The Force Unleashed - yes, I know I'm late to the party.

[Samuel]

"Hey, but I'm a Jedi and I have the FORCE!!" OK fine, so the AI in the game is going to control your character for the whole game and you are basically going to be a spectator, because you don't ACTUALLY have the Force and there is no way that I can think of that a system that actually emulates the Force is going to work when it comes to lightsaber combat and defenses. You could do an arrow system where it warns you where an attack is coming from I suppose, but the way programers make levels, you can eliminate that all together and just die a few times until you memorize where the baddies are going to spawn from. Either way, it is just going to come down to timing and memorization, because real realism would have the badguys do things that are unexpected and then you would keep getting killed.

Maybe something like them lighting up on the minimap or screen? It isn't impossible.

Also, Stark I want to here your rant on KoTOR. Because I am a nut.

[Oskuro]

Despite their many faults, I liked JK: Outcast and Academy for the lightsaber combat as well as the Jedi feel, it might have been Jedi wank, but not as excessive as TFU. But can't agree more about the cockblock that is to give you a bunch of SW guns, and then hand you a lightsaber and force powers. MP was just a bunch of weirdos jumping around with glow-sticks, who once realised they could force-push missiles away, had no reason to do anything but randomly wave the lightsaber.

Although I must concede that the combat system was quite deep once you learned how to properly use the thing (1vs1 duels had the potential of being awesome).

Also, KotOR was nice, but not as a SW product, more as a general RPG game. It would have worked in a different setting.

[Darth Onasi]

Eh KOTOR was good, don't care what anyone says.
I have issues with the EU's half-assed attempt to shoe-horn it into the canon though, who the hell are they to tell me who my Revan was? Assholes. I hate the EU!

[Oskuro]

Agreed, my Revan was female, and black, and she kicked ass.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Of course Revan kicked ass. All must agree on that, now why that Protocol/Assassin Droid isn't still killing Jedi is what I want to know?

It's not like there's much that can stop him....

[chitoryu12]

On the subject of blocking blaster bolts, either give the protagonist some wanky super-armor that can take a bunch of hits, or do like Unleashed did for some of the bolts and have your guy just swing his sword to quickly deflect a bolt and then bring it right back into combat.

[weemadando]

On the subject of blocking blaster bolts, either give the protagonist some wanky super-armor that can take a bunch of hits, or do like Unleashed did for some of the bolts and have your guy just swing his sword to quickly deflect a bolt and then bring it right back into combat.

Just alter your design, have less guys shooting at once to allow reasonable animations to deflect without having ones come through and hit you.

Or go hog fucking wild, have the lightsaber flashing all over the place to deflect and occassionally have him raise up the off-hand to deflect a few Vader style.

[Oskuro]

Jedi Knight managed deflection quite decently, as long as you kept your guard up, you could pretty much deflect anything, save explosives or the like, it's a nice tradeoff between offense and defense (and you could spend points into lightsaber defense to increase the arc and effectiveness of the blocking). You could even aim the deflected bolts.

The Battlefront 2 option isn't half bad for a MP environment, adding a block button with an overheat indicator, so you can block, but not indefinitely.

Of course you can't expect players to actively deflect and block incoming bolts.

[Zac Naloen]

Or go hog fucking wild, have the lightsaber flashing all over the place to deflect and occassionally have him raise up the off-hand to deflect a few Vader style.

My guy does that all the time in force unleashed...

[Trogdor]

I have heard that there is some hidden cut scene in Unleashed where Jar Jar gets frozen in carbonite, though I finished the game and didn't see it. Did anybody here unearth it? Does it even exist?

Anyway, weemadando, I really wouldn't bother playing through the whole game (unless the scene I described above is actually real and you hate Jar Jar that much).

There really isn't very much in the later game that isn't there in the early game. Upgrade your force lightning enough and you can down a whole group of the basic stormtroopers with one barrage, which is kind of satisfying, but the basic stormtroopers rapidly become few and far between, replaced by wanked out stormtroopers that you may well find yourself having to run away from. And the only part of the plot that is actually surprising and somewhat clever is when Vader crashes a meeting of the rebel leaders, and Obi-Wan Kenobi, circa Ep. III, appears to fight him. It's like "WTF?!" Then, "oh, I see what you did there. Well played."

