Darth Maul Battle of the Sith Lords (Codename: Damage) The Story of the Cancelled Star Wars Game
The cancelled Star Wars game, Darth Maul: Battle of the Sith Lords is just one story of the final years at LucasArts. The story starts in 2010; Red Fly Studios had just ported Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II to the Wii. Although we established in my Force Unleashed videos that LucasArts considered The Force Unleashed II a failure, the Wii port scored higher on Metacritic and LucasArts took notice.
In October 2010 both parties signed a retainer where Red Fly would start working on basic mechanics for a Darth Maul video game. Lucasfilm had planned to use Darth Maul in the Clone Wars animated series so Red Fly’s original game idea was binned in favour of a tie-in to the Clone Wars. Red Fly were told that Darth Maul had survived The Phantom Menace and that he now had robotic legs. Red Fly spent months knocking up a game prototype inspired by Batman: Arkham Asylum.
Red Fly organised a face to face meeting with Big George himself. Red Fly arrived at the meeting to find someone exchanging Force Unleashed artwork for more relevant props, because that’s a job at LucasArts. Big G saunters in and before Red Fly could finish their pitch, he cuts them off, walks over to two Sideshow Collectibles statues of Darth Maul and Darth Talon, rotates them to face each other. Then he says "They’re friends!"
George now wanted Darth Maul and Darth Talon to be friends. He likened the game's story to Burn Notice. He wanted Darth Maul to be like Sonny from The Godfather, and for Darth Talon to be like Lauren Bacall. He actually did an impression of her.
Some poor sap now needs to tell George Lucas that Darth Maul and Darth Talon are separated by about 160 years of lore. Even if the two did join up for this game, Darth Maul would be nearly 200 years old. George just says "Well that’s fine. We’ll just make him a clone of Darth Maul".
Red Fly left that meeting with their heads spinning. They were starting the Darth Maul game again. Again. Lucasfilm insisted on enforcing a tight grip on the Darth Maul game's production, leaving Red Fly at the mercy of their financial decisions. Without receiving any sign-offs for game milestones, and burgeoning to around 80 staff members, Red Fly were spinning out endless content for a game which still had no solid direction and were spending money on Darth Maul faster than they could earn it.
After suggesting that the studio could be purchased as a fully-owned subsidiary of LucasArts, LucasArts suddenly halted all communication with Red Fly. Then after weeks of silence, on June 24 2011, Red Fly received an email with the subject line “Maul Termination Letter.”
The Darth Maul game was cancelled. Red Fly shed 70% of its workforce and the Darth Maul game joined its brothers on the shelf of cancelled Star Wars games.
Out of the blue in October 2015 Red Fly CEO Dan Borth took to Reddit and claimed that Red Fly would be re-pitching their cancelled Darth Maul game idea to EA. Borth said that Red Fly intended to present a Darth Maul game play demo to “the powers that be”, in an effort to re-kindle the Darth Maul project. Borth hoped that rekindling interest in the Darth Maul game online might push EA into greenlighting their cancelled game. The game was still in a rough form, so the core combat loop could have been adapted to any video game EA might have thought of. However since that AMA, Red Fly haven’t really been heard from again. Late in 2016 Red Fly Studios were quietly acquired by Swedish publisher Gaming Corps. Whilst no announcements have been publicly made, Gaming Corp are still using that cancelled Darth Maul game footage on their own corporate website.
Does the cancelled Darth Maul game still have a glimmer of hope? Would you play this cancelled Star Wars game? What would you want to see in a Darth Maul game?
Sources:
http://nerdist.com/gaming-daily-red-fly-studio-wants-to-resurrect-darth-maul-game/
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2015/12/16/darth-maul-would-have-looked-stunning-in-unreal-4.aspx
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3q2mpm/hi_im_dan_borth_of_red_fly_studio_the_creators_of/?st=irc0sf5l&sh=90cbbffc
http://www.dualshockers.com/2015/10/25/dan-borth-of-red-fly-studio-discusses-cancelled-darth-maul-game-in-reddit-ama/
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2014/05/07/the-story-of-the-darth-maul-game-that-never-came-to-be.aspx?PostPageIndex=2&PageIndex=3
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3q2mpm/hi_im_dan_borth_of_red_fly_studio_the_creators_of/
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