like Star Wars knew that it was popular and just kind of lived with it.

Yet, Halo having the same amount of exposure and influence seem to be a problem with people; enough that the overexposure of the franchise is a common topic on the blogs and forums I frequent.  It’s not an invalid complaint: Halo is everywhere nowadays, and there is a great deal of risk in that.  It could get watered down and stretched thin.  But is it really there yet?  Is it really worth complaining about it being milked?

After all, gamers should be excited about the popularity and fandom of Halo.  After all, it is quite an achivement.  Most of the major entertainment franchises out there were kicked off by a big, splashy movie or a long-running TV or comic book series.  Halo is only eight years old and has yet to see the silver screen.  Bungie and Microsoft gave birth to a consistent fictional universe that people love to explore, and they did it with a video game.  Halo is indeed the new Star Wars, in more ways than one.  It’s the big sci-fi franchise for the nerds who think they’re cool and it was launched with this great new media called video games.  It’s going to be here for a long, long time.  Big fan or not, if you’re a video gamer you should be happy about that.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go back to welding my handmade replica of a BR55HB SR Battle Rifle to go with my Master Chief costume.

Halo 3: ODST–The game is good, the commercial is better.

I typed this up about a week ago or so, with the intent of editing it and publishing it soon after.  However, I had a presentation on gaming and libraries at the North Carolina Library Association Conference last Wednesday, and them immediately fell ill afterwards.  So, this review is no longer timely, but I hope you still value my opinion on the game.

I was going to wait until I gave Firefight mode a good try before I wrote about Halo 3: ODST, but you know what: the one thing that Bungie has always been spot-on with in the Halo series is multiplayer.  There is no real need to review Firefight mode, as far as I’m concerned.  You know it’s great, I know it’s great, we all know it’s great.  Multiplayer is always fun in Haloland.

So this review will only address the campaign.

Much has been said about the drastic new directions in which this new Halo campaign goes.  Instead of the all-powerful, nearly bulletproof SPARTAN-II Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, you are the Rookie: an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper.  The ODST are the elite of the UNSC armed forces.  They are specially trained for the most hostile combat situations, dropping in from orbit at breakneck speeds, right into the thick of the Hell that is combat or, sometimes, deep behind enemy lines for covert operations.

So why did Bungie decide to have you play junior detective in this game?  Sure, we all knew that this game was going to be a mystery story at heart, but in practice it just doesn’t work as well as the developers would have us believe.  Yes, New Mombasa at night is very cool.  Yes, there is real tension as you duck and dodge Covenant troops.  Yes, there is that really dreadful sense of being alone.  This doesn’t let up throughout the entire game; there are some moments that I felt really, really helpless.  Unlike playing as Master Chief, this time around I actually panicked when I ran out of ammo during a fight with Brute Chieftain, and I actually felt myself scrambling for a new weapon instead of just kind of casually walking over to pick up a new one.

And the way the storyline is delivered, through flashbacks uncovered by objects in the environment, which can be discovered in any order, as opposed to linear delivery, does offer up a few surprises.  You will likely not discover the items in order, so you piece details together as you go along, giving the whole narrative a feel not unlike a really good mystery novel; the whole thing unfolds in a very organic way, not rushing any major reveals.  The flashback missions, which allow you to play as other characters (all of them ODST), are exciting and appropriately epic; it’s like a greatest hits compilation of what made the great moments from the original Halo trilogy great.

So what makes the game not work?  Granted, this is something different from the traditional Halo experience, and there are plenty of incredible, dramatic moments to play through.  Everything should make this a great game, but there is just something missing.  There’s too much exploring between the breakneck action sequences; the final long stretch feels more like a test of patience than a test of skill; the whole thing just feels too short; I WANT TO PLAY THE LIVE ACTION ODST COMMERCIAL!

