Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II has better AI, more open maps

There are clones aplenty in the Star Wars universe. One of them, a clone of Darth Vader’s secret apprentice Starkiller, is the main character in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II. While LucasArts is essentially bringing back the same hero from the first game, they are adding a few tweaks and upgrades to the sequel.

There are clones aplenty in the Star Wars universe. One of them, a clone of Darth Vader’s secret apprentice Starkiller, is the main character in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II. While LucasArts is essentially bringing back the same hero from the first game, they are adding a few tweaks and upgrades to the sequel.

A Guardian interview with executive producer and lead writer Haden Blackman reveals that one major focal point for the dev team is to make combat less of a button-mashing affair.

“The team has completely redesigned all the familiar Force powers from the first title including Force Push and Force Grip, and has added a few newcomers including the potentially amusing Force Mind Trick that’ll allow you to trick Storm Troopers into leaping from high ledges.”

That Storm Trooper mind trick may be harder to pull off, though, since Blackman also explained that the game’s enemy AI has been redesigned to make enemies better at navigating the more open and less linear maps. They’ve also added in a host of “tactically significant” new enemies.

The Force Unleashed II will again use three different physics engines — Havok, Euphoria, and Digital Molecular Matter — and Blackman believes that the things they learned while working on the original and the subsequent DLC releases will be one big plus for the sequel.

“The biggest difference is that the team knows how to use this stuff!” he joked. “Whenever you’re building the first iteration [of a game series] and a brand new game engine at the same time, everything comes in hot and fast – we were literally figuring out how to get the most out of those three technologies all the way up to shipping. The DLC then helped us to learn more, and that knowledge has given us the biggest leap forward.”

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II comes out on October 26.

Via [Guardian.co.uk]