Star Wars is a very important franchise for me, and when you put video games and combine them it makes for a great recipe for awesomeness. In the history of gaming we have gotten some great star wars games: The Jedi Knight series, Rouge Squadron, Battlefront, etc...
The Force Unleashed was an entry in the massive library of star wars games that was hyped far beyond what it really was: The story behind it is quite unique for a video game project, what I mean by that is that usually projects must start with a central focus or a central point... TFU didn't. A small group composed of six developers started brain storming ideas for a new star wars game, the ideas ranged for plenty of concepts, scripts and many ideas (with just saying that one of the ideas was a mercenary character taking place in the distant future past Return of the Jedi), eventually after researching the expanded universe they eventually got stuck between the old republic era or the (then) lesser known point between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope.
In interviews, developers said that the game was going to fill the void set between the episodes 3 and 4, that we will find out about about dark characters in the saga and that The Force Unleashed was going to be "the next important chapter in star wars"... unfortunately it also promoted itself by being a bigger game than it really was, reaching to consoles that were not meant to handle it´s visual flare, effects and other sugar coating elements (Wii, PS2, DS, etc...). So what went wrong? The awser is quite simple and complicated at the same time:
The main problem is that the promotion of the game said otherwise to what was given and another and even bigger problem is the fact they branched out to multiple systems... giving unique fetters to each and everyone of them (ex: the Wii version has a 2vs2 mode while the PSP version has a special missions mode) pretty much demanding the consumers to buy all versions of the game to acquire the maximum experience; not only is this practice anti-consumer but also very unpractical from a development point, the core team focused on the PS3, 360 and PC versions while other hired 3rd party devs where given the task to adapt that game into the Wii and the other platforms, the amount of work placed over the head of this devs must have been crushing.
Of course the game wasn't received has well has it was hyped by both critics and players... the game at it´s core is just a beat em up style action game and quite fun at it, however it´s nothing like it was promised, I can say (having played it on the PS3) that is a good fun game witch only special deliver is the story and by saying like is the greatest thing ever either but I can at least appreciate what was done here, basically what this does is explain how the rebel alliance was created... that´s really it.
Force Unleashed 2 was announced almost a year after the lunch of the first game and I was flabbergasted at it, I was wandering why if the original gave a very solid conclusion to the story, but of course the sales had demanded that devs pushed another game out:
What are they talking about...?!
Why make Starkiller the most powerful Jedi/Sith ever? It warps the concept of the force almost completely! Is Starkiller Kratos? I don´t mind playing a powerful character but this is ridiculous... no other character in the star wars universe has a chance against that guy.
This game was clearly rushed, just by looking at the game itself in terms of mechanics, there is no depth to combat unlike in the first entry... I heard that some of the developers who worked on the original game moved on, where they the brains of the gameplay department? It makes me sad because not only is the gameplay worts but the story also is, Starkiller is turned into an unlikable jerk who is blinded by his desire to find Juno that the most important events that lead to episode 4 are ignored entirely, there is no character development and Vader is turned into a wimp!
TFU2 is not very good, it was clearly rushed out into the marked has you might be able to tell... is sad indeed when this happens in gaming.
Quoting Miyamoto "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad"
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