WhatÂ's in a name? There are, of course, letters arranged into established phonetic patterns to produce phonemes which we recognize as corresponding to familiar sounds. If weÂ're very lucky then no one has decided to become clever and add apostrophes. Would a rose by any other name smell significantly less sweet? If we instead called a rose Gushing Flower Of Maximum Sweetness, would its affect on our olfactory senses be suddenly deadened? Does a name affect the thing it describes, or is it simply a well placed noun? These are all very esoteric and general questions that IÂ've no interest in actually answering, but simply act as a foil to explaining why I think Star Wars is finally, and thankfully, dead.

I know itÂ's such an uncommon and unexpected thing, an article on the internet about Star Wars. You must be really quite surprised. I mean, after a quarter of a century, who would still be talking about a cheesy 70Â's sci-fi popcorn flick? We all remember other great films that came out in the late 70s, films like, um, I donÂ't know maybe Grease was around then, IÂ'm sure something with Travolta! For those of you who donÂ't know, Star Wars is a twenty-five year-old movie that spawned 5 sequels – though some are called Â"˜prequelsÂ' if youÂ're interminably Â"˜analÂ' - which its creator, George Lucas, pretended that heÂ'd fleshed out since the beginning. Star Wars also birthed a massive series of books, games, and poorly produced television specials that make the Starlight Vocal BandÂ's brief variety show look scintillating by comparison. But as the years have worn upon Star WarsÂ' already threadbare, though entertaining, story, the franchise has become a veneer losing what originally defined the tale and keeping only the gadgets and conceits of the mostly fan-constructed universe. Star Wars isnÂ't just dead, itÂ's a well decayed corpse.

I donÂ't want to give them impression that I donÂ't like Star Wars. Like every other child of the 70s and 80s I was indoctrinated into the School of Lucas. Many a happy hour I spent with a cardboard tube or a gnarled branch chasing the dog around the backyard and making fffwaoong and scizzzshhh lightsaber noises. Â"˜Get some friends,Â' my parents would encourage, but a Jedi need not such earthly ties, nor broccoli, nor multiplication tables. IÂ'd wile away the hours with Hoth Luke – arm tragically lost in a bike chain many moons past – stuffed into his beat up X-Wing hurling bright imaginary lasers toward the surprising and franchise-twisting Decepticon meance across the face of a thousand worlds; teaming up with Optimus Prime – arm tragically lost from being hurled against a rock several times – against insurmountable odds. So, yeah, IÂ'd fallen in some kind of love with Star Wars, though my playtime epic tales had little to do with the original story.

And, I think thatÂ's a relatively important point – if one is to assume any important point can be made in an article about Star Wars. Though I used some of the technological trappings of Star Wars, an X-Wing, a Jedi, a basic good vs. evil concept, the battle waged atop my roof, where Chewbacca finally cast Megatron into the Gushing Flower of Maximum Sweetness bed was no more Star Wars than, well, Knights of the Old Republic.

ItÂ's been a slow but steady transition away from the original concept. The New Republic Books following the story of the moviesÂ' heroes through exciting new adventures worked as a stepping stone away from Star Wars. Similarly, in the video games of Star Wars we moved further from the movies and more into original creative concepts. Games that put you into the situations of the movies, that had you skirting across HothÂ's icy surface, or piloting the Millenium Falcon through the second Death Star, or that even just had you interacting in some way tangential to the plot – if not directly involved in it – became fewer and further between.

Even as the new movies began to disappoint audiences around the world, Star Wars was only a titular trapping used to give credibility to otherwise original works. It became like a template saving people the trouble of having to come up with ship designs, character classes, and world building. The story didnÂ't matter as long as at some point a jedi/smuggler/bounty-hunter flew his X-Wing/Tie Fighter/Star Destroyer to Tatooine/Coruscant/Kessel. ThatÂ's not a criticism, as fans clearly feel comfortable and energized by familiar concepts in familiar surroundings, itÂ's the reason we have genre staples in the first place. Star Wars became less a story and more a set of rules that both writers and consumers understood from the start; it saved time in not having to reinvent the wheel and gave story-tellers the chance to get right down to the work of telling their stories.

And, maybe thatÂ's enough to be a Star Wars story. Maybe if we all agree that Star Wars is now just a franchise and never had individuality all its own then anything that contains Tatooine, a Tie Fighter, an AT-AT, or a Jedi is enough to qualify as being a Star Wars story. But thatÂ's not how IÂ've felt about it. For me Star Wars has always been about the events described in at least the original trilogy if not the original film. For me, to be a Star Wars story requires some tie to those events, some expansion of that tale, some connectivity to Vader, the Emperor, the Death Star, Obi-Wan and so on. Which is just one of the reasons I donÂ't think Knights of the Old Repbulic, for example, was a Star Wars story. ItÂ's also why I donÂ't think the upcoming Battlefront or Republic Commando will be either.

None of this is meant to impugn these games. On the contrary, though I may seem to be driving toward some saber rattling, mind numbing, purist point of view, I am actually suggesting that the best Star Wars games are actually born from something like an original thought. I might even be willing to suggest that the reason LucasÂ' most recent theatrical efforts have been so middling and morbidly dull is because they are so rigidly held to the tenets of the original trilogy. No, on second thought, they were bad because Lucas has the writing aptitude of a dyslexic armadillo. Either way, my point is that one of the things that made games like KOTOR, Jedi Knight, and Tie Fighter so fantastic is precisely that they were not so rigid in their inception. They were free to follow their own story lines, their own character struggles.

Yes, they had Jedi, but what are Jedi really but a typical RPG hybrid class. They cast spells and swing a sword, have limited armor, and are deeply intellectual. They are a fighter/mage (or whatever complex 3rd Edition ridiculously arcane terminology gets across my idea). Yes they have Star Destroyers, but the concept of a really big ship is not exactly limited to the franchise. Yes they have planets, typically ones of a single ecological type, but that just saves the trouble of coming up with names like Endor, Naboo, and Arakis Â"… wait, I meant Tatooine. So you have some standardized names for the franchise, but outside of that these games are essentially entirely new stories with only the required elements of familiarity.

And, thatÂ's good!

By comparison letÂ's talk about Star Trek. With a vast series of games that simply seem incapable of expanding the franchise outside its persistently annoying Picard/Data/Janeway/Enterprise/Blah Blah Blah staples, the games associated with the franchise just never seem to have gone anywhere. In fact, IÂ'd dare argue that the best Star Trek games of late have been the Elite Force games which, though still locked onto the efficiently annoying characters weÂ've all become bored with, at least try and find a new direction. The very stagnation of Star Trek games is that, with few exceptions, they are all very much Star Trek games.

So, as I look at the flavors of Star Wars to come, and I see how little they actually resemble the original movies and their bastard children Â"˜prequelsÂ', I find myself more instead of less excited. What keeps a franchise fresh is new talent that takes the franchise in entirely new directions. Consumers like some link to familiarity, but at the same time they donÂ't want to be locked in the same old hoary struggles that never seem to get resolved. If thereÂ's never another Star Wars game that includes Luke, Vader, or Han Solo in any significant capacity, then thatÂ's probably good news. It means the mostly fan constructed universe still has some viability. So, bring on KOTOR 2, let slip Battlefront and Republic Commando, and let them be a different take, on a new story.

- Elysium