Force Unleashed 2 Is Too Much

[the_rotton_core]

You know what I miss? Dark Forces. You know the one star wars game that doesn't have any Jedi nonsense. Where you shoot stormtroopers with blaster rifles and throw thermal detonators at them? Seriously, that was a fun game. Why has the "non-Jedi" aspect of the Star Wars universe been so dismissed? Where are the stories about Han, Chewie, Lando, Boba Fett and Jabba the Hutt?

Wait, don't do that Lucas. You'll just f**k it up.

Dark Forces 2 was jedi Knight 1. But I agree it would be nice to have a mercinary style game set in the star wars universe.

On the subject of too awesome I'm reminded of one halloween when myself and a group of friends were watching the Thing. We'd barely batted an eyelid at the at the gory monstrous deaths all through the film. Then came one seen where they were taking blood samples to see who was human and who was a Thing. There was a close up shot of a scalpel running across a persons thumb and everyone in the room visibly cringed.

Lets face it, we've all had a paper cut on our thumb so we know how bad it feels but do we know what it feels like to be torn to pieces by a big alien monster thing?
This lack of relatability (is that a word? I'm just gonna go with it) is also my beef with the Saw franchise (aside from the overall lack of plot or credible acting) the deaths are just to elaborate to the point where I simply can't relate to the situation the characters are in.

 

[Azrael the Cat]

You know what's sad about Force Unleashed 2? When I first heard about it was only a day or two before the street date. And honestly the first thing that went through my mind. "He's dead! TFU was supposed to be canon, how in god's name do you bring him back? Cloning? Jesus Jumped-up Christ, Lucas! ENOUGH WITH THE CLONES!"

Now we see the point of the whole cloning nonsense. Boba Fett is a clone, Starkiller is cloned and reborn. Lucas has introduced cloning as freaking retcon white-out. And when these new Star Wars films come out supposedly set thousands of years in the future. What? Emperor Palpatine? They cloned him?

*facepalm*

Anyway there's no possible way TFU could have been good. TFU was basically the Jedi Knight series cranked up to 11, so you know TFU2 was gonna be the same thing. And the story was gonna suck and... Yeah, no point in dragging this out.

You know what I miss? Dark Forces. You know the one star wars game that doesn't have any Jedi nonsense. Where you shoot stormtroopers with blaster rifles and throw thermal detonators at them? Seriously, that was a fun game. Why has the "non-Jedi" aspect of the Star Wars universe been so dismissed? Where are the stories about Han, Chewie, Lando, Boba Fett and Jabba the Hutt?

Wait, don't do that Lucas. You'll just f**k it up.

Ahh Dark Forces, good memories. How awesome would it be if you had a new 'Dark Forces' style game, with no jedi powers, and no 'I'm-not-a-jedi-but-I'll-still-have-random-superpowers' either, where occasionally you have to take out Jedi as bosses. Either by outsmarting them (ala Atton Rand's list in KotOR 2 of the various ways he successfully killed Jedi when working as a non-jedi, hence undetectable, assassin), or by some truly badass fighting. Would be nice to see the tables turned on the player for the first time in a decade or so, and have the poor PC have to take out the Jedi/Sith lord.

 

[Azrael the Cat]

Ohh, Carpenter's The Thing. Great film. Truly a great film. Superb exercise in how to do a film where the 'monster' isn't particularly powerful, could easily be killed if identified, but fear itself slowly causes everyone to crack and leave vulnerabilities in their plans (note how most of the characters in the film get killed by OTHER characters, or deliberately trapped by other characters to be killed, rather than killed by the 'thing's own machinations?).

Heck, even the 'hero' takes out one or two innocent characters.

 

[KAR849]

Jedi Knight 1 did the good/bad ending well in my opinion. Though of course it was simplistic execution in retrospect, but both endings were satisfying enough.

 

[Crazy_Bird]

Anyone remembers Darth Nihilius from Kotor 2?

That guy was said to be a able to destroy planets. This guy was practically a deathstar on legs with serious roid abuse related problems.

That's why I don't see much sense in the Starkiller is overpowered argument. He is not the worst example. Yet Yahtzee is right how this could evolve in such a way.
The modern additions to the Star Wars myth just undermines the consistency of the first trilogy.

 

[Fdzzaigl]

I absolutely agree with this. It's a problem of popular media resorting to 'populism'.

While I have absolutely no problem with popular media and I'm really not an elitist who only plays the 'most original and complex games out there' or some such, I hate it when populism enters the fray.

It's the kind of thing you see with TFU: you have the force and people kind of liked it. Why? Because it showed how guys in the films used some mysterious and all-encompassing power that no one really understood.

