E3 2010: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II Interview
Post by Steve Farrelly @ 04:02pm 02/07/10 | Comments
Prior to E3, AusGamers was invited out to LucasArts in San Francisco to check out Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II. Read on for a full interview with the game's Project lead, Julio Torres...
Sitting out at LucasArts in San Francisco, which is but a small part of the larger LucasFilm campus, AusGamers and handful of other gaming journalists from around the world had a chance to talk to Julio Torres, Project Lead for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II who happened to also work as lead producer on the first game, and has been at the helm of the snippets of DLC we've been seeing arrive for TFU since its original release.
The following is Part One of a full transcript of the round-table discussion, where we learn a lot about the game's development, evolution, re-evaluation and more. And in case you missed, here's the E3 2010 trailer, embedded for your viewing pleasure.
AusGamers: First of all I saw in the gameplay demo we were shown that the game has definitely evolved a lot, but one of the things I found with the first game was that the upgrade system was somewhat clinical, or mechanical, if you will. I felt it could have been a more organic system given the nature of the game, and character, at hand - has it changed at all for TFUII?
Julio Torres: So the improvements we've made to the upgrade system are really UI specific. So basically the system we have in place at the moment is very fluid and you move in and out of these screens at a much faster pace than you ever have before, so the interface has definitely changed. The system in place to actually cash in your points to buy the Force Powers hasn't fundamentally changed - there're many reasons for that; one is because it is an innovative product but we don't want to re-invent all the wheels, we wanted to really pick our areas that we wanted to improve and the area we looked at here was for the navigation of the system for the player's experience of that, versus creating a whole new system.
You know for me, this is by far a more action/adventure game where you want to plow through the experience and leave the RPG element lite. We want it to be accessible and friendly for a large amount of people and felt that mixing a large amount of RPG stuff would have gotten in the way of that goal.
AG: What drove the decision to go for the bigger more epic boss battles this time around?
Julio: We want you to be the biggest bad ass Jedi in the Galaxy. And in order for us to achieve that, we had to up the ante on not only the combat experiences at all the levels, you know, the AI that's at your size, mid size or even ATST size, and we realised it's just not good enough - we want to take The Force and ramp it up to levels we never have before - so we had to create these gigantic monsters and creatures in order to support that.
AG: Will we see a return of the Quick Time Events associated with boss battles?
Julio: You know that's a good question - we've been asked that a lot. So absolutely the direction for TFUII now is much more about feeling engaged with The Force, so instead of timing combat for the QTE to get you through the bosses, you're going to feel through the controller and the mini-game experience that, if you're choking something or Force Lightning something, you need to engage at the right time. You'll need to feel it in order to time the interaction correctly and you'll have feedback letting you know you've achieved that as opposed to press-and-watch, press-and-watch.
AG: So there's still an on-screen prompt?
Julio: You will be prompted on-screen to press buttons, because basically we want people to know what Force Power to use, but we are playing with the idea we may not do that right off the bat, we may actually do it after a certain amount of time (or failures) in case people don't get it.
Does that make sense? We want to try to make is accessible but at the same time we don't to make it so accessible that it's kind of... dumb.
One of the ways we're exploring your interaction with the mini-games is - and right now we're focus-testing it - to actually create the experience where it's supposed to be. So if you're supposed to be grabbing some creature in a specific portion of the body, the gameplay is there, it's not at the bottom of the screen to allow you to miss all the action - so we're working towards a user interface that engages you where we want you to be, which is where the action is.
The idea is to minimise the HUD so as to maximise the action.
AG: The awesome parallel stuff you've been giving us in the DLC...
Julio: You mean the "What If?" scenarios?
AG: Yeah! Will we be seeing anymore of that alongside events in TFUII, or decisions made through the narrative?
Julio: Just to be clear that the take-away (from here) is right, TFUII is still between Episodes III and IV. So the core experience that we're telling - you being a fugitive and working through your identity - that's all between Episodes II and IV. As far as what we do post-release with DLC or any kind of expansion... it's all on the table.
I'm a big fan of the What If? scenarios, you know, I was the Project Lead for those and they gave us huge freedom to tell stories that... you know, "wow, what if that happened?" - did you play DLC 2? You know the fact that you got Luke to be your apprentice which is something Vader could never do; that's a huge thing right. So we certainly want to play with that, we're just not ready to start talking about anything we're going to be doing post-launch.