[Samuel]

I have heard that there is some hidden cut scene in Unleashed where Jar Jar gets frozen in carbonite, though I finished the game and didn't see it. Did anybody here unearth it? Does it even exist?

Anyway, weemadando, I really wouldn't bother playing through the whole game (unless the scene I described above is actually real and you hate Jar Jar that much).

There really isn't very much in the later game that isn't there in the early game. Upgrade your force lightning enough and you can down a whole group of the basic stormtroopers with one barrage, which is kind of satisfying, but the basic stormtroopers rapidly become few and far between, replaced by wanked out stormtroopers that you may well find yourself having to run away from. And the only part of the plot that is actually surprising and somewhat clever is when Vader crashes a meeting of the rebel leaders, and Obi-Wan Kenobi, circa Ep. III, appears to fight him. It's like "WTF?!" Then, "oh, I see what you did there. Well played."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMiDv-SV ... re=related


Why does he hold the lightsaber in such a retarded fashion?

[Trogdor]

Thanks for that, Samuel. I probably never would have seen it otherwise, as I am far too lazy to play that game again to find the easter eggs.

Why does he hold the lightsaber in such a retarded fashion?

I assume because someone on the dev team thought it looked cool that way.

[Ted C]

Having read Weemadando's assessment, I believe I'll stick with LEGO Star Wars and give The Force Unleashed a pass. It may take more than one hit to kill a grunt with a lightsabre, but at least they die in a satisfying shower of bricks.

[Ford Prefect]

The idea that lots of people think that Knights of the Old Republic is good and that The Force Unleashed isn't is broken. TFU is just about the only Star Wars game based on a vaguely original premise which is at all interesting: people complain that the plot violates canon and is retarded, but who the fuck cares when it's twenty million times more interesting that 'hey, looks like the Sith are trying to take over the galaxy' or 'this blind dude is totally God now but you can kill him anyway'. TFU had character progression which, though in ways cliche, was at least competantly written, well foreshadowed and thematically consistent, whereas in KotOR it's more like 'character development' actually means 'I randomly mass murder people because, you know, Bioware'.

[Darth Onasi]

Yeah cause Darth Skinhead totally doesn't murder people in ridiculously gratuitous ways.
And honestly, "Darth Vader's secret apprentice?" I've seen better premises in fan fiction. Oh yeah and it turns out you turn against Vader. NO WAY TOTALLY UNEXPECTED!

Yeah KOTOR had issues, and Bioware suffer from a deep lack of scope which becomes more evident in Jade Empire.
But to say TFU has a more original premise than KOTOR? Feh. I say, feh!

[Stark]

No, sorry. The whole 'Sith xyz will destroy universe' plot is massively old; at least TFU was just 'go fuck up some goobs, oh wait revenge!'

[Darth Onasi]

Problem is, different doesn't always mean better.
And TFU's angsty OH NOES BETRAYAL, RAR! REVENGE! And SPONTANEOUS ROMANCE with the obligatory useless female companion (because macho men aren't macho without one!) ain't exactly original.
Let's not forget Skinhead is a Gary Stu one man army who created the Rebellion and can be adept at both dark and light sides in short order (eat your heart out, Kyle Katarn) and he can hold his lightsaber like a complete Matrix wannabe prat and not burn his arm off.

Yeah I don't like him..

[Stark]

Uhhh, so you're saying KoToR isn't full of stupid plot twists, unbelievable romance and characters single-handedly shaping the galactic situation?

If you are, I must refer you to the content of the games in question.

[Darth Onasi]

Uhhh, so you're saying KoToR isn't full of stupid plot twists, unbelievable romance and characters single-handedly shaping the galactic situation?

If you are, I must refer you to the content of the games in question.

Sure it is. But then, so were the Star Wars movies. But it was done reasonably well.
TFU was just jerking off over Darth Skinhead from start to finish. Yeah you can accuse some fans of doing the same with Revan after the fact, but this was on the developers, from the start.

