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The Force Unleashed II: What's Improving?
The action-packed trailer for The Force Unleashed II at E3 2010 had show-goers talking, as did the demonstration of the gameplay. Even with the extraordinary success of the first game, the development team clearly knows that it can't just coast on previous success for this sequel. Prior to E3, I visited LucasArts' offices and talked to executive producer Haden Blackman about the areas from the original Force Unleashed that are undergoing tweaks and improvements for the sequel.
On Light vs. Dark:
"The notion of split endings is something that we're really fans of. We can't reveal anything about the ending or endings of TFU II yet, but we feel that the struggle between light and dark is important, and that's one of the ways we've conveyed it in the past."
On Pacing:
"One of the things we learned from TFU I was just better pacing. TFU I was just combat, combat, combat. Here, we've certainly got a ton of combat, but we also have some areas of exploration, more puzzles, and I think the pacing feels much better and more even."
On Surprises:
"We can't talk too much about anything, really, except to say that we have a couple not-so-little surprises I think fans are going to be totally psyched about."
On Enemies:
"A lot of work is going into enemy design, too. In TFU I, because we went to so many locations, we had about 100 different enemy types, so they weren't differentiated as well as they could have been. With this game, we're focusing on much more defined enemy types."
On Star Destroyers:
"Honestly, the issue with the Star Destroyer fight [in TFU I] was actually a bug. The sticks were telling you the wrong direction. That's another thing we're focused on with TFU II, working on a defined polish for the game."
On Technology:
"We have some new Euphoria behaviors and Digital Molecular Matter material types that we didn't have in TFU I, so that's been really fun. The best thing about it, though, is that we could have made no changes to it and it still would have gotten better, because the team knows how to use it."
On Leveling:
"There's one currency now, and you use that to rank up whatever you want, rather than splitting them into talents, powers, and combos. One of the other big changes is that we completely ripped out our US solution and replaced it, so we could get rid of the loading screen and have it be a more accessible experience."
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