Star Wars 1313 Concept Art Shows Boba Fett: The (Canceled) Early Years
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It still remains to be seen whether Disney’s buyout of Lucasfilm, and their ambitious plans for the Star Wars franchise, will prove to be just the shot in the arm George Lucas’ universe needed…or just something of a mess. While there are plenty of reasons to be cautiously optimistic, there have already been some casualties as well. Last Spring Disney shut down LucasArts, the venerable game developer behind classics such as the Monkey Island series and several enjoyable Indiana Jones games. That was upsetting in and of itself, but it also meant Star Wars: 1313, a very promising project described as “Uncharted meets Star Wars,” got the axe. Well, sorry, because the concept art we’ve got to share from the doomed project isn’t going to soothe your disappointment.
1313 looked great from the get-go, and that Uncharted comparison seemed to be apt. The game would have cast players as a bounty hunter descending into the wretched hives of scum and villainy found in the lower levels of the city-planet Coruscant. It looked great and full of potential, but a bit of information that only leaked after the game had been canceled made fans even more heartbroken. Somewhere along the way, the generic protagonist showed in the early demonstrations was replaced with the Star Wars’ universe’s most notorious bounty hunter, Boba Fett. You can see some hints of what the game might have offered in this barrage of concept art.
The folks at IGN posted the concept art along with some details of what the game would have been like. It would have opened with Fett on Tatooine, that shithole planet in the middle of nowhere that seems to be pivotal in like every important galactic happening ever. This basically would have been Boba Fett Begins, with the hunter young and unseasoned, not even sporting his full iconic set of Mandalorian armor. 1313 would have taken place after Revenge of the Sith but before A New Hope.
Much of 1313 would have taken place in the titular location, a seedy level of Coruscant’s underbelly ruled by crime and corruption. At one point he would have jaunted down a layer to 1314, “a rarely-explored slum that has been shrouded for years in complete darkness.” Sounds like the game might have worked a little survival horror level in with all the gunplay, much like the Ravenholm section of Half-Life 2.
IGN also got to see a 15-minute demo of the canceled game, and described the sequence like so:
The main thrust of our demo saw Boba Fett chasing a Trandoshan through a sprawling marketplace in level 1313. As Fett chased after his target, he ran through several storefronts, including a sort of butcher shop that featured sliced-open Tauntauns hanging from the rafters. The crime families of 1313 were using these Tauntauns to smuggle spice to other planets, a plot point that our source tells us would have been central to Star Wars 1313’s story.
Interestingly, IGN’s sourced revealed that elements of 1313 were planned to tie into the long-gestating, possibly never-happening live-action Star Wars TV series. Specifically, the game’s crime families and the crime-riddled underbelly of Coruscant in general. While 1313 will likely — and tragically — stay dead, earlier this year there was buzz that the Star Wars TV series might finally air on ABC, but the last we heard anything was January. We’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed. Maybe they can resurrect 1313 in Force ghost form.
You can see more of the 1313 concept art over at IGN.
