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Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

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Developed by:
Release Date:
9/16/08
Media:
multimedia project


Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is a multimedia project developed by LucasArts along with Dark Horse Comics, Lego, Hasbro, and Del Rey Books. It consists of two video games, a tie-in novel, action figures, a comic book, a reference book and a Star Wars Roleplaying Game supplement, as well as a book on the making of the game. The game will be available on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, PlayStation Portable, Nintendo DS, N-Gage 2.0, iPhone (mobile phone), and PlayStation 2 platforms.

Story[]

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed tells the story of Darth Vader's secret apprentice, code-named "Starkiller" but born Galen Marek. Set between Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, the story explores the aftermath of the Great Jedi Purge as well as the rise of Darth Vader. The events of The Force Unleashed are "pivotal" in Darth Vader's history and development as a character, and offer illumination into other characters from A New Hope, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, and Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi

Novel[]

Sean Williams' novelization was released in the United States on August 19, 2008. It spent one week as #1 on both Publishers Weekly's respectively, the following week. It also reached #15 on USA Today's bestsellers list

Williams took on the writing project in part because of the "catchy description" of The Force Unleashed being Episode 3.5 of of the Star Wars saga.

The novel focuses on the dark side of the Force and its practitioners; Williams found it "interesting" to portray the Jedi as "bad guys". The author most enjoyed developing the character of The Force Unleashed's main character. Williams also said that while the game allows the player to "do" Marek's actions, the novel allows readers to experience Marek's thoughts about those actions, adding another dimension to the story.

Other products and critical response[]

The Force Unleashed game will be released in North America on September 16, 2008; in Australia and Southeast Asia on September 17, 2008; and in Europe on September 19, 2008. A PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 demo was released for download on August 21, 2008. The Apprentice was licensed to Namco/Bandai to be a playable character in both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of Soulcalibur IV.

At Toy Fair 2007, Hasbro showed seven figures from their action figure line based on the game. Lego released a model of the main character's ship, the Rogue Shadow.

Dark Horse's The Force Unleashed graphic novel was published August 18, 2008. Newsarama called the graphic novel a "solid story" that matches the video game source material in both structure and plot.

External links[]

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