So a couple of games were made on that concept and then you have TFU and the makers probably kind of though: ok the force lightning and the force pushing things around is liked by people; lets just throw a shitload of effects on it and make everything bigger and better.

But they forgot that what made the force awesome in the (first) films, was that while some could use it, it really wasn't an every day thing and that reconfirmed that mystery: it wasn't easy to use it.

That's what populism is: using a popular concept while losing all the volume, all the actual content of that concept.

Contrary to the makers ideas, people get tired of all this OP crap sooner or later. It's like a children's game: remember when you played with action figures? These were usually fun until they were 'able' to defeat every bad guy in the book within the blink of an eye, then it was usually time to move on to the next set of heroes.

 

[OceanRunner]

I have long since regarded TFU as part of it's own seperate continuity.

 

[Antonio Torrente]

I feel the same way about some game guns.

I'm sorry, your testicle powered thirty barreled lightning shooting shotgun bazooka artillery cannon... thing is cool and all, but I prefer my assault rifle with a scope.

This is one of those times that simple is better

 

[Valiard]

Yeah Nihilius in KOTOR 2 was underwhelming i mean the fight with Sion was way more interesting in that physical might was never able to kill him, that you needed to psych him out was an interesting twist.

 

[taltamir]

the thing to remember about lucas, his "great success" was the first 3 movies. Back then he was a nobody and he had a good director assigned that severely modified the scripts to be less stupid. (the original scripts by lucas were retarded)... then he got big and famous and got full creative control to do whatever he wanted... guess where that got us?

 

[Azabondiia]

I agree in principle with the idea that the stunt in Indy 4 broke from the established reality of the medium. Because Indy is an adventure story (heroic / mystic stuff happens), rather than a fantasy (stuff happens by magic), its pretty clear to see an issue with an unrealistic stunt.

But can the same be said for FU2, the force (which is basically magic), doesn't need to fit into our reality, because its magic.

Star Killer can be the mutts nutts when it comes to the force, thats fine - but where I do see the disconnect is the fact that Vader and Sideous are both rubbish compared to Star Killer - but thats the problem doing prequels, you always end up jumping the shark because you can - which I believe is the point that is being made.

In short, all things made later - seem more advanced than things made in the past - even if they are set before events that occurred. (Star Trek has similar problems)

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

You complain that those bosses are too big yet a few weeks ago you praised shadow of the colossus. I see a little inconsistency in your ramblings.

But didn't Yahtzee make the point that the Colossi "feel" real, shaking the ground and pawing sleepily at the player clinging onto them?

Personally I thought that Crystal Skull's most "real" scene, and in fact the only genuinely affecting one in the movie, involved two elderly professors talking in a classroom. (Of course, it didn't hurt that the professors in question were played by Harrison Ford and Jim Broadbent.) The characters spent most of the movie dashing from place to place, but it was the moments when they stopped running about and took time with each other that really resonated for me. That's not a good quality for an action / adventure-themed movie to have.

 

[VondeVon]

The most amusing part this week was the side rant about Indiana Jones. The escapes orchestrated by a clairvoyant lunatic were the best parts!

 

[SageRuffin]

If I may go on a tangent, I still believe that SW:tFU, as well as Galen by extension, would probably be better accepted if it wasn't tied to the Rise of the Empire; like, if it was set long after the Legacy era or something. That way, instead of trying to shoehorn characters from the original saga into the storyline/gameplay, it instead only has to make indirect references, like how you can easily refer to Yoda by saying something like:

"One's power in the force is not measured solely by the appearance of the individual. There once lived a great Jedi master, the smallest thing you ever saw... he could as easily control the world around him as any other."

You know, something like that. Pardon me if I sound like a lobotomized retard for even trying to defend SW:tFU (of which you can kiss my ass since I actually enjoy the games and am eagerly waiting for more DLC to drop), but I think the one saving grace the series needed was to not set between episodes 3 and 4. Hell, I have a video on YouTube [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2CsU9TKOAM] where me and a friend are playing a nice little game of SCIV (you know, that featured very choice Star Wars characters), and everyone freaked out at the fact that Galen was even created and might be as powerful if not more so than Darth Vader; I've since disallowed comments because people wouldn't stop being fucking morons about it (feel free to ask for specifics).

I'm starting to ramble, so I'm gonna stop here and get back to achievement grinding.

Addendum: And for the record, Galen didn't so much pull the Star Destroyer out of the sky as he just redirected its trajectory.

 

[I forgot]

As usual another excellent article that isnt meant for mere laughs but to actually change the industry, a true observation of human fallacies.

