swg credit or manny white
from:
wow gold
Star Wars games used to be great. Think the original arcade game in the 80s. Or the Super SNES games and the likes of Tie Fighter and Dark Forces in the 90s. But the last ten years or so havent been kind to fans of the Force. Remember gaming atrocities like - shudder - Masters of Teras Kasi, Obi-Wan and the official prequel games. If you missed them youre lucky. If youre curious then feel free to splash out a quid or two for each on ebay. Of course there has been the occasional good un but interestingly
swg credit these games - Knights of the Old Republic, Battlefront and possibly the early days of Galaxies if youre feeling generous - were all developed externally. So the pressure is on for next Star Wars game - The Force Unleashed. Released on Sept 19th the game is being developed in-house and has the added expectation of being marketed as the next film. Luckily then what Ive seen and played so far looks like it could banish those Super Bombad era memories for good. I recently spoke to LucasArts Project Lead Hayden Blackman about Force Unleashed, George Lucas and the stresses of creating a new Star Wars game.
TFU is set the game between films 3 and 4. Was this a deliberate
www.starwarsgalaxiesonline.com marketing decision so the game appeals to those younger fans who prefer the prequels as well older fans of the original films?
It was a bit of both really.
swg credit The technology is important obviously but we wanted to make a great game first and foremost. Early on we started talking to the guys behind the physics engine Euphoria but we had already created some concept videos at this point which showed the whole unleashing of the Force concept. Initially we had assumed we would use Havok for the physics. We didnt talk to the DMM guys until later on. So the early focus was very much on the story and game ideas rather than tech. Of course when you get something like DMM and Euphoria it brings on new ideas. We realised we could get these great environmental effect with DMM for example where we change materials on the fly. It helped and inspired us to create a planet full of giant mushrooms for example. So a bit of both then but TFU was driven more heavily by the game than the tech.
You are pitching this game as
www.starwarsgalaxiesonline.com the new film. Was this is a conscious decision from the early days or purely marketing hype to create a bigger buzz amongst Star Wars fans?
It happened quite organically early on when began nailing down the story and where the game was set. I love a lot of our games like Knights of the Old Republic and Dark Froces but they dont have Darth Vader and they dont deal with the big events between the two trilogies. Once we got the storyline and once we realised there were some big beats and twists in the plot and characters we saw that the game had started to become more of an event. We realised we had a fun game in development and then the action figures and comic guys got excited and signed up. As games people we had to get excited about the game first and then we got the rest of Lucas excited too. Weve got a great team here. Weve gone through adversity but hopefully weve created a great game.
Star Wars: The Force
swg credit Unleashed is out for 360, PS3, Wii, DS and PSP on Sept 19th. No joy for PC gamers though.