AG: I guess the reason I ask is because they were awesome concepts, but were just too short...
Julio: That's good feedback. How long did it take you to play through it?
AG: Approximately an hour, maybe less...
Julio: And what do you feel would be a better size for one download of this nature?
AG: Well I think, and these are fundamentally different games, but the Fallout 3 DLC, I always pulled a solid three, four or even five hours out of those, and let's face it, we're talking about classic moments from Star Wars being retold in interactive form - people are going to want more out of those, so I think, like, three hours would be a good amount of time to look at.
Julio: Okay, that's great feedback; something to think about.
AG: So you guys mentioned that the engine has been retooled a little and expanded and that the game itself will cater to a little bit more exploration; are we talking more vertical exploration, you know, looking for more power-ups and that kind of thing or actual expanded level design? Because the set-pieces we've seen already look amazing...
Julio: So it's going to be more of a power-up exploration system than anything else. We are in currently developing secondary objectives, but ultimately what we really want to make sure is that we tell the best core story possible given the time-frame that we have - we're releasing October 26 - and as a Project Lead, one of my biggest goals is to really make sure that the nuggets we're tackling are polished and really well done. So I'm being really, really careful making sure that we don't try to overdo it. So my guess is that given all of that, there is going to be exploration; you're going to be able to find Holocrons and do crazy stuff, you know, if you're really good at the controller you're going to be able to do a double jump, dash, backflip to reach crazy stuff, it just won't be essential to the core experience.
AG: From what we've been told of the story and what we've seen, it seems like Starkiller is actually pretty unstable, is that going to manifest itself into the gameplay at all?
Julio: Yes. It's very important that the dynamic between his feelings of "am I clone? Am I not a clone? Why do I have these memories of being betrayed by Vader?" plays out through the core experience and we have flashback movies and we will always have you questioning whether or not he's a clone, so that it constantly manifests itself through the core experience.
AG: But will there be any moments in actual gameplay where he flips out uncontrollably, like, out of the player's hands type of thing?
Julio: Yes... I'm not sure I can reveal everything - you guys saw the Force Fury stuff in the demo right, well we're really going to play with that, but it's only going to come in certain instances, because if you were that powerful all the time, it would break the game - you just can't have a game where you're that super-powerful the whole time. But we are exploiting the fact that you are losing your own mind, and are confused about the whole experience and that won't just be story, it'll also be in gameplay.
You are so incredibly powerful that you've never felt like that before. Like, ever.
Click here for Part 2 of our interview with Julio.
The following is Part One of a full transcript of the round-table discussion, where we learn a lot about the game's development, evolution, re-evaluation and more. And in case you missed, here's the E3 2010 trailer, embedded for your viewing pleasure.
AusGamers: First of all I saw in the gameplay demo we were shown that the game has definitely evolved a lot, but one of the things I found with the first game was that the upgrade system was somewhat clinical, or mechanical, if you will. I felt it could have been a more organic system given the nature of the game, and character, at hand - has it changed at all for TFUII?
Julio Torres: So the improvements we've made to the upgrade system are really UI specific. So basically the system we have in place at the moment is very fluid and you move in and out of these screens at a much faster pace than you ever have before, so the interface has definitely changed. The system in place to actually cash in your points to buy the Force Powers hasn't fundamentally changed - there're many reasons for that; one is because it is an innovative product but we don't want to re-invent all the wheels, we wanted to really pick our areas that we wanted to improve and the area we looked at here was for the navigation of the system for the player's experience of that, versus creating a whole new system.
You know for me, this is by far a more action/adventure game where you want to plow through the experience and leave the RPG element lite. We want it to be accessible and friendly for a large amount of people and felt that mixing a large amount of RPG stuff would have gotten in the way of that goal.
AG: What drove the decision to go for the bigger more epic boss battles this time around?
Julio: We want you to be the biggest bad ass Jedi in the Galaxy. And in order for us to achieve that, we had to up the ante on not only the combat experiences at all the levels, you know, the AI that's at your size, mid size or even ATST size, and we realised it's just not good enough - we want to take The Force and ramp it up to levels we never have before - so we had to create these gigantic monsters and creatures in order to support that.
AG: Will we see a return of the Quick Time Events associated with boss battles?