Bungie did a bit of wasting some potential here.  There are brief glimpses of  what this game could have been: a view of the Covenant War from the grunt’s eye-view.  In the original Halo trilogy, you were the guy who came in when the good guys needed a Big Damn Hero.  You took down big vehicles and went toe-to-toe with the most gruesome foes.  You punched enemy leaders in the face and made last-minute escapes.  You were an action hero.  But as an ODST, you’re just a normal guy.  You’re not a super soldier.  You’re maybe a little braver, a little more hardass than the other grunts, but you don’t have a reinforced skeleton or an energy shield or the ability to jump a quarter-mile in the air.  This could have showed the kind of high-tension, quick-burst kind of combat that we Halo fans are led to believe comprised most of the war with the Covenant–as opposed to the epic space opera of the original games.  Halo 3: ODST is indeed that, but it’s also too far in the other direction: it’s too different.  It’s too, dare I say, laid back.  Sure, the flashback levels are truly intense and chock-full of those in-the-thick moments I was hoping for, but most of the game is spent as one giant fetch quest.

So is this a good game?  Certainly.  It’s a great deal of fun and demands a bit more brain activity than the original Halo trilogy.  But is this truly an ODST game?  Does it convey that sense of intensity, loss, and drama that the awesome short film does?  Only at times.

Microsoft E3 Keynote

For us video gamers, E3 is like a sports draft, election night, and a hot date all rolled into one.  Massive amounts of speculation to be confirmed or denied (in real time, thanks to the Internet: you crazy kids who never had to wait for your EGM features don’t know how good it is nowadays), a few surprises, and–if all goes right–a great feeling when it’s all over with.

Microsoft popped out their keynote today, and I’ve got to say that my previous “meh” attitude about the rest of the year has reached nearly debilitating amounts of joy.  It’s gonna be a good twelve months for 360 and PC gamers.

Now, I’m not going to pretend that I was there.  I would have love to have been there, but I’m not there.  I’m not a well-traveled video game journalist.  I’m just a fat dude with a laptop and a reliable Interent connection.  So if you want professional, in-depth coverage and commentary, check out Kotaku and Joystiq.

If you want my opinion on the big news items from today, read below.

• Halo: Reach is indeed in the works. Microsoft rolled out a teaser that would make Michael Bay stand up and clap, and it ended with a Spartan saying “We’re not going anywhere.”  The Halo games may be the finest recruitment tool that the US military never realized it had.  The trailer implies that Spartans, not Marines or ODST, will be the main player-characters, and I am using the pluarl because I see this as a squad-based shooter.  Maybe even third-person.  After all, also revealed was the “Firefight” mode for Halo 3: ODST (think Horde mode), and 3rd-person shooter Gears of War did kinda-sorta steal the thunder of the Halo series.  If this game ends up being a 3rd-person tactical shooter, remember: you heard it here first folks.
• Star Wars: The Old Republic will have full-voice acting. I’m cool with this, so long as you can skip the dialogue and get to the freakin’ quest.  In even bigger news, the first cinematic trailer is out and it is beautiful–really beautiful.  This is what the prequel trilogy should have been, but no: we’ve got Jar Jar Binks and Darth Vader giving a slack-jawed “Noooo!!!” at the end of it all.  I will be picking this game up, and if any game can kill WoW it is this one.  I don’t think it will, due to economics of both time and money (that’s a whole new post), but last time I checked there are more people who don’t play WoW than do; this game could bring in those who would have never picked up an MMO otherwise.
• Summer of Arcade is back, or: more reasons to stay broke. Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and a re-imagined TMNT: Turtles in Time won’t be hard sells.  Shadow Complex from Epic Games looks pretty sweet, for Contra fans, but it damn sure better have co-op.
• Metal Gear Solid: Rising is coming to the Xbox 360. Awesome.  Five hours of cut scenes punctuated by a few seconds of game play here and there.  I loved every part of Metal Gear Solid 3 except for the cinemas and the original Metal Gear Solid truly captured my imagination, but am I the only person in the world who thinks that Metal Gear Solid 2 was the world’s biggest vanity project?  Am I also the only person in the world who has not played Metal Gear Solid 4–and is perfectly fine with it?  In short: life was fine without a new Metal Gear Solid, life will continue to be fine.  Doesn’t mean I won’t buy it, doesn’t mean I will.
• Ozzy Osbourne is in Brutal Legend. \m/
• Project Natal is going to eliminate the need for the controller…supposedly. I’m sure this will be awesome for at first, but I see too much potential for gimmickry.  That, and so many games require complex body motions: can you imagine playing Gears of War with your body?  Yeah, I’d have a coronary.  Peter Molyneaux, who gave us the Fable series, is involved so we’ll have at least one innovative game, but I see this quickly becoming Wii Remote for the 360.
• Left 4 Dead 2 will be released this year. Too soon.  Way, way too soon.  It will apparently bring lots of cool stuff to the table–more melee weapons and an advanced AI Director–but Valve, would it have hurt you to sit on this thing for a year so I’d feel like I had gotten my money’s worth from buying the first game?  Are times that tough?  Oh, and this game will be set in the South.  Get your stereotypes ready, boys!  EE-HAW!  Break out the Beam and put your arm ’round your cousin’s waist–we gwine to a shindig!
• Nintendo continues to betray its once longtime fans and focus entirely on bringing in new gamers who may or may not stick with the hobby. Okay, we don’t know that for sure.  Their keynote is later this week.  I’m pretty sure I’m right however.  I’ll bet this year they’ll announce Wii Music 2: this time, all you do is put the disc in the machine and dance.  It’s like a CD player with Miis!  What fun!

