Today in Alternate Timelines: George Lucas Wanted to Merge the Studios Behind Monkey Island and Fallout

Star Wars has had a fascinating trajectory in the video game space, but it seems like things could have gone in an entirely different direction if a few things had been different. Among them, Brian Fargo recently revealed that George Lucas was at one point interested in merging Interplay with Lucasfilm Games.

Fargo, the founder of Interplay and current studio head of InXile Entertainment, posted an old letter from Lucas on Twitter, thanking the former for sending him a copy of Interplay's Stonekeep. In the tweet, Fargo says this was "during the time [Lucas] was trying to persuade me to merge Interplay into Lucasfilm Games and have me run it."

It was just two years after Stonekeep that Fargo and Interplay published Fallout, launching a major video game series that's still going to this day. To think of what could have happened if Lucasfilm, which itself would go on to produce adventure games like the Monkey Island series and Grim Fandango under the LucasArts banner, had merged with Interplay is wild to consider.

As for why this didn't happen, Fargo's answer was fairly straightforward. "The deal structure made no sense, and besides, we might have worked on Star Wars instead of Fallout and more," Fargo said.

Fargo is currently working with his studio InXile to launch Wasteland 3 on May 19, 2020. And while LucasArts isn't making games anymore, the Star Wars series just got a shot of life in Respawn Entertainment's Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. So no, there wasn't a Fallout-style Star Wars, but I think the trade-off is fine.