Scrapped Star Wars 1313 Concept Art Reveals A Dark, Gritty Coruscant

By Rudie Obias | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

Star Wars: 1313One year ago, the Internet crapped its collective pants when Walt Disney Company acquired Lucasfilm for $4.4 billion. Part of the deal was the promise of Star Wars: Episode VII in 2015. Over the past year, we’ve covered almost every aspect of the buyout, including the immediate cancelation of all existing Lucasfilm, and Lucasarts, properties until the Mouse House could figure out what direction to take the new company. Sadly, we’ve also seen a lot of highly anticipated projects go the way of Boba Fett in the Sarlacc Pit. Some of these included the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the video game Star Wars: 1313. If you want to be bummed, check out this newly revealed concept art.

These new pieces from the canceled video game were posted on Kotaku. Artist Gustavo Mendonca worked on the game and created all these images. The plot of the game was going to take place on the urban planet of Coruscant, and followed Boba Fett, and other bounty hunters, through the seedy underbelly of organized crime. It was targeted for mature audiences and showed that Lucasfilm was down to create new products geared towards adults. The game was set between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope in the Star Wars timeline.

The concept art is brilliant, and considering Mendonca created, Star Wars: 1313 would have been one hell of a game. There’s a dark and gritty quality to his rendering of Coruscant that the prequels lacked, which were mostly clean and glossy 1313’s weaponry was also a strong part of the game, and the bounty hunters had a large array of weapons like blasters and a flamethrowers. “No disintegrations!”

Mendonca is a multi-medium artist from Brazil, who mainly works on movies and television. He currently lives in San Francisco and worked for the likes of EA, Capcom, Coca Cola, and Nike, along with Universal Studios, MGM Studios, and Warner Bros.

Star Wars: 1313 was at the forefront of cutting-edge technology at Lucasfilm. Industrial Light & Magic developed and created special software that rendered the game’s action in real time in a process called “real-time motion capture.” Programmers didn’t have to create new characters with lines code, but rather an actor placed in special costumes could use motion-capture technology to make the game’s action and movement possible. Lucasfilm’s Chief Technology Strategy Officer, Kim Libreri, theorized that this new tech could be used to make a movie with real-time rendering and editing. It would theoretically be possible to make a full-length feature film in one day, according to Libreri.

Disney Interactive Studios took over the Lucasarts branch of George Lucas’ former-company and they have yet to develop, or announce, any new video games that take place in the Star Wars universe. While Star Wars: 1313 is officially cancelled, there is a small possibility that it might live on through third party licensing with another studio. It is rumored that Electronic Arts might take on 1313 and Star Wars: First Assault, but nothing has been officially announced.