Halo: Reach in the works?

So some Internet treasure hunter unearthed shaky proof that Bungie is working on a game called Halo: Reach.

Right now, it’s purely conjecture.  After all, Bungie has said that Halo 3: ODST will be the last Halo game, but if there is anything that George Lucas has taught us it’s that there is no such thing as a dead horse.  Case in point: old school Star Wars fans facepalm over this new…thing…masquerading as Star Wars (the Clone Wars animated series), but eight-year-olds the world over are eating it up.  The core base of a franchise might get burned out from over-saturation and relentless marketing, but there will always be a new fan base.  In other words, Halo 3: ODST is far from the final Halo game.

So if Halo: Reach is to see the light of day, what kind of game could it be?  I’m rooting for something similar to ODST, a game in which the Master Chief is not the main character.  Don’t get me wrong: I love this character, and find him much more iconic and interesting than Gordon “Determind Silence” Freeman, but his story has been told.  True, the original Halo trilogy only told of his involvement in the later stages of the Human-Covenant War, but the novel The Fall of Reach (really good by the way; give it a read) told his entire origin, detailing every major event in his life up until that fateful moment when the Pillar of Autumn exits slipspace right in front of Installation 04.

I would find Halo: Reach a far more interesting game if it told the story of what happened on the ground in the Battle of Reach.  This would be a perfect set-up for a squad-based shooter where you play as a UNSC Marine.  Imagine Call of Duty 4 set in the Halo universe and you’ve got an idea of what I am speaking.

No matter what Bungie does, I’m sure it will be pretty cool.  The Halo trilogy was very well executed, even if the developers did work largely under the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality.

The Halo Trilogy is Complete!

Of course, it was complete two years ago, but for me it has only ended recently.  I never gave the single-player campaigns of the Halo games a fair shake: I always just rolled with multiplayer.  I traded up when the new entry in the series came out and had a vague understanding that the narrative involved aliens that wanted to kill us, more aliens that wanted to kill us, and giant hula-hoops in space that would kill everything–and I mean EVERYTHING.

However, after playing Halo Wars, I found myself interested in the game’s fiction more so than ever.  I don’t know if it was because it served as a prequel/spin-off (after all, some people didn’t get into Star Wars until the release of Episode 1, and some people like CSI: Miami or CSI: New York but don’t like the original series) or because I was genuinely interested in Halo 3: ODST from the moment it was announced (A Halo game without Master Chief?  Stealthier game play?  Open world?   I’m interested.), but I suddenly has this urge to wrap myself up in the Halo Universe, to know the series’ narrative from start to finish.  Halopedia and Halo.Bungie.Org helped, but if I were to be a true fan–and I really wanted to be a true fan–then I needed to go to ground and experience this story and universe the way it was meant to be experienced: as a game.

