The phrase heard most often at the press launch for The Old Republic was "We can't tell you that yet." Questions about the gameplay, scale, price, delivery system and release date of the game were all answered with those frustrating words, but at least BioWare's Gordon Walton acknowledged how frustrating he knew it was:

A lot of the things we're not talking about is not because we're teases or because we don't know yet, it's because it's not settled... At this point of time, [anything we tell you about the release date] would be a lie. It's all about the quality, and until we get close, we don't know yet. We don't want to overhype [the game]. No games are overhyped like MMOs are overhyped, and a Star Wars MMO may be hyped the most of all.

So what do we know about the game? Well, it'll be a cross-platform MMO. taking place 3,600 years before the movies — and 300 years after the Knights of the Old Republic games — where players will decide upfront on what "faction" their character is. (The only two were were told of were Jedi or Sith, but others were promised. "Not everyone's fantasy is to be a Jedi," said lead writer Daniel Erickson). You'll also decide on your character's class and race, as well as whether you're good or evil.

From there, the players will get to explore new worlds, complete tasks and — unusually for an MMO — experience a story. As BioWare's Co-CEO Ray Muzyka explained, the addition of a story to the MMO format is a groundbreaking — and, in his eyes, necessary — move, adding "emotionally compelling storytelling" to create something unique. (Lead writer Erickson agreed, saying that story was a central concept of "every RPG until we went to MMO-space, and then something fell off the truck").

While staying unsurprisingly cagey about the amount of work that's already gone into the game, BioWare's lead designer on the project, James Ohlen, admitted that the game is the equivalent to not just one sequel to Knights of The Old Republic 1 and 2, but several; "[The Old Republic] is the equivalent of every other BioWare game ever released, combined," he explained.

The game will offer players the chance to travel between worlds and interact with AI-driven companion characters as well as other players. ("What would Han be without Chewbacca?" said Muzyka when asked about the role of companions in the game. "What would Luke be without R2?" But don't worry; you can kill them if they annoy you). You can also choose between following the light or dark sides and, maybe most importantly, have awesome lightsaber battles.

Ohlen said that BioWare and Lucasarts' aim with the game was to "allow players to carve out their own epic stories - and that's important, because Star Wars is all about epic stories." Muzyka perhaps put it more succinctly:

We're going to allow you to experience the great moments of Star Wars... What are the cool things that you've seen in the movies? If you can do it in the movies, we're trying to do that in the game.

If you don’t know Will Wright, he’s the visionary standard-bearer for "sandbox" games – instead of exotic mazes with pre-packaged surprises, these are free-running simulations, where fun emerges from how players use the systems to accomplish goals they create for themselves – hence the industry buzzword, “emergent gameplay.” So in Sim City, for example, you’re free to make your city an idyllic Bedford Falls, or a sleazy, jazzy Pottersville, or a smoking crater. Plenty of fun either way!

In Spore you have whole alien species to play with. You design it, then guide it as it scratches its way up the evolutionary ladder, from micro-organism to animal life to tribal society, to global empire to space faring galactic civilization – as all species must! With each step, the scale of the game jumps an order of magnitude, like in the old Powers of Ten short, which was one of the game's inspirations.

The Creature Creator by itself is already a fantastic achievement in UI design – it’s ridiculously easy to create a vertebrate organism, configuring the spine then choosing from a huge library of arms, legs, sensory organs, skin, body ornamentation, everything positioned, scaled, rotated. It's a powerful 3D design program broken into sweet, manageable toylike chunks, and makes the least of us feel like a Pixar animator. The engine's flexibility seems endless.

Spore then looks at your alien’s anatomy and calculates how it walks, speaks, dances, and fights. It generates ability scores, and these presage something of the future strategic landscape, as interstellar diplomats or hegemonizing military horde.

But that's not all – once you’ve got your alien, it gets uploaded to a communal server, and is downloaded to populate other players' universes. Spore is a “massively single-player” game – the solo experience is embedded in the many tentacles of a fully -featured social networking service., letting you tag and sift and comment other players’ creations. The Creature Creator is being released early as a free download, so that the "Sporepedia" will already be seeded with user-made content when the game launches (I assume there is some mechanism for filtering out the inevitable flood of aliens that look like penises and/or the cast of Family Guy).

As a science fiction fan, I like Spore’s classic, friendly space-opera vision of the galaxy: It's a place where aliens of every shape can evolve, develop space flight, and cruise around to weird planets, messing with less-evolved creatures, and trading and fighting with other aliens. I feel in my bones that this is the way life in the galaxy should be, and now we're going to live it.

A few caveats. Powerful as the editor is, the aliens it makes inevitably bear a family resemblance to one another. Morph them how you will, share a rounded, fleshy feel that makes them look like they're made of many-colored putty. They move with the same stagy, cutesy toddler-like motions, so despite the fabulous variety in shape, it's hard to make something that feels truly alien or dangerous. Walking around the room, one parameterized alien starts to look like another, and I'm left feeling that the possibility-space of alien life is only partly explored.