Julio: You know that's a good question - we've been asked that a lot. So absolutely the direction for TFUII now is much more about feeling engaged with The Force, so instead of timing combat for the QTE to get you through the bosses, you're going to feel through the controller and the mini-game experience that, if you're choking something or Force Lightning something, you need to engage at the right time. You'll need to feel it in order to time the interaction correctly and you'll have feedback letting you know you've achieved that as opposed to press-and-watch, press-and-watch.
AG: So there's still an on-screen prompt?
Julio: You will be prompted on-screen to press buttons, because basically we want people to know what Force Power to use, but we are playing with the idea we may not do that right off the bat, we may actually do it after a certain amount of time (or failures) in case people don't get it.
Does that make sense? We want to try to make is accessible but at the same time we don't to make it so accessible that it's kind of... dumb.
One of the ways we're exploring your interaction with the mini-games is - and right now we're focus-testing it - to actually create the experience where it's supposed to be. So if you're supposed to be grabbing some creature in a specific portion of the body, the gameplay is there, it's not at the bottom of the screen to allow you to miss all the action - so we're working towards a user interface that engages you where we want you to be, which is where the action is.
The idea is to minimise the HUD so as to maximise the action.
AG: The awesome parallel stuff you've been giving us in the DLC...
Julio: You mean the "What If?" scenarios?
AG: Yeah! Will we be seeing anymore of that alongside events in TFUII, or decisions made through the narrative?
Julio: Just to be clear that the take-away (from here) is right, TFUII is still between Episodes III and IV. So the core experience that we're telling - you being a fugitive and working through your identity - that's all between Episodes II and IV. As far as what we do post-release with DLC or any kind of expansion... it's all on the table.
I'm a big fan of the What If? scenarios, you know, I was the Project Lead for those and they gave us huge freedom to tell stories that... you know, "wow, what if that happened?" - did you play DLC 2? You know the fact that you got Luke to be your apprentice which is something Vader could never do; that's a huge thing right. So we certainly want to play with that, we're just not ready to start talking about anything we're going to be doing post-launch.
AG: I guess the reason I ask is because they were awesome concepts, but were just too short...
Julio: That's good feedback. How long did it take you to play through it?
AG: Approximately an hour, maybe less...
Julio: And what do you feel would be a better size for one download of this nature?
AG: Well I think, and these are fundamentally different games, but the Fallout 3 DLC, I always pulled a solid three, four or even five hours out of those, and let's face it, we're talking about classic moments from Star Wars being retold in interactive form - people are going to want more out of those, so I think, like, three hours would be a good amount of time to look at.
Julio: Okay, that's great feedback; something to think about.
AG: So you guys mentioned that the engine has been retooled a little and expanded and that the game itself will cater to a little bit more exploration; are we talking more vertical exploration, you know, looking for more power-ups and that kind of thing or actual expanded level design? Because the set-pieces we've seen already look amazing...
Julio: So it's going to be more of a power-up exploration system than anything else. We are in currently developing secondary objectives, but ultimately what we really want to make sure is that we tell the best core story possible given the time-frame that we have - we're releasing October 26 - and as a Project Lead, one of my biggest goals is to really make sure that the nuggets we're tackling are polished and really well done. So I'm being really, really careful making sure that we don't try to overdo it. So my guess is that given all of that, there is going to be exploration; you're going to be able to find Holocrons and do crazy stuff, you know, if you're really good at the controller you're going to be able to do a double jump, dash, backflip to reach crazy stuff, it just won't be essential to the core experience.
AG: From what we've been told of the story and what we've seen, it seems like Starkiller is actually pretty unstable, is that going to manifest itself into the gameplay at all?
Julio: Yes. It's very important that the dynamic between his feelings of "am I clone? Am I not a clone? Why do I have these memories of being betrayed by Vader?" plays out through the core experience and we have flashback movies and we will always have you questioning whether or not he's a clone, so that it constantly manifests itself through the core experience.
AG: But will there be any moments in actual gameplay where he flips out uncontrollably, like, out of the player's hands type of thing?
Julio: Yes... I'm not sure I can reveal everything - you guys saw the Force Fury stuff in the demo right, well we're really going to play with that, but it's only going to come in certain instances, because if you were that powerful all the time, it would break the game - you just can't have a game where you're that super-powerful the whole time. But we are exploiting the fact that you are losing your own mind, and are confused about the whole experience and that won't just be story, it'll also be in gameplay.
You are so incredibly powerful that you've never felt like that before. Like, ever.
Click here for Part 2 of our interview with Julio.
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