So a download of Halo: Combat Evolved from the Xbox Live Marketplace, finding a brand new collector’s edition of Halo 2 on Amazon, and my already-owned copy of Halo 3 (remember: multiplayer was always fun!) helped bring me up to speed.  By the way, just in case you’re wondering, I did pick up the collector’s edition of Halo 3 along the way: the town Wal-Mart still had some brand new ones.  The little bro now has my old standard edition.

Having played the whole trilogy over a few days, I can see both why people love these games and why people hate them.

Why the love?

It made fast-paced tactical shooters work. Before Halo, you either played fast-paced, intense shooters such as Doom, Quake, and Unreal, or you played tactical shooters such as Rainbow Six.  One had twitch game play, one had plan-and-execute mechanics.  With the release of Halo: Combat Evolved, you had to have a quick trigger finger and brains.  Granted, most of  the time the ol’ “run forward and shoot things” worked, but when it didn’t work–my oh my how it didn’t work.  Heavily armored enemies call for flanking maneuvers; packs of shielded enemies call for coordinated grenade strikes; sometimes sniping away the “leader” enemies to send the underlings into a panic is the only way to advance.  Finding and using cover is key to success, and it feels more organic than in the Gears of War series.  Couple this with the fact that you can only carry two weapons at once and everything you do is a tactical decision.

It’s narrative done right in a game. Say what you will about the odd turns that the Halo plot makes at times: this is how games should tell stories.  The game play is tight and engaging, securing this work as a true “game” first.  But the narrative is there, in the background, told through in-play lines of dialogue and often foregoing cut scenes to make the gamer really feel a part of the story.  When you see a Scarab tank blow up, it’s because you hopped on its back and found its power source and killed it yourself.  Rarely does a major plot point happen that the gamer didn’t have to do something: throw a lever, plant a bomb, whatever.  There are some moments that trick you into thinking that your running out of time when you never will, and Halo may not have the most well-developed plot in the world, but it’s on the right path of gaming narratives.

The cast of characters is great. Speaking of narrative: the Arbiter.  Sergeant Avery Johnson.  Commader Keyes (both father and daughter).  The slimy and scheming Propehts.  Tartarus.  Lord Admiral Hood.  All of these characters are unique; your allies are likable and your enemies disgusting.  As for Master Chief, I now understand why gamers love him so much.  He is a man of honor and quiet dignity, and is not emotionally unattached as you would believe (given he spends all of the games behind a mask).  He is a protector, and he takes that job seriously.

There are Biblical references in the game. The Bible is the easiest literary work to reference in the Western world, so this shouldn’t be a boon.  But I have this fascination with Biblical references in secular works of art, and they abound in Halo.  Did you know that Master Chief was a Christ figure?  Really; that’s a different post all-together, but trust me on this.  Ultimately, what I’m getting at is that this shows an attention to detail and narrative structure lacking in so many games.

The weapons are awesome, there are lots of explosions and Big Epic Moments to make you feel like a Big Damn Hero, and–this is every nerd’s dream–Master Chief has a girlfriend IMPLANTED IN HIS HEAD. Well, not implanted, but close enough.

Why the Hate

Stand here, shoot this guy, hope that your shields last longer than his. For all of the awesome firefights that all three games offer up, all too often you’ll find yourself at one end of a hallway with a ridiculously overpowered enemy at the other end of the hallway, and the only thing to do is just stand in place, maybe move around a bit, and dump bullets into him until he dies or you die or you just get bored.  This is about as fun as it sounds.

The vehicle handling in the first game sucks.  No really.  It sucks. It gets better in the second game and is actually pretty tight in the third, but in the first game I learned to dread seeing a Warthog.