And…it's an enormously generative plaything, but will it, ultimately, be fun? Without individualized characters or anything human to look at, will we come to care about our legions of BEMs? Will the algorithmically generated galaxy feel like a limitless universe of wonder, or just one randomized planet after another?

It's easy to take shots at a game as ambitious as Spore, a game whose scope, ambition, and top-notch level of execution are frankly jaw-dropping, but as a game designer and gamer, I can’t help but cheer it on. Will Wright and the Spore team are hammering at the limitations of the video game medium itself, as a tool for storytelling and self-expression.

My prediction is that Spore will rock our collective world. Their vision statement references "Sandkings," so that's got to be a good sign. So download and begin seeding the galaxy! Just be careful when they make a castle with your face on it.

Talking to game site Videogamer, LucasArts' Cameron Suey admitted that maybe enthusiasm had overpowered quality control in the past:

Star Wars is one of the greatest licenses for a videogame you could have and in the past we got a little excited about that and we put out games that probably weren't up to the quality bar that we would have liked. That's definitely something we've recognised and we understand. The more Star Wars games you put out and the more you love that environment the more it becomes mediocre and anodyne. We're really focused on telling singular, excellent Star Wars stories with engaging and innovative gameplay and cutting edge technology. That's going to be the future of Star Wars games... You might see less and better [games in the future]. Make it right and do it right.

Here's the thing about the hardcore fans. They know Star Wars better than almost anyone. However, that almost anyone is a couple of guys that work at Lucas Films in the licensing department, where they have a massive database where absolutely every element of the story, Lando's eye colour, and where was Princess Leia at a certain point of time, all that information is tracked very meticulously. I mean they know the name of characters who were wearing a helmet in the back of a canteen suite. All that stuff is understood and it's a known quantity. They won't let us do anything with the story unless it fits. And if they're a little concerned about it then we figure out a way to make it work. So the story is actually going to fit.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed interview [VideoGamer]

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• LucasArts' first adventure game was actually Lucasfilm Games' Labyrinth , based on the movie of the same name. The developers consulted with Douglas Adams on the game, and he suggested that they make it a hybrid game that starts as a text adventure, and then turns into a graphical game.
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• Their first true science fiction game was 1987's Maniac Mansion, which contained the technology that was used in LucasArts' games for over a decade. It introduced new ideas like multiple endings, multiple character, and clues there were hidden in the cutscenes, which was a clever way to make you watch them.
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• LucasArts famed SCUMM engine was created for this game, and used for many more of their interactive adventure titles. SCUMM actually stands for Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion. It's been ported to multiple systems, and you can still play those classic LucasArts games on it.
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• Maniac Mansion was inspired by B-movies, and features a storyline complete with mad scientists, disembodied, sentient tentacles, and an evil mastermind played by an also sentient Purple Meteor. Players have to figure out how to stay alive and save the Earth from the Meteor.
  
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• In part of the game, characters can actually microwave a hamster, and when this game was ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System, they were ordered to take it out. However, they noticed it a bit too late, so it made it onto all the North American game cartridges.
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• In 2004, fans collaborated and enhanced the game graphics, added music, fixed glitches, and released as freeware Maniac Mansion Deluxe.
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• LucasArts/Lucasfilm Games visited the world of science fiction again in 1988 with Zak McCracken and the Alien Mindbenders, where titular hero Zak had to help fend off an alien invasion by the Caponians. They want to lower the intelligence of everyone on Earth by using dial tones.
  
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• Luckily Zak finds some ancient technology left behind by the Skolarian race which can be used to fight the Caponians. Unfortunately the parts are scattered all over Earth and Mars, and you have to go around collecting them.
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• In later games the developers decided to make it impossible to actually kill one of your characters, although this new "rule" was broken a few times.
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• LucasArts went on an adventure game tear after Zak McCracken, producing Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure in 1989, The Secret of Monkey Island in 1990 (probably the title most remembered and most associated with LucasArts), and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge in 1991.
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• During this period, in 1990, Lucasfilm Games became LucasArts during a reorganization of the company.
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• They returned to the realm of science fiction with Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis in 1992, the sequel to Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle in 1993.
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• Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis was a game not based on any previous Indiana Jones, and featured Indy going to the lost city of Atlantis. He eventually encounters a huge machine called the Colossus, which runs on a mineral called Orichalcum. This device gives the Atlanteans godlike powers, and comes in handy if you want to turn yourself into pure energy.
  
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• The cover art for the game was created by lead artist William L. Eaken in an effort to emulate Drew Struzan's work on the previous Indiana Jones movie posters. In fact, LucasArts eventually released movie-style posters promoting this game.
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• Dark Horse Comics released a four-issue miniseries based on the game, and also for the planned sequel that never came out called Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix. It involved Indy finding the Philosopher's Stone that could transmute metals and bring people back from the dead. The Nazis planned to use it on Hitler's ashes.
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• In Day of the Tentacle, you return to the original Mansion, and do battle against the Purple Tentacle, who drinks toxic waste and grows arms. Oh, and he also wants to take over the world.
  