Yahtzee Croshaw is the John Stewart of Gaming, give it a couple more years and I see Yahtzee leaving the simple internet media and branching out into the public's eye.

Actually, I kind of dread that day because he's still an amateur at game criticism. Almost all of his works are filled with fallacies, even now.
The problem with both of these cases is that they don't want to put fear, they want to empower. You're not supposed to be afraid with Kratos because he's a god killer with amazing strength. Plus, he's comparing this to Condemned, which is a Horror game. No duh you're more likely to be afraid. He misses the point of these games. I want to know what gave him the idea that a game where you beat up monsters, gods and titans wanted to instill fear?

If he's an amateur, you're not even in scratching distance of him.
Horror game or not, you want to feel your emotions evoked, to find yourself in front of a challenge that you may be apprehensive to approach. You have to be realistic and relatable if you want the player to feel even remotely connected to the characters and the process at hand. Games that pride themselves as ridiculous don't have to deal with this. Saints Row 2's reckless abandon of realism and Team Fortress 2's charming art style can attest to this. But any game that wants to have a semblance of realistic struggle needs to have some sense of scope. "Empowerment"? Hardly. Whatever empowerment God of War 3 grants is easily offset by the amount of detachment to the game you feel once you become to powerful.

To put this into perpective, can you imagine playing Grand Theft Auto 4 as the mayor of SimCity? No, you can't. You can't imagine that kind of gritty realism when you're conjuring up tornadoes. The struggles in Max Payne become laughable. When you're a god among men, there are no interesting men.

Seriously, I think you're just mad because of what I said about Yahtzee. In a way, I'm not even disagreeing with you (you don't get a sense of apprehension from Kratos because he's so damn strong) so I don't know who you're responding to. If this was about a game like Dead Space, I'd find nothing wrong with his point. I only found something wrong with his example and him insinuating that games should be more realistic.

I'm as mad as you're pretending not to be, smartass.
And you're missing the point. A good struggle needs to be not only interesting, but understandable. You take down ships of unfathomable size in Force Unleashed 2, to the extent at which you just don't care anymore, and the kind of emotions you intended to evoke is missed completely as you take them down Star Destroyers like anything else. Where do you go from there? Lifting a star fighter out of a swamp looks pretty fuckin' wimpy in comparison. You just overshadowed an entire franchise's worth of scope just to impress someone for thirty seconds. It's called moderation, and that game doesn't have it. You don't need to pull a rabbit out of your ass to impress people. Jules from Pulp Fiction can do it with a gun and a random bible verse. He didn't kill a spaceship; he just showed complexity of character. There is a time and a place for everything. And that "everything" is not interchangeable with "Deus Ex Machina".

I said in a way I agree with you and you're still going on. You're making arguments with an imaginary person. You sure showed me you weren't mad at what I said.

 

[ImprovizoR]

You complain that those bosses are too big yet a few weeks ago you praised shadow of the colossus. I see a little inconsistency in your ramblings.

In Shadow of The Colossus you weren't an overpowered Jedi with 2 lightsabers. You're just a dude. It's ridiculous how Starkiller is overpowered. Even a monster 100 times bigger than him can be easily defeated. And then you're supposed to feel tension when you fight stormtroopers afterwards?
I know exactly what Yahtzee is saying. Just play TFU2 and then go play Jedi Knight 2 and see for yourself how a Star Wars game should be made. In Jedi Knight you're constantly struggling to be just a little more powerful and skillful because it can save your life. In TFU2 you just press buttons randomly and everything around you dies. On top of that you have something like Kratos in God of War that allows you to be even more powerful for a limited amount of time after you kill enough enemies. And that move allows you to kill everything in one hit!

 

[NeoShinGundam]

This is how Final Fantasy XIII was turned into a train-wreck. Square-Enix concentrated SO much on making every battle an EPIC CLASH OF SUPER-MEGA EPICNESS. Yeah they look really great, but they last FOREVER!!! Playing the game, it feels like everything else (the characters, the plot, linear level design) are after thoughts only there to move you from one overly-cinematic fight scene to the next.

Here's a little tip for game designers: when you make every encounter "special" in the exact same way, special will eventually lose its luster and become the new Average.

 

[Doomcat]

I agree with what Yahtzee says...im actually more scared of monsters in Minecraft then i am of monsters such as giants or ogres or whatever you want to call those gigantic things that they put in everywhere.

Minecraft makes you Vulnerable and makes the monsters plausibly strong. it makes afraid to go out at night. enough said.

 

[Atmos Duality]

"Design by committee".

