Top 10 Things We Want from Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
by Tom Burns

Oh, the perils of hyperbole. Don't get us wrong - we love a nice sense of self-confidence and the ability to talk the occasional smack (that's why we have a crush on Sarah Silverman) - but when you set up or fail to rein in completely unrealistic expectations, in 9 cases out of 10, you're setting yourself up for a fall. Setting the bar crazy high means that eventually you're going to have to get your big ass over that stupidly-high hurdle and, don't kid yourself, everyone's watching.

But sometimes it works out. When Jason Jones, head of Bungie, told the press that: "Halo 2 is a lot like Halo 1, only it's Halo 1 on fire, going 130 miles per hour through a hospital zone, being chased by helicopters and ninjas ... And, the ninjas are all on fire, too" - he was potentially dooming Halo 2 to the kind of overhyping that killed everything from The Last Action Hero to the Hudson Hawk. Fortunately, Halo 2 was, in fact, almost that awesome, so Jones didn't get much blow-back for his comments. (He maybe got one or two melee attacks instead of the full-on plasma grenade to the face.)

The new contender for the "potentially overhyped" award in the world of video games is Lucasarts' upcoming Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, a multi-next-gen console game that Star Wars fans and gamers alike talk about in hushed tones in darkened alleyways... you know, if they left their homes. We know gamers who are more excited about this summer's release of The Force Unleashed then they were about the release of Revenge of the Sith (well, the lack of Hayden Christensen's involvement will do that). So, why are fans so excited about The Force Unleashed? Why is there so much buzz surrounding the game that it inspired Vanity Fair to do its first video game-related article ever?

First off, it's the first release from Lucasarts after a major company shake-up, in which the whole organization was restructured and split into two teams - one working on a kick-ass Star Wars game, the other, a kick-ass Indiana Jones game. Second, the story - the game (much like the upcoming live-action Star Wars TV series) is set between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, and is supposed to show us completely new perspectives on the development of Darth Vader and the Rebel Alliance. The game revolves around Vader's "secret apprentice," a dark padawan who, it's rumored, is controlled by Darth with a restrictor shackle. (Warning - most of what follows is pure internet conjecture.) Allegedly, Vader, realizing how far Palpatine has pushed him into the Dark Side, plans to use his new little brother (that'd be you, the player at home) to take down the Sidious bastard who got him all burned up in the first place, while Darth goes about his daily business of killing the last of the Jedi and conquering planets in the name of the Empire. But since turning against the Emperor is a dangerous proposition, Darth doesn't want any witnesses - in other words, frag anyone in sight. The third (and real) reason people are so excited about The Force Unleashed is that it's supposed to be a technological marvel, employing Euphoria, a new artificial-intelligence system that makes the game's characters crazy-smart, like Lawmower Man-smart, and Digital Molecular Matter (DMM), a revolutionary physics engine that makes the world of the game ridiculously responsive (if you want to scuff the sidewalk, you can scuff the sidewalk, that sort of thing).

What does that mean for the AI-illiterate? The short version is - your character will have the potential for full, unlimited access to the Force, and you can do almost anything with it. Do you want to throw a platoon of Stormtroopers to a Rancor monster? You go right ahead. Do you want to pick up a tree and smack down a TIE Fighter? Be our guest. Think we're exaggerating? The official trailer for the game at the Lucasarts web site opens with Darth's new sidekick Force-grabbing a freakin' Imperial Star Destroyer out of the sky and slamming it to the ground, right at his feet, like the flying saucer at the end of Men in Black. When you OPEN your trailer with that image, c'mon, you're purposely setting the bar for yourself extremely high. Lucasarts - don't promise us that the Force will be full-on UNLEASHED, if all we can do is pick up a bunch of heavy stuff and wave it around. We want the insane Jedi action that we dreamed about as children, well before we knew anything about physics, logic, or reality. We want Star Wars UNLEASED - we want to be able to do everything that our sick little minds have ever wanted to do in the Star Wars universe with no limits, no load times, and no hangovers in the morning.

What all that in mind - our completely unreasonable expectations about a game that has done nothing to quash our completely unreasonable expectations - The Deadbolt has assembled the Top Ten things we'd want to be able to do in a Force Unleashed game. Granted, we're submitting this far too late in the game's development cycle, but as the anticipation for The Force Unleashed grows this summer, we thought the nice folks at Lucasarts should know the totally bat-****, illogical, dream fodder fantasies that Star Wars gamers have in the backs of their sick little minds, so they can have an idea of just how high into the stratosphere people are placing the bar for this one.

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