It comes with two free metagames: “Halong” and “Halost.” I swear somebody at Bungie said “Wow, this game is short.  Let’s make it longer by adding in long stretches of a level where all a player is doing is moving from point A to point B, and let’s make it take forever for them to do it, even without the endless onslaught of enemies that pop up every ten seconds.  Now, to make sure that this game really does last at least six hours, let’s give them a horrible navigation system that rarely pops up and make everything on the map the same color!”  Again, by the third game this was abated, but in every single game I found myself saying–at least once–”WHERE DO I GO NOW AND HOW DO I GET THERE?”

The Flood is the most annoying, unrealistically difficult enemy in the history of first-person shooters. By the end of the third game, you’ll meet Flood variations that require two full clips of the Battle Rifle to drop.  They hop around like monkeys on crack, making them nearly impossible to get a bead on, and they swarm and push you into a corner whenever they get a chance, more often than not when you are actually making good progress through a level, which bring me to my final point…

The AI sits on their “I Win” button. From grenades that materialize out of nowhere and blow you into the Great Beyond to close-quarters-combat that leave you no choice but a leap into a bottomless pit to a lightly-armored vehicle barely clipping the heavily-armored Master Chief and killing him, the AI is more than willing to pick up its toys and go home if you make it sad.

With that being said:

All in all, I’m glad I played throug the trilogy.  It was a good time, despite the many faults of the game, and now I feel like I’m really up to speed for Halo 3: ODST.  I’ll also pick up a few of the novels I’m sure.  However, my overall opinion of the Halo games haven’t changed: mulitplayer is where it’s at when it comes to game play.  The single-player campaign, however, is just engaging enough to draw gamers in–if you’re willing to put up with some frustration.  In fact (and I know this label has been over-used in the past twenty years) I would even say that Halo is the new Star Wars: I can see  a fandom developing for it that rivals the house that Lucas built, as the universe expands and Bungie continues to build on the Halo mythologies.  If that is the case, then move over Hollywood: games are here to stay!

We All Suck at Halo 3

Admit it: unless you are some kind of bizarro freak of nature that never sleeps, either doesn’t have to work for a living or is able to work from home, and can sustain yourself on a diet of beef jerky and Bawls, you are routinely, in the most pornographic way, beaten at Halo 3 on Xbox Live.  I know this because it’s true for myself: I might get a few kills, and I’ve been on a winning team a few times, but left to my own devices I get tea-bagged more than the first dude to pass out at a frat party.

So this video is for all of those people like me (meaning most of you).

Song by Palette-Swap Ninja, video by YouTube user usethefork.

Speaking of Halo, I finished Halo Wars and have found it awesome.  I do agree with L.B. Jeffries from Pop Matters in that Ensemble may have scaled back the RTS concept a bit too much, leaving out features that would have made the game play even smoother, cleaner, more lemony-fresh; features such as hot keys that allowed you to choose specific units and give you more elegant control over your offense.  Given that the game’s ad material hyped up being able to “choose a side,” I also would have loved to see a campaign for the Covenant and not had playing as them relegated to multiplayer.  Complaints aside, Halo Wars is a great game and proves that yes Virginia, you can play an RTS on a console: just a different kind of RTS than to which you are accustomed.

Dawn of War II for the PC is more action and tactics oriented, playing almost like a squad shooter.  Perhaps a console port of this game is in the works?  I wouldn’t mind one, though I have it for PC.

Halo Wars also succeeded in pulling me deeper into the Halo Universe than any other game in the franchise.  I have always appreciated the story behind the games and found Master Chief an endearing character, but as far as game play I valued the games more for multiplayer, never having finished a single Halo campaign.  Having played through Halo Wars however, I’m interested in how the whole thing pans out on a bigger scale, so I’ve re-purchased the first two Halo games and plan to play the trilogy straight through, guzzling the story down in one epic stretch.  It will also be interested to see how the game play evolves from one game to the next; it’s easy to look over finer details when the release cycle is once every three years.  I’ll be playing other games along the way, of course, but most of my time will be spent with the Halo series.

