Cancellation of Star Wars: 1313

"1313 was going for a 'Mature' rating, great news for anyone who believes Star Wars' more child-centric offerings have been its most disappointing. For LucasArts this doesn't mean gore and sensationalism, it means adult-themes and stories, another reason for glowing anticipation. Sometimes games pursue an M rating because of this desire to do something gratuitously gory, and that's not what we're doing at all. I just don't think those kinds of things go with Star Wars. So when we talk about making something that's mature-themed, it really is about those characters, the type of story content we're going to be dealing with, and the kind of things they're motivated by. The world itself as well."

- Colin Campbell and Dominic Robilliard

Star Wars: 1313, also known as 1313, is a cancelled video game in development at mh:awesomegames:LucasArts. It was to follow the bounty hunter Boba Fett navigating Level 1313, a subterranean metropolis within the planet Coruscant.

Background
The LucasArts staff decided to reveal the game at E3 2012 during the pre-production period. By that time, they had several drafts of the story done and the levels mapped out, and had hired Wilson Bethel to play the protagonist. Then two months before the convention, George Lucas mandated that the game star a young Boba Fett.

After a successful showing at E3, the studio continued production during the next few months. Then in September of that year, president Meegan quit and the company was put on a hiring freeze. Then shortly afterward, Lucas announced the sale of the company to Disney. The staff continued to work on it, including producing demos to show the game to their new shareholders and later Electronic Arts. This lasted until the eventual reorganization of LucasArts.

After a period of developmental limbo following The Walt Disney Company's acquisition of the Star Wars franchise, production on Star Wars: 1313 was terminated when Disney closed down LucasArts and laid off its staff on April 3, 2013. Another reason why the production shut down is that The Walt Disney Company said it would be too dark for their "family-friendly image" and will get a M-rating, making it one of the most disappointing failed development cycles in modern gaming.

Aftermath
On January 18, 2014, a report emerged indicating that Disney had abandoned the trademark for 1313. In December 2015, Kathleen Kennedy told Slashfilm that Lucasfilm had been looking at the material for both 1313 and Underworld, and that those projects may still be developed.

The announcement of the cancellation from Disney, not only hurt the reputation of the Star Wars games especially from Electronic Arts, but also boosted the Disney hatedom severely. Many people even blamed Disney's executive meddling for the cancellation, as this was one of those cancellations which stemmed from executive meddling, not due to circumstances within the developers.

Jesse Harlin, former composer at LucasArts, was set to create the game's music: "I was getting to do a lot of stuff with the music that I hadn't had an opportunity to do before too—I was creating music for street performers who would play in back alleys, there were Star Wars dance clubs that you couldn't even go into but I was having to think: what does an alien dance club sound like?" Among his work for the game, he told PC Gamer about writing a "Massive Attack-meets-Star Wars song." He later revealed on his personal Twitter one of the background characters that was in development for the game, saying "At LucasArts working on Star Wars: 1313, I was writing hip-hop for a malfunctioning protocol droid named 80-HD. He probably looked like this." The character's name comes from the name of a fictional rap artist that first appeared in LucasArts's 2006 theme park simulation game Thrillville.

Following the release of Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order and its positive reception, the reputation of the Star Wars games had managed to recover after the likes of Star Wars Battlefront II and Kinect Star Wars, both of which gotten negative reception from gamers. It would then lead on to another new upcoming Star Wars game, Star Wars Eclipse by Quantic Dream with LucasArts finally being revived as Lucasfilm Games.

On March 24, 2020, screenshots from the game were leaked and shows what it could have been.

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