[Ford Prefect]

Yeah cause Darth Skinhead totally doesn't murder people in ridiculously gratuitous ways.

Uh, hello? My complaint wasn't that you kill people in KotOR, just that in order to represent you as a bad person, the Dark Side options almost invariably lead you to just randomly killing people.

And honestly, "Darth Vader's secret apprentice?" I've seen better premises in fan fiction. Oh yeah and it turns out you turn against Vader. NO WAY TOTALLY UNEXPECTED!

Yeah KOTOR had issues, and Bioware suffer from a deep lack of scope which becomes more evident in Jade Empire.
But to say TFU has a more original premise than KOTOR? Feh. I say, feh!

Good thing I didn't say that TFU was 'more original' than KotOR. KotOR, like TFU is based on a vaguely original premise: IE. it isn't basically just a retelling of the events of the films like Rogue Leader. The difference is that TFU actually capitalises on it and does something interesting, even if it doesn't fit into the canon of Star Wars. Not that I care, given that the vast majority of Star Wars media is utter dreck and anything which does something interesting with the setting is mana from Nirvana.

[Darth Onasi]

Yeah cause Darth Skinhead totally doesn't murder people in ridiculously gratuitous ways.

Uh, hello? My complaint wasn't that you kill people in KotOR, just that in order to represent you as a bad person, the Dark Side options almost invariably lead you to just randomly killing people.

Yeah I got that, but then you're comparing it to a game like TFU which is all about how many Stormtroopers you can crush with a TIE fighter on the head.

Good thing I didn't say that TFU was 'more original' than KotOR. KotOR, like TFU is based on a vaguely original premise: IE. it isn't basically just a retelling of the events of the films like Rogue Leader. The difference is that TFU actually capitalises on it and does something interesting, even if it doesn't fit into the canon of Star Wars. Not that I care, given that the vast majority of Star Wars media is utter dreck and anything which does something interesting with the setting is mana from Nirvana.

Don't see the interesting part myself, but eh.

[Stark]

ITT we learn that Onasi is a KotoR fanboy who hates TFU. It's sad because I think TFU is a terrible game, but due to level design and other issues, not because it enrages my SW fan spirit. I have to say it's existence in a totally absurd position relative to the movies certainly freed it from blandness and actually made it feel like SOMETHING might HAPPEN that you didn't already know about.

[Darth Onasi]

ITT we learn that Onasi is a KotoR fanboy who hates TFU. It's sad because I think TFU is a terrible game, but due to level design and other issues, not because it enrages my SW fan spirit.

Yes because it's not like I've continually acknowledged KOTOR'S glaring flaws.
And I hate TFU for it's rubbish design. However, I also hate it's story for being mastubatory fan fiction in quality.

I have to say it's existence in a totally absurd position relative to the movies certainly freed it from blandness and actually made it feel like SOMETHING might HAPPEN that you didn't already know about.

Well yes, stuff happened. A lot of bland, contradictory stuff.

[Stark]

Sorry pal, KotoR's writing is awful too. People just think it isn't becasue... shit, I actually don't know why. People tell me Mass Effect has a good story too, so I think it's some kind of infection. At least TFU doesn't have visors of +5% to-hit.

TFU doesn't appear to contradict itself, which frankly is all that matters. Ford's whole point is that by deliberately going outside canon the game was able to do shit it would never have been able to do otherwise. I'm with him because I'm a movie purist and thing the EU is pretty much entirely shit so I'm totaly unintersted in the canonicity issue.

[Ford Prefect]

Yeah I got that, but then you're comparing it to a game like TFU which is all about how many Stormtroopers you can crush with a TIE fighter on the head.

I hear that TFU's character development takes place in the beat 'em up sections? My complaint, which isn't exactly complex, is that KotOR's development for 'bad' characters defaults to 'mass murderer', much as 'bad' characters in Mass Effect default to 'racist asswipe'. Starkiller actually has a character: his motive is not just revenge, it's a desire to get approval from his father figure. Right up until the end of the game it's obvious that he still has faith in Vader and believes that they can kill the Emperor and rule the galaxy as father and son.