If you're a Star Wars gamer, you've probably heard the news.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, is officially announced and planned for a November 2007 release.

The premise? You play as Darth Vader's secret apprentice, during the time between episodes III and IV. Your choices and actions will affect the plot, and be able to result in multiple different endings. That means non-canon endings.

Kill Darth Vader and then the Emperor as final bosses? There's a thought.

A big batch of information just became available (see here, here, here, and here.) and you can look at that to your heart's content, I won't regurgitate all the details here.

I just want to talk about how excited I am. First of all, I'm a just tiny bit disappointed that I was wrong about no info coming out until CIV. I was used to the drought, and was expecting it to continue, but I'm certainly glad to hear stuff.

Why am I excited about this game? Well, I already wrote pretty extensively on why I was looking forward to seeing what comes out of Lucasarts next, no mater what that may be.

Basically, they are totally geared up for next gen. They have a system called Euphoria, which is "bio-mechanical AI" which is basically an accurate simulation of how characters in the game should react to their environment (such as balancing on rope bridges, or getting hit by things correctly). On the non-living side, Lucasarts has acquired DMM (Digital Molecular Matter, which similarly simulates the proper reactions to breaking for different physical materials. (My other blog has some more information on these and some links)

Those both add up to an awesome, unprecedented next-generation gaming experience. Here is a video that showcases them both, with an emphasis on DMM. (Thanks to tragiclove for the video, I wouldn't have known about it otherwise)


Then there is the pre-vis. It was a concept video (not a tech demo) of what Lucasarts wanted their next Star Wars game to be, and Force Unleashed is most certainly that game. If you really want to understand why you should be excited about this game, just watch the video.



The last thing I want to bring up is the thing I'm afraid will go unnoticed by a lot of people following this game. I am very glad to say that Lucasarts is truly making this a next gen title. Lucasarts is making this game for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Those are the two powerful next gen systems. The Wii, while awesome, went in a different direction with their next generation, forgoing the raw power that the 360 and the PS3 embrace, the power that will make the implementation of DMM and Euphoria possible.

The alternative is for Lucasarts to hang back. There is a larger install base for the older consoles. A developer could easily (and many have) make a last-gen game, and simply port it to next-gen with slightly improved graphics. No, this game is being made for next-gen.

There are PSP and Nintendo DS version being released, no surprise, but they obviously can't handle what this game is offering, and the responsibility for making those versions is being outsourced to another developer, while the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions are being made in house, by Lucasarts. The real interesting part, though, is that a PS2 version is also being made, and also being outsourced. It makes financial sense to release a game for the PS2, it probably has the biggest install base of any popular console right now, which means the most potential buyers. But while Lucasarts isn't ignoring that audience, they aren't pandering to it, and they aren't lowering their standards for this game. I am very happy about that, and am very glad that Lucasarts really made the right choice in going full, honest next gen.

Thanks to this article for the console release information.


Fun fact! George Lucas himself contributed extensively to the character and plot design for this game.
(I seem to recall that once, when asked "What is your favorite Star Wars game?" George Lucas responded "It hasn't been made yet." Was he referring to his game as it was in production? I can't say, because that would be diverging from Fun Fact! to Fun Speculation!)


Linkfest!
Euphoria technology showreel*
Original Indiana Jones game/Euphoria trailer*
Euphoria/DMM Showcase

Lucasarts Pre-Visualization

Official Lucasarts Page (By they way, check out their brand new site design. It's spiffy.)
StarWars.com Article
Computer and Video Games News Story
Eurogamer Article
Kotaku Entry One* and Two*.
There's also a cover story in Game Informer, which I have yet to pick up.

My other Lucasarts blog (Some of the links there are dead, new ones are here, for the cool stuff at least)

* Not linked to elsewhere in this blog


By the way, this is totally a picture of a Jedi exploding from a rancor's stomach. How awesome is that?