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• This game features time travel, and lets you go back in time to interact with historical figures like Ben Franklin, John Hancock, and Betsy Ross. In fact, time travel ends up being the very thing that saves the day. Just try and forget the fact that they are portapotties turned into time travel devices called "Chron-o-Johns."
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• Inside the game, you could use Ed's computer to play the complete and full version of the original Maniac Mansion. Other games have done this since, but Day of the Tentacle was one of the first.
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• In 2004 Adventure Gamers compiled a list of the Top 20 Adventure Games of All Time, and Day of the Tentacle topped the list.
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• By the mid to late 1990s, LucasArts adventure games had begun to decline in sales. Console games were becoming more popular, as well as first person shooters. The Dig became the last science fiction game released by the company in 1995. After that they released two more Monkey Island sequels, and the afterlife themed Grim Fandango before shutting down the adventure games development in 2000. Since then, LucasArts has focused mainly on developing Star Wars and Indiana Jones games.
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• The Dig was an ambitious game produced by Steven Spielberg for LucasArts, which very nearly didn't come out. It was based on a story idea that Spielberg originally had for Amazing Stories, and had dialogue provided by Orson Scott Card, and was written by both Spielberg and interactive fiction author Brian Moriarty. It began development in 1989, but wasn't released until six years later.
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• The story involved a team of astronauts placing explosives on an asteroid on a collision course with the Earth, a la Armageddon. However, things go pretty well, and the mission seems to be a success. However, once they investigate the surface of the thing, they get zapped to a faraway world. Commander Boston Low (voice by Robert Patrick) and his team have to explore their alien surroundings and find a way to get back home.
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• The Dig was the first LucasArts game to have its soundtrack sold separately on CD, and a novelization of the game was written by Alan Dean Foster, who has written numerous Star Wars novelizations, and well as ones for the Alien films.
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• LucasArts actually filed a "notice of opposition" with the U.S. Patent Office against the website Digg in 2007, saying that they were infringing on their trademark on The Dig. They settled out of court, and the opposition was withdrawn later that year.
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• Most LucasArts games feature reference to other LucasArts games, the numbers 1138 (from THX-1138, Lucas' first film), and Han Solo's line "I have a bad feeling about this." Several of the games also feature a plant named Chuck, which has become a running joke amongst game developers. He first appeared in Maniac Mansion, and later made his way into other games.
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• Besides the science fiction games, LucasArts also produced the motorcycle adventure Full Throttle (my personal favorite), the magical adventure Loom, the Monkey Island series of pirate adventures (four games total), Sam & Max Hit the Road, and Grim Fandango. Hopefully, we'll see games like this coming out once again.
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These images came from deep within the bowels of James Zhang's website, where you can kill a good hour or two paging through his amazing illustrations and listening to trippy ambient music. He's worked on several LucasArts projects, including KOTOR II, so hopefully the rumors have some merit to them. We'd love to do some spacefaring and lightsaber-swinging on our next-gen systems, especially in the Star Wars-verse.

KOTOR III concept art captured? [Games Radar]

The front lobby offered up even more Star Wars items, like full-sized Vader and Boba Fett costumes, Han's Blaster, and more. Next to the reception desk were two huge framed posted for The Creature from the Black Lagoon and Dracula. However, towering over everything in the center is a large monument built to honor Willis Harold O'Brien, the man who pioneered stop-motion in animation with the visual effects in King Kong, and later animated dinosaurs in The Lost World, co-wrote King Kong vs. Godzilla, and had Ray Harryhausen as an assistant. A surprisingly touching tribute to man who needs a lot more recognition.

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• Fracture: In the far future, the effects of global warming have created terrain-deforming weaponry and split the United States in two. The Atlantic Alliance on the East, and the Republic of Pacifica on the West. You play a partially cybernetic human who has access to things like grenades they raise and lower the terrain, open swirling vortexes, send enormous molten rock formations into the air, and burrow through the Earth. If you want to beat up on the terrain of future San Francisco, this is right up your alley.
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• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed: Play as Darth Vader's secret apprentice as you hunt down the rest of the remaining Jedi, and use your amped-up Force powers to literally rip TIE-Fighters out of the air and hurl them at opponents. Set between Episodes 3 and 4, you'll encounter characters and settings from both sets of movies, mess people up with the Force, and use your lightsaber like it's going out of style. Hopefully we'll also find out why we never found out Vader had a secret apprentice before as well.
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• Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures: We'll be the first to admit that Indiana Jones has a tenuous scifi connection, at best. The guy is a swashbuckling archaeologist who hunts down supernatural artifacts and doodads, but hey... at the end of the day he's a scientist and a professor. Plus he's pretty kickass and might be encountering aliens in Indy IV. This game continues the idea of encasing Indiana in Lego, like the Lego Star Wars: The Complete Trilogy.