Whilst the 21st October marked the announcement of Star Wars™: The Old Republic™, LucasArts in the UK staged an event to launch The Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels on the Nintendo Wii and Star Wars: The Clone Wars Jedi Alliance for the Nintendo DS and Jedi News were fortunate enough to be invited along and to have the opportunity to interview Feargus Carroll, the Project Leader for Jedi Alliance.
Read the first part of our interview to hear what Feargus had to say about the game, both in terms of the gameplay as well as where the idea for it originated…
JN: Hi Feargus, could you tell us a bit about what you do?
FC: LucasArts was formed independently of most other games companies and I was project leader for the DS game which was based in Singapore, where the game was being built along with the TV series, actually in the same building.
[To the press agent] Do we know if the TV series has come out yet? (Editor’s note: episode 1 of The Clone Wars was being shown in another part of the venue)
JN: It airs this Saturday (25th October) on Sky Movies. I saw an advert on Sunday for it.
FC: We saw that being animated about a year ago then went back to our studio and we pulled our models directly from the TV series and configured them for our game. In the future we might just pull them straight from the TV series, but because it is for the DS we had to build our own version.
So in answer to your question, I’m the project leader and I had to go over to Singapore and set up the games studio and set up the team. My brief was, I’d read the script, I’d seen a couple of episodes and I saw that this is all about characters. It’s a high action show, I’m sure you’ve seen that, but what it’s really about is the relationships between the Jedi amongst themselves, the Jedi and the Clones and then the bad guys and the good guys. It’s an ensemble cast with the backdrop of the Clone Wars and it’s all about the warfare being played out.
So in my role, I said “we’re going to do a game about the characters in the film and the second brief was it’s a DS game,” (pulls out stylus) “and that’s your lightsaber, make that work.” There’s a DS game called Ninja Gaming which is stylus-only but we had already started working on a stylus-only game before that got announced. So my role was to give them the vision and they then came up with ideas and they then came up with characterisation an how we could tie that into the TV show. And my third thing was that I did not want to make just a version of the TV show. I wanted to do something that enhances and supports the TV show.
We had our own story and we had to get that through as far as licensing is concerned. We feature all the characters from the show and all the key Jedi and we go to many of the same locations. So you see in the movie where Ahsoka meets Anakin on Christophsis, in our game we go to Christophsis but at a different moment in the Clone Wars. Later on in the show you’ll see Padmé go to a planet called Rodia and we go to Rodia in our game. So the idea is that you play the game or watch the show first and you go “I saw that on the game” or “I saw that on the show”.
JN: So there’s a lot of crossover between the two?
FC: That’s right. So what you won’t do in our game is play that scene where Yoda is carving his way through tanks. We wanted to have it as a different thing.
JN: So with this game, is it that you go on a journey where you start at a point and then go to a destination or is it just lots of little battles increasing in difficulty?
FC: There’s a full story arc. As you guys will know, part of the Padawan training is that you build your own lightsaber. You go off to a planet and you build your own lightsaber. In the first animated Clone Wars, do you remember when Luminara and her Padawan (Barriss Offee) go there to get crystals?
JN: Yes, on Ilum…
FC: That’s right. So the concept of our story is because it’s the Clone Wars, Ilum’s out in the outer reaches and you don’t want Padawans wandering about in the outer reaches at risk without a lightsaber. So what they do is they get a whole cargo of Ilum crystals and they’re bringing them to Coruscant to allow them to build their lightsabers there in relative safety. On route to Coruscant, they get hijacked and the story is that it’s your job to find out who would do this and what could they possibly want with these lightsaber crystals. The second thing is that we’ve re-introduced a new bad guy that is unique to our game, it’s not on the TV show yet and it’s the Nightsisters. And you find out that the Nightsisters and Dooku have formed an uneasy alliance.
JN: This is on Dathomir?
