Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Preview

Why should we be interested in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, the latest in the seemingly never-ending factory line of LucasArts games based on George Lucas' spiralling science fiction saga? Because it's the best Star Wars game EVER!!11! That's according to Cameron Suey, the producer in charge of the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the game. To find out why he holds his game in such high regard, and why Euphoria, DMM, Havok and all that other crazy tech stuff makes The Force Unleashed, well, unleashed, read on.

VideoGamer.com: Would you say Force Unleashed is the best Star Wars game ever?

Cameron Suey: I'm a humble guy so I try not to use a lot of hyperbole, but it's certainly the greatest Star Wars story that we've ever told in a video game. I absolutely love the gameplay. This is the first game I've worked on, in about four years in the industry, in which I still love the game even a year-and-a-half after I've been playing it a little bit every day. Working so closely to it, usually you get sick and fed up of a game, you never want to see it again once it's done, but I still have fun every time I pick up the controller. Early on that was one of our primary goals and we achieved that. So it's certainly the most fun game that I've ever played and it's certainly the greatest story of a Star Wars game.

VideoGamer.com: But you won't go as far as to say it's the best Star Wars game ever made?

CS: You know what, I'll say it, it's for me, and greatest applies to value judgement and opinion, definitely the greatest Star Wars game. I'm of course biased!

VideoGamer.com: That's great because, being frank, some Star Wars games aren't as good as others...

CS: That is true. Star Wars is one of the greatest licenses for a videogame you could have and in the past we got a little excited about that and we put out games that probably weren't up to the quality bar that we would have liked. That's definitely something we've recognised and we understand. The more Star Wars games you put out and the more you love that environment the more it becomes mediocre and anodyne. We're really focused on telling singular, excellent Star Wars stories with engaging and innovative gameplay and cutting edge technology. That's going to be the future of Star Wars games.

VideoGamer.com: So we'll see perhaps less Star Wars games in the future?

CS: You're might see less and better. Make it right and do it right.

VideoGamer.com: That will certainly please the fans.

CS: I hope so. That's who we make these games for. We can sit in a room and we can make games for ourselves all day long but they're only going to sell five copies. We want to make games for the widest kind of Star Wars fan as possible.

VideoGamer.com: Force Unleashed is coming to every platform going, except...

CS: No Commodore 64, no Apple IIE...

VideoGamer.com: No PC...

CS: No PC as well, yes.

VideoGamer.com: We're a multiplatform website and some of our PC-owning readers have complained about this.

CS: And that's something that every time I read that, we do hear that complaint, it hurts. Our goal was we wanted to get this game to as many people as possible. I definitely wish it had been possible. However the PC being the gaming platform that it is, someone with a $4,000 high-end system would definitely be able to play the Euphoria, the DMM and really technical elements of the game. But someone with a low-end PC would have a watered down experience, they would have to turn all the settings down and it wouldn't be the same game. On the other hand if we made that game for as many people as possible, because we are trying to make mass market games, something that everybody can enjoy, well then it's not taking advantage of what those $4,000 systems can do. So one way or the other depending on how you build that lead PC SKU, it's not going to be for the same amount of people, it's going to be not as good or only for a select few people.

That said we're definitely not out of the PC market. It's just with our choice for this game, with the known quantity for the consoles, and every console is the same with the same processing power, it made sense for us to develop for those consoles.

VideoGamer.com: So the decision was purely about the PC being a varied platform?

CS: Exactly. And no matter where you pick that bar somebody's out of luck.

VideoGamer.com: It had nothing to do with piracy?

CS: I don't have my fingers in the pot of what goes into the legal part of pirating. I'm not really familiar with the figures. I understand it's a lot more prevalent in some areas than others.

VideoGamer.com: Do you guys have any message to your PC-owning fans, because you guys have a heritage on PC?

CS: Absolutely. We started on the PC. Unfortunately that goes back to the point of such a variance of the platform. There wasn't such a variance at that time and it made a lot more sense to develop on PC. The message is that we're not shutting the door on PC at all. Just for this project it happens to be that we don't have a PC SKU. I really hope that everyone can experience this game on a platform eventually.

VideoGamer.com: Might there be a PC version in the future?

CS: No. And if there was no-one has told me about it yet! I've got my head in the sand as far as this project goes. We only don't have a PC version for this product.