When Star Wars: The Force Unleashed landed in 2008, it quickly became one of the best selling Star Wars games of all time. Even though it was a commercial hit, many critics and gamers looked past the awesomeness of being a badass Sith warrior simply because of the persistent glitches and horrid AI. The team at LucasArts has listened though. The Force Unleashed II won’t be a ‘force’ push around this time. It’s time to get ‘tactical’ with this game, my fellow Star Wars fans.
Force Unleashed II executive producer, Haden Blackman, spoke with CVG about how the new and improved AI forces you to play the game as if it were a ‘tactical puzzle’. Now more spamming the ‘force push’ button over and over.
“Every game is a work in progress. There is tons of stuff I would have done differently in hindsight with TFU that we focus on in TFU 2. AI was one of them; we had over a hundred AI units in TFU and some of them ended up feeling very vanilla, there wasn’t enough differentiation between them and there wasn’t a lot of tactical differences between them.”
“That was a big focus for us, we said let’s do 20 or 25 units and make them very unique, give them special abilities and make you think about their tactical significance and how you take them out. A lot of the game now is like a tactical puzzle, so you do a scene and think ok there are three snipers there, a bunch of melee guys there and a big trooper there based on how I’ve ranked up my powers and my personal play style.”
Ok, I’ll be the first to admit: All of the early trailers they’ve shown for The Force Unleashed II look completely, 100% super badass. I just hope the team can mold that potential into a truly great sequel, because while I did enjoy The Force Unleashed, it left me wanting for me.
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II continues StarKiller’s journey this October 26th. Did you enjoy the first game enough to spend another $60 on the sequel? Why not use the force and let us know in the comments below!
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