FC: That’s right, and at the end of our game you go to Dathomir. That’s the one game level that’s not in the TV show. Because we had Nightsisters we had to go to Dathomir to find out what they’re up to. And as you’d assume with the Nightsisters and Dooku there’s a twist in the tail. Esentially what they’re doing, they’ve got the ability to harness Force powers and they’re using them. There’s a ship in the TV show, that fires a sonic thing.
JN: That sounds like an Ion Cannon.
FC: Yes, well in our game they are building a sister ship that can destroy cities. We don’t say it but if you like it’s a precursor to the Death Star. They’re building this big ship called the Malevolence. You have to find out what’s going on. So you discover the Nightsisters, what they are doing and oh look, Dooku’s involved too.
We feature six playable Jedi; we’ve got Anakin, Ahsoka and Obi Wan. We’ve also got Mace, Plo Koon and Kit Fisto. So something for everybody. These characters all feature in the series and I thing this was something that George was most pleased about, that it was an opportunity to expand on the back stories of these Jedi who only appear fleetingly in some of the movies.
The message of the game is that two Jedi fight stronger than one and something that you’ll pick up quite quickly in the show, is that Jedi are not like James Bond. They don’t go behind enemy lines on their own and take everybody out. They work hand-in-hand with the Clones and something that George was quite quick to pick up on was that the Clones are not battle droids in white. They’re real people with something to add.
It’s a co-op game where you choose two Jedi for each mission. They are able to fight better together which is something that’s established in the TV show and we explore that further in our game.
JN: Are there opportunities for multi-play? So you can play with someone else?
FC: It’s something that we were considering at the start but we weren’t able to get that in. We’re considering multi-player for future versions of the game but right now there isn’t.
JN: How long has the game been in development? From start to right now?
FC: Well I arrived in Singapore, it would be two years in January. So my first job was, “There’s the show, what game are you going to make?” We submitted to it to Nintendo in July.
JN: Are there any features you would have liked to put into the game but you couldn’t because you did not get a chance?
FC: Given more time to think it through I would say multi-player. However we have crammed a lot in. This is the first DS game which has got full 3D audio lip-synching. The voices from the game are the ones from the TV show. We give the player a chance to play with multiple different combinations of Jedi so in a way this is now a TV show in your pocket.
JN: With it being the Clone Wars, you are killing lots of battle droids. Are there any puzzle levels?
FC: Bearing in mind the target market, the brilliant thing that I have is my own little focus group. I have a twelve year old son and twin girls aged eleven. They’re right smack in the demographic for the show and that particular piece of hardware. I know the games they play and what they like about them. What we wanted to do was give them a range of gameplay experiences so it isn’t just fight your way through level after level.
So in every level, the guys who design the levels in a 3D package called “Sketch up” have colour coded them so the green floor was navigation and the red floor was combat and the blue section was puzzles so there are puzzles there. And again it’s about the two Jedi fighting together. For example you might see them from an overview and one’s on a corridor above and he or she has to do something there that opens a door for the other and then they have to activate a door.
JN: So they’re working in tandem.
FC: Yes, and the other thing is that there are mini games, so, you know that thing that R2-D2 does where he sticks in his little spinning thing? We’ve got a mini game that actually does that. So you play a game where you have to line the things up. Another is where you have to cut a hole in a steel door with your lightsaber. So the experiences that you get from watching the show, we turned those into mini games. You also have to think about how am I going to get my Jedi from there to there? It’s episodic.
The structure of the game, to enhance the TV show, we have ten levels. Each level ends on a cliff hanger so something really bad will happen and then it’s “meanwhile on Coruscant”. So you play one level with one pair of Jedi, then you leave them in some peril, and move onto a different pair of Jedi; then they find some peril. You then go back to the first lot and solve that particular problem, then you work your way through that level. It should take 20 minutes to half-an-hour to complete a level just as it takes 20 minutes to half an hour to watch the show.
Check back for the second part of the interview in the next couple of days
Feargus Carroll Interview: Copyright 2008 LucasArts and Jedi News. No part of this interview can be reproduced without prior written consent from Jedi News.
