Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

According to lead producer Vinde Kudirka, the goal of the game across all platforms is to make the player feel like "a super-powerful Jedi".[8] Executive producer Julio Torres said that while the story is consistent across platforms, gameplay decreases in style across platforms to reflect each platform's uniqueness and strengths.[8] The Wii's control scheme is focused on being able to precisely control Starkiller's Force powers and saber combos.[8] The Wii exclusive "Force rage" power puts the game's protagonist, Starkiller, into a bullet time mode exclusive to that platform; the Wii version also has a Force sight power not included on other platforms.[8] The Wii version also has a multiplayer mode, inspired by The Outfoxies, in which four players can challenge each other in a fighting-style combat game.[9][10] The Wii game also has an extra story-based level, on Dagobah, that is not present in the HD version of the game, making the plot of the Wii game slightly different from the HD version.[11]

The PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 versions feature new Force powers, new skins for Force powers that appear in The Force Unleashed, an improved rendering system providing richer colors, and a new audio system.[8] The gameplay also highlights the potential to "destroy" the game environment.[8] Neither of the PC, PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 versions of the game include multiplayer.[12] The Nintendo DS version features the same Force powers as the console versions, but was designed for shorter play sessions due to its mobile nature.[8]

A downloadable content (DLC) level was released in December 2010, providing a continuation of the non-canonical Dark Side ending of the game, with the dark Starkiller clone depicted in said ending as the protagonist. The level is set in a different timeline from any other pieces of Star Wars media, including the first game's own dark alternate timeline depicted in its expansions.

The level takes place during an alternate depiction of Return of the Jedi, primarily the Battle of Endor, where the remnants of the Rebel Alliance lead a desperate attack on the Empire's new battle station, the Death Star II. Darth Vader's trusted apprentice, the dark Starkiller clone, arrives on Endor with special orders to eliminate the Alliance's remaining leaders. Slaughtering numerous Ewoks and Rebel soldiers in his path, he arrives at the shield generator protecting the Death Star, where he kills Han Solo and Chewbacca. The dark apprentice then confronts Princess Leia Organa, who has been training as a Jedi after her brother Luke Skywalker's death on Hoth to fulfill his failed destiny of restoring balance to the Force. Following a fierce duel, the dark apprentice slays Leia. Aboard the Death Star, the Emperor declares the Rebel Alliance defeated, then subdues Vader with Force lightning while chastising him for resurrecting his failed apprentice as a clone, claiming he knew of Vader's plans to overthrow him using the clone from their inception. Deeming the clone too powerful to be kept alive, the Emperor orders his forces to kill him. As the dark apprentice meditates near Leia's corpse, he senses Star Destroyers nearby.

Haden Blackman served as a writer for the sequel,[18] and was only given a mere 3 weeks by Lucasarts to write the game's script. In crafting the dialogue of The Force Unleashed II, Blackman sought influence from Darksiders (2010), as well as other video games such as Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (2009) and Heavy Rain (2010).[19] In the wake the early stages of conceiving The Force Unleashed II, the main protagonist Starkiller was initially intended to be replaced with a new lead character, but such plans never materialized as LucasArts opted to develop more backstory for the character.[2] As the character progression of Starkiller initiates, the story follows a dark nature—much like its predecessor. Blackman suggested that as opposed to his empathic tendencies in The Force Unleashed, Starkiller becomes conflicted with his loss of an identity, ultimately culminating into what he called a "much more personal story";[2] "He's dealing with a sense of identity and not knowing whether he's going insane or not," he added, "and the possible collapse of the Rebel Alliance, and his being torn between what he wants and what Kota wants."[2] Blackman's main objective was to have the storyline be attractive to a broad audience; while he asserted that fans with a general understanding of the Star Wars franchise would be more enthralled with the storyline, Blackman emphasized the need to appeal to a more mainstream demographic.[2] "With The Force Unleashed II again we're trying to create a story that if you’ve played The Force Unleashed," explained the comic book writer, "you're going to know a bit more going into it, but hopefully the story still stands on its own and you can enjoy it even if you haven't played [the first game], whether or not you're familiar with all the continuity."[2]

To avoid any perceived continuity constraints, they would travel to the headquarters of Lucasfilm in San Francisco, California to give an overview of their plans. "With The Force Unleashed II, remarked Blackman, "because we’d already established this notion of Darth Vader’s secret apprentice, really it was just sitting down with licensing and saying ‘this is what we want to do’ and getting a few pieces of feedback from them."[2]

