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1313 - TV Tropes

  • ️Wed Jun 06 2012

1313 (Video Game)

Star Wars 1313 was intended to be a Star Wars Legends work, produced by LucasArts as a Third-Person Shooter video game. It is notable in that it is a collaboration between said company, Industrial Light & Magic, Lucasfilm Animation, and Skywalker Sound.

The game takes place some time before the Battle of Yavin in Coruscant's vast undercity - specifically, Level 1313. The story revolves around a pair of bounty hunters (one of which is a young Boba Fett) who travel there in order to deal with a problem that they've been hired to deal with. Once they get there, however, it's clear that they're getting way more than they bargained for, and have to deal with a conspiracy taking place in the seedy underbelly of Coruscant's underworld.

The game was intended to be one of the few Star Wars games to not feature the concept of the Force at all, let alone in combat — instead, players were meant to use their own arsenal and their environment around them in order to achieve victory. The gameplay has elements of a cover-based shooter, which would have been a first for LucasArts.

Unfortunately, the game was put on the shelf after Disney purchased Lucasfilm and its subsidiaries. The official statement was that Disney needed to put more effort into projects relating to the first installment of the Sequel Trilogy before working on unrelated stories. An employee noted that the game was still in production at that time. Then it was announced that the game was cancelled, following Disney shutting down LucasArts. As of January 2014, Disney's trademark on the title has expired.

Since then, the franchise has made direct references or re-used concepts from 1313 in other projects:

  • Level 1313 is name-dropped in the fifth episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars seventh season in 2020, and the episode takes place almost entirely in this area.
  • In 2021 Boba received his own spinoff show, The Book of Boba Fett, that December, which focuses on crime lords and has no mention of the Force (at least until another Mandalorian shows up).
  • The Coruscant level of 2023's Star Wars Jedi: Survivor has strong parallels to this concept as it takes place in the undercity, a location previously not explored in the canon outside of the aforementioned The Clone Wars episode, and is much more oppressive by comparison. Bounty hunters form a prominent side quest activity in the game as a whole, with Boba Fett himself appearing in the quest's climax.
  • 2024's Star Wars Outlaws, while not as seedy or gritty as 1313, is a stealth-based open-world game with cover that follows the adventures of a scoundrel, and is notable for having effectively no mention of the Force for almost its entire runtime.

1313 would have provided examples of the following tropes:

  • 13 Is Unlucky: The act of getting to the city involves the protagonists' ride being shot to hell, and was slated to go From Bad to Worse from there. The air of the sector itself is also said to be hard to breathe without some sort of oxygen mask.
  • Badass Normal: Boba Fett and his partner are simple non-force-sensitive bounty hunters. Of course, Boba is already known for being the premiere Badass Normal of the franchise.
  • Bloodier and Gorier: Developer talk confirmed to be in here in order to secure the M rating. The screen bleeds a bit whenever you get hit.
  • Bounty Hunter: The player character (Boba Fett) and his ally.
  • City Noir: Coruscant is already a Wretched Hive by the time the Empire takes over... And then there's the undercity, which is amazingly worse.
  • Coming of Age Story: The story would have been about how Boba Fett became the top bounty hunter that he was in the Original Trilogy.
  • Continuity Snarl: As it turns out, reels of unreleased The Clone Wars episodes reveals that Boba gets his iconic green Mandalorian helmet at some point before the Clone Wars ends, but concept art of 1313 shows him with a blue & grey Mandalorian helmet, likely Jango's. Though the context could be that Boba switched out his green helmet for the blue helmet for some reason.
  • Darker and Edgier: The goal of this game was to create a decidedly grittier and more 'adult' environment than what most Expanded Universe stories show. It would likely have been similar to Republic Commando and the second installment in the Knights of the Old Republic series.
  • Improvised Weapon: The partner lobs a grenade into the escape pod and ejects it into an enemy ship.
  • Recycled with a Gimmick: Early comments on the game are describing the platforming & third person shooter elements as being Uncharted in a galaxy far, far away.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: There's a droid that's going after Boba. On the other hand, Highsinger or a similar droid appears to be an ally of Boba, but doesn't have their red eyes anymore.
  • You Don't Look Like You: Boba doesn't look like a clone of Jango.