Halo Wars: an RTSFPS

I was loving Halo Wars until I got to the fourth mission, which is one of those annoying “protect the stupid, slow-moving civilian” missions you find in just about every game that involves warfare or espionage.  You know: you have to watch the back of some dolt that moves 3/4 slower than you do from countless waves of enemies while they move from point A to point B only to have the bad guys press their freakin’ “I Win” button when you are *this* close to finishing the task.

These missions make sense in a narrative context, especially in Halo Wars.  Civilians need evacuating from war zones, so in  a game in which warfare is the narrative backdrop it doesn’t hurt to save a few lives here and there.  What bothers me the most is the aforementioned stupidity of the AI.  I don’t know about you, but if I’m escaping a war zone I’m going to run with the urgency that such an event demands, not plod along as if it’s a nice Sunday stroll wherein I just happen to be shot upon.  I also hate that–twice–with only five minutes left until the civilians were nice and comfy and on their way to safety, I was soundly handed my butt on a platter by an enemy force that materialized out of nowhere.

I’m not sure when I’ll be getting back to Halo Wars single-player campaign.  The first three levels were immensely fun.  I applaud Ensemble Studios for figuring out how to make an RTS work on consoles: strip down the tech-tree and resource building, ramp up the combat, and give us lots of “get-on-the-ground-and-make-things-go-BOOM!” missions.  They really did take the visceral action of the best parts of the Halo series and make it work as a strategy game.

This is another reason I don’t like this mission.  It kills the flow.  Call me cold, but I don’t want to save innocent lives.  I want to blow stuff up.  I want to build an awesome army and rip apart the Covenant.  I want to leave the burnings corpses and crumpled structures of enemies in my wake.  So yes, this mission does add something to the game, but don’t Zerg-rush me out of nowhere when victory is in sight, or at least make it possible for me to prepare for said Zerg-rush.

I can’t wait to give multiplayer a try though, and I’m sure once I get past this grating mission I’ll enjoy the rest of the game.  Like that one passage in a book that just doesn’t make sense, maybe this mission is just one blunder on an otherwise smooth road.

September 16th Round-Up

Today was fairly interesting day in gaming, with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed dropping and some headline-grabbing news.  I was hoping that my next post would be a review of The Force Unleashed, but I haven’t played the retail code of the game yet (damn job), and there are a few things I’ve just got to speak on.

–Nintendo is obscenely rich. According to the Financial times, Nintendo rakes in more money per capita than Goldman-Sachs, a major investment bank.  For every employee that Nintendo has, the company pulls in $1.6 million; Goldman-Sachs takes in $1.24 million a head.  Of course, Nintendo only (yeah, I know, only, but ride with me) pays their employees an average salary of $90,900; that means the shareholders make a cool $1.5 million off of each employee (not each individual shareholder mind you, but the shareholders as a group).  With 3,000 full time employees, that’s…wow, my calculator just broke.  In other words, if you own stock in Nintendo, then you should buy the developers of Wii Play cookies every day.  On second thought, no: send the dev team behind Super Mario Galaxy (the last truly great Nintendo game) the cookies instead.

–Ryan Payton, Metal Gear Solid 4 producer, could be directing the next Halo game. Now this I like.  The Halo series, with all of its short-comings (not exactly the most thrilling game play you’ll find) does have a strong story and fun characters.  The MGS series, while sometimes a bit too…self-indulgent…has always had a big brain and a strong soul.  I would love to see the kind of artistic integrity that made this series a true standout put to work in a, well, mindless game such as Halo; it could make all of that story potential shine.  Oh, and apparently Peter “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of how awesome I am” Jackson is involved.  Nerdgasm imminent.

You know, I thought there was more I wanted to speak on; maybe I just confused two really, really big stories with lots of little ones.  Oh well.  I’m off to play The Force Unleashed, which I hear is part of the dreaded “good game, but flawed” crowd.  I gave the demo a glowing review, but I have to say that I fear that this isn’t the Grand Redeemer of Lucasarts we were all hoping for.  Hey, there is always that rumored Indiana Jones game.