The primary cast from the previous game returns to voice their characters again in The Force Unleashed II. Sam Witwer returns to provide both the likeness and voice of Starkiller, the game's protagonist. He also voices Emperor Palpatine having earned the part during a read-through of the script during development. Witwer petitioned David Collins, voice of PR0XY and audio lead for the game. He told Collins that "if [he was not] going to get Ian McDiarmid to do this [...] I'll do it."[20] Actress and model Nathalie Cox reprises her role as Juno Eclipse, as does Cully Fredrickson as General Rahm Kota.[21] Matt Sloan, who portrays Darth Vader in the webseries Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager and voices Vader in the original The Force Unleashed returns to the role in The Force Unleashed II.[22] Veteran Star Wars: The Clone Wars voice actors Tom Kane and Dee Bradley Baker are also included amongst the cast. Kane voices Jedi Master Yoda, a role he has provided several times within the Star Wars franchise. Baker voices bounty hunter Boba Fett, a clone and adopted son of Jango Fett. Baker provides the voice of all of the clone troopers in the Clone Wars series, of which Boba is one.[23]

The Force Unleashed II derives from LucasArts' Ronin 2.0 game engine, an update to a similarly named proprietary game engine used by its predecessor.[19] Like The Force Unleashed, the game integrates three third-party technologies: Havok for varying types of body physics such as ragdoll animation, NaturalMotion's Euphoria for realistic non-player character artificial intelligence, and Digital Molecular Matter for dynamic destructible objects.[4][19] Blackman felt the second game takes better advantage of the powerful engine than does the first game.[4] LucasArts acknowledged players' frustration with the first game's targeting system, and worked to revise it in the sequel;[6] Blackman said fixing the Force grip feature was the developers' top priority.[4] The game also includes fewer enemy types, instead focusing on making enemies more "'special and unique'"; the game was also designed to offer "epic" boss battles.[4] Other adjustments include allowing players to dismember enemy characters and improving menu speeds.[6][24]

The game is AMD Eyefinity validated.[25]

The audio engine received a massive overhaul to upgrade the quality of sound effects.[19] Brian Tibbetts was declared the lead sound designer of the sound effects team, resuming his endeavors from The Force Unleashed. David Collins, who formerly served as the lead sound designer, sustained a supervisory position.[26] The sound effects team was divided to address specific details; Tom Bible was in charge of creating sound for weapons and force powers, while Aaron Brown specialized in the spaceships.[26] Although some effects were borrowed from The Force Unleashed, the vast majority of sounds were completely new.[26] Tibbetts thought that collaborating with his peers to be one of the most complex and challenging parts of his job. "I chose to have my office in the main area of game development and always had an open door policy regarding communication with other disciplines. There were many meetings regarding asset changes and in general communication at Lucasarts is good between disciplines. I’ve always stressed that we should work together as much as possible and there were many moments of myself and sound designers working directly with designers, artists, and producers at their desks or ours."[26]

The nine-month schedule of The Force Unleashed II caused difficulties with Tibbetts, who found it frustrating to keep up with the frenetic schedule.[26] "There are many different ways to integrate our audio assets including scripting or placing sound emitters directly inside environment art and our work was unfortunately blown out many times," he stated.[26] As production neared its conclusion, Tibbets created an emailing system with a group of engineers that would notify them after audio reference was edited. According to Tibbetts, "This helped a lot especially as the responsible parties didn’t realize or intend to blow us out and were more than happy to help resolve the situation. By the time this tool was built though, we had already had to re-author/integrate excessively though which is always frustrating."[26]

Dmitry Andreev devised a framing system that gave the illusion of operating at 60 frames per second (FPS), despite running at 30FPS. To familiarize himself with the process, Andreev observed various 120 Hz television sets that incorporated two frames in producing an intermediate image, resulting in a smoother and clearer picture.[27] The design team utilized a variety of interpolation techniques on multiple parts of an image, such as transparency and reflection.[27] Andreev stated that "as soon as I got back home, I started to play with it and soon after that realised that there are a lot of issues. Mostly the artifacts of a different kind, that appear in more or less complex scenes, as well as performance issues [...]."[27] In response to the difficulties, he constructed a prototype that performed several enhancement techniques which examined images for vectors that demonstrated how "elements of the image would move from one frame to the next".[27] The LucasArts coder realized that such processes could be repackaged for a different use. "We already know how things are moving as we have full control over them. This way we don't need to do any kind of estimation," he professed.[27]