That's a more generalized version of the precise answer: "Design by Marketing"

The Force Unleashed (1 and 2) is about marketing a power trip to children. So few games specifically demonstrate what their goal is than this one (ESRB ratings be damned).
You do flashy things, and people fall down. That's it. That's the level of depth they needed to achieve in order to sell.

If you go into any deeper territory, you encounter two problems:
1) You begin to alienate the younger audience, as you move towards topics that require a higher mental maturity.
2) It takes effort, which means time and money. You don't have those after blowing your budget on special effects.

This is the exact manner in which the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy was written, and it's the manner in which most games are made today.

The industry will not change unless faced with inevitable collapse. American TV is facing a similar crisis, culminating in the relatively recent Writer's Strike.
Why are there so many utterly worthless, stupid reality TV shows? Because the TV executives have discovered the lowest common denominator: Bruckheimer Cop-Shows and stupid people doing stupid things in front of a camera.

 

[Azrael the Cat]

Anyone remembers Darth Nihilius from Kotor 2?

That guy was said to be a able to destroy planets. This guy was practically a deathstar on legs with serious roid abuse related problems.

That's why I don't see much sense in the Starkiller is overpowered argument. He is not the worst example. Yet Yahtzee is right how this could evolve in such a way.
The modern additions to the Star Wars myth just undermines the consistency of the first trilogy.

2 big things with Nilhus, explaining why you cannot compare him as a contradiction to normal starwars power. Starkiller is a Sith/Jedi - a straight up user of the force. Nilhus, Sion, Kreia and the PC are NOT. They are something....else....as explained in the game.

Nihlus, and almost all the main antagonists and protagonists in KoTOR2 are accidents - not truly Jedis. Nihlus is unsustainable - he is a force vampire, that must keep feeding and feeding or wither away and die. He is neither a true jedi nor sith - just something horrible created by the monstrosity the PC did at Malachor 5.

Similarly for Darth Sion. He is seemingly invulnerable, but also a side-effect, a monstrosity of limited lifespan created by the monstrosity of Malachor 5.

And, of course, (made far more obvious with the restoration patch) so is the PC. He NEVER got his force powers back. He is a hole in the force, which went unnoticed when he was in exile in the outer planes. When he returned he started sucking the force out of the lifeforce of the planets he was on. Then due to his nature, he started gathering force sensitives to him without even realising it, both light and dark, and wielding unexplained influence over them. As is revealed later, he is draining them, whether he wants to or not. He's neither a sith nor a Jedi - the Jedi SUCCEEDED in cutting him off from the force after what he did at Malachor 5. He's become a hole in the force, draining all around him, which is why he is so powereful. You can't measure him, or Nilhus, or Sion, by ordinary Jedi or Sith rules because they aren't Jedi or Sith. They are something far more horrible - so horrible that the remaining Jedi Masters risk their lives to try to kill the protagonist even if he is complete light side, as he is just too dangerous, draining all around him even if he doesn't want to.

And Kreia? She's an odd one, and the hardest to explain. She's the only one I'm aware of who has truly managed to walk the neutral path between Sith and Jedi. At different stages (there's a walkthrough on the web that traces this brilliantly, as it's hard to follow in the game, as so much crucial info is shown momentarily, or put in hints at near-opposite ends of the game, or requires you to combine info you can only get from ultra high or ultra low rep with some characters. But she is only pretending to be Sith when she kills the Jedi masters and kidnaps your companions later. Just like she pretended to be kind-of-Jedi earlier. She is neither, and she knows what you are. She realises - correctly - that the universe will be doomed to repeat these wars, destroying itself time and time again as the Jedi and Sith fight for power. Moreover, she points out the troubling feature of the Star Wars universe - both Jedi and Sith are determinist philosophies, while any Jedi or Sith exist the rest of the galaxy has no free will.

So she hopes that Nihlus - the force vampire - can destroy all the big centres of Jedi, while the PC - the force black hole - can destroy all the Sith, and that when they meet the force black hole will kill the force vampire of starvation. And that once these creations of Malachor 5 - these things that THINK they are jedi or sith, but are really neither - once they kill every single remaining jedi and sith in the galaxy, and the PC (the force black hole) kills Sion and Nihlus, then Kreia can kill him and then herself, freeing the galaxy from eternal cycles of war, and giving it free will away from the Jedi/Sith cycle.

Of course, things don't go that way. The PC not only gathers force sensitives - he trains them. And as Kreia recognises they will form the future Jedi - the council that we see in the Star Wars 1-3 movies - something more warlike and ready to act than the council we see in KoTOR 1. Nonetheless, Kreia's last words: the PC, whatever he is, is not a Jedi, nor a Sith, and that gives her hope.