First off.. I actually was considering trying to boot up my old 360 to get a copy of Arena before it poofs.. but I hadn't actually heard it was top-down, or just forgot about it. And that kind of killed that idea for me in advance. So.. effort saved, I guess?
Second.. Squadrons is a hot mess that I actually think suffered due to its licensing. Maybe a hot take, but I think it would have done much better if it wasn't a Star Wars game. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the fact that it exists, and I got to fly around in VR in some classic Star Wars ships.. but the ships and music were the only things about that game that were even remotely "Star Wars."
It was kind of a victim of its own design, which tried to mash up too many concepts. They tried to make a Star Wars flight simulation MOBA. I joked from the start, it should have been called "League of Squadrons." They tried to pull off a chocolate and peanut butter combination, but it was more like mixing steak and gummi worms; the concepts are so different that nothing worked as it should have.
To be fair, Arena doesn't actually *look* top-down
. The camera is positioned behind and a bit above your ship, so it looks really nice and 3D, it's just that you only fly on a flat plane - hence I say it's top-down.
As for Squadrons, your comments are interesting in that your experience is the exact opposite of mine - not in terms of what we think of the game, but apparently, in terms of what we did with it. I played through the single player and never, not even once, touched the multiplayer. You talk extensively about multiplayer and don't mention the single player, so I'm guessing that while you probably did play through the single player, it wasn't something you paid much attention to, concentrating on the multiplayer.
So, I'm happy to concede everything you say about the multiplayer - I haven't experienced it, but certainly the ship designs indicate clearly that everything is designed for a balanced experience, and it's not a good look for Star Wars. I will say, though, the single-player campaign really didn't feel like that to me. I hated the "modern" characters, who for the most part had no place in the Star Wars universe, and the story was... well, the story I guess was all right, as long as the characters weren't talking, which is a bit of a problem. But the missions did really well in bringing out the uniqueness of different ship designs. The game really felt a lot, lot like the good old X-Wing series to me.
Regardless, I don't think I agree that the game suffered from being a Star Wars game, and that it could have done better as a Wing Commander game. Quality-wise - who knows, maybe? But since we're talking about the economy of a revival, I'm really just looking at the most basic indicator, i.e. the chance of generating good sales. And it's clear to me that a reasonably well-reviewed space combat game with Star Wars slapped on it would, in 2020, generate better sales than a Wing Commander game. Even so, whatever the sales were for Squadrons (and really - they can't have been that bad! SteamDB has four estimates listed, ranging between 760K and 1.86M, and that's just Steam), evidently they were not considered good enough for EA to continue supporting the game. Maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way - maybe it is a matter of gameplay. Maybe the game's sales weren't the problem, but rather the problem was the way the active player base dropped off (apparently, in the space of a single month). Maybe with better multiplayer gameplay, Squadrons would have soldiered on, generating more revenue, and therefore justifying further development. If yes, then maybe this could all have been done with Wing Commander. *But* - a Wing Commander game would have had far lower sales at the outset... and a Wing Commander game in 2020 would have been designed exactly the same as Squadrons, because it would have been done by the exact same people, with the exact same guidelines. I just don't see how this could have been a viable approach, given that we see what the outcome was.
Here's a problem.
Squadrons does look like a Star Wars game at first glance, and the problems you mention are only apparent once you get deeper into the game. However, if it is a WC game, then it is a question of how to make a first impression on the players, like:
1. What do Confederation ships look like and how should they be painted? And what about the uniforms?
2. The Kilrathi side has the same problems and even more - How should they look like? Like bobcats? Lions and tigers? Or gorillas? Do they have the cultural appearance of a feudal empire or primitive tribes?
3. How many species are there in the Confederation fleet?
Such questions would come before the team in the early stage of the development. Even if they were able to address these issues well - wouldn't it be nice to release it as a new IP?
Hmm... honestly, these are rather fannish questions
. That is to say, I don't think any of these are the be-all-end-all issues. For each of them, you can have a variety of different answers, each reasonably satisfactory. The core issue is simply finding the appropriate formula in terms of game type, scope and budget. What the spaceships look like, what the Kilrathi look like - that's not a problem, given that preceding Wing Commander games provide with three-four significantly different answers to both questions. And as for species in the Confederation fleet, if you mean alien species - literally no one cares
. If you mean spaceship types, well, heck, you can have as many and as few as you need.