Interpolating the graphics in 30FPS was opted due to the large variety of rendering technologies that were practical to developers, as well as a less stringent time schedule.[27] Although Andreev felt that it was not impossible to produce a video game in 60FPS graphics, he felt that it would require much more rigorous efforts on art, engineering, and design. "It is fair to say that in a lot of cases," he explained, "during pre-production, studios try to see what it would take to make a 60FPS game. Then, they get something that doesn't look very pretty when running at 60, realising that all the art has to be produced very carefully as well as level and game design."[27]

The Force Unleashed II performed under expectations. In the United States, it sold 500,000 copies within its first two weeks,[28] thereby becoming the fifth best-selling video game of October 2010.[29] The Force Unleashed II was the fifth-highest selling game of the week in the United Kingdom, denoting sales of 56,064 copies.[30] In Sweden, The Force Unleashed II was the third best-selling overall game of the week; the PlayStation 3 version of the game topped its respective chart, while the Xbox 360 version trailed behind Fable 3 as the second-best selling Xbox 360 game of the week.[31]

Commentators were divided on The Force Unleashed II. The Observer columnist Toby Moses avouched that the game failed to live up to the expectations established by its predecessor.[58] Alexander Sliwinski of Joystiq derided it as a "desperate cash grab", which had no intentions of aspiring to be a "major part of lore or to be nearly as epic" as The Force Unleashed.[59] "It simply cobbles together glorified fan fiction for what amounts to an unexceptional subplot as it abruptly ends in the second act screaming, 'SEQUEL GOES HERE'," remarked Sliwinski.[59] Despite proclaiming that The Force Unleashed II had "dazzling" gameplay, The Washington Times' journalist Joseph Szadkowski concluded that it was "one of the most underachieving games of the year".[60] In his 6.5 out of 10 rating review, Anthony Gallegos of IGN stated that The Force Unleashed II immediately captivates the audience with its visuals, albeit being plagued with repetitious gameplay, a "shoe-horned in story", and a nonexistent depth "in the experience".[57] "Scenery is, of course, massive and massively impressive, and the possible repetitive nature has been broken up with some freefalling levels and the odd exploratory moment," commented Neil Davey of The Guardian, who issued the game a four out of five stars.[61]

Game Informer' Andrew Reiner said the game's mechanics are more fluid than the first game's, and praised the textures and animations as "among this generation's best".[43] GamePro's Mitch Dyer and Matthew Keast of GamesRadar highlighted the game's variety of lightsaber crystals and their ability to boost Starkiller's powers.[45][51] Keast observed that LucasArts seemed to take player feedback from the first game seriously, and made numerous subtle improvements for the sequel.[51] He also praised "substantial" improvements to the Force grip power, although Alexander Sliwinski of Eurogamer did not detect any improvements.[42][51][62] The Writers Guild of America nominated the game for its Outstanding Achievement in Video Game Writing recognition.[63]

John Teti of Eurogamer said the game overall "feels like it was created out of obligation rather than inspiration", and points toward Blackman's departure from LucasArts before the game's release as a potential sign of trouble.[42] IGN's Anthony Gallegos criticized the game's repetitive level design and underdeveloped story. He also felt that because Starkiller begins the game as a powerful character, leveling up does not feel as satisfying as in the first game; while the game does offer increased variety in enemy types that "occasionally present a challenge", defeating them eventually becomes formulaic.[57] Andrew Reiner of Game Informer criticized the story and the dissatisfying appearances by Boba Fett and Yoda.[43] GameSpot's Kevin VanOrd called the final battle repetitive, and that the game's end sequence erases the story's dramatic tension.[49] The Force Unleashed II was later one of GameSpot's nominees for "Least Improved Sequel of 2010".[64] GamePro' Mitch Dyer faulted several performance issues and the game's brief, unfocused story.[45] The downloadable content was poorly received by Luke Plunkett of Kotaku, who criticized the murder of Han Solo and Chewbacca depicted in the expansion.[65]

Nintendo Power praised the Wii version's multiplayer mode,[66] as did Lucas M. Thomas of IGN.[67] GameSpot's Kevin VanOrd was more critical of the multiplayer, calling it "unspectacular".[48] VanOrd did go on to praise the game's art, combat, and control scheme.[48]