Picking up from where we left off in part 1 of our interview, Feargus talks more about different aspects of the gameplay as well as giving a little bit of insight as to what goes into creating the graphics….
JN: As you know, our site is called Jedi News, but we also have an alternative website called Sith News, for those people who like a bit of the dark side. Can you go over to the darkside in this game?
FC: No. And deliberately not, because for reasons I don’t know, the whole temptation by the darkside doesn’t appear in the show. If you watch this season and the next season, this is why Obi-Wan is so heartbroken in Episode III. The Anakin you see here is the noble, heroic, impetuous, brave, posterboy Jedi. There’s not a hint of him going anywhere near the darkside. And that’s why Obi-Wan is so gutted when he does turn.
JN: So it gives the impression that the fall from grace is that much greater?
FC: Exactly. And another thing, having seen the show and that key line in Episode IV when he (Luke Skywalker) says “Did you fight with my father in the Clone Wars?” and, pardon me, but f*** yes! You should see what we got up to! He was the best starfighter pilot in the galaxy. In this season you see that he was, by far, the best starfighter pilot in the galaxy.
JN: He wasn’t just being polite.
FC: They’ve taken that one little exchange and they deliver. They expand on it. He was an absolute rockstar Jedi. He was great, noble, cared about people, he cared about the clones. So that’s a very, very long way of saying no, you can’t go to the darkside in our game.
JN: With The Force Unleashed there have been extra features you have been able to get from the website. Are there going to be any extra bits that you can get following the game’s release?
FC: You know, you’ve got me there because I actually don’t know. It’s something I haven’t checked with our PR people. We’ll get back to you on that.
JN: We’ll hold you to that!
FC: Lots of games have extra levels. There are no cheat codes for the DS game but there are cheat codes for the Wii game. The Wii game is called Lightsaber Duel and the DS game is Jedi Alliance. It’s possibly the longest title for a DS game in a long time. It’s Star Wars: the Clone Wars – Jedi Alliance. We were calling it Clone Wars: The Day of the Nightsisters and at one point that was in there as well but there was no room for anything else.
JN: Maybe that could be our headline.
FC: Feel free!
JN: You mentioned about the Nightsisters, does that mean that the Rancors pop up as well?
FC: You do get to attempt to escape with your life from the Rancor in our game. Actually, here’s a little snippet for you, when they did the movie and it’ll probably come out on the DVD, but during the bit when Anakin and Ahsoka are running away, they get caught by Ventress and you’ve got Anakin and Ahsoka fighting Ventress with a Rancor running about. In the game our Nightsisters don’t ride the Rancors but there are Rancors running about.
JN: So you could recreate that scene from Return of the Jedi with Luke when he’s battling the Rancor. Rancors do seem to keep popping up as they are also in The Force Unleashed.
FC: That’s duel of the Rancors.
JN: They’re very popular.
FC: Yes.
JN: So when will the games actually be released?
FC: 14th November
JN: Just in time for Christmas!
FC: Oh yes, do you think they thought of that?
JN: Where do you want to take the game next?
FC: Well we are working on the next game in the studio, but unfortunately it’s far too early to say anything about that.
JN: Will it be a Clone Wars-linked game?
FC: That would be a reasonable statement shall we say.
JN: Is this your first involvement with LucasArts?
FC: I’ve been with LucasArts just 20 months. I was working for EA and I moved from the UK to Singapore to work on this game and this is my first project for Lucas Arts.
JN: And are you staying put in Singapore? That’s where you’re based, right?
FC: That’s right, I’m essentially the project leader of the games studio in Singapore.
JN: You mentioned earlier about the fact that with the 360 you could essentially use the same figures between the TV series and the game.
FC: The animators in the show use the product but they have an obscene number of polys and their pictures are probably about 90% similar. So essentially, you build one model and there’s only 10% difference between the show and the game.
JN: With the DS how close are you when you create smaller versions?
FC: I’ll show you on screen what it looks like (loads up DS). We’re really, really pleased because if you think about it, some of the characters in the TV show are 40 to 100,000 polys. The budget our artists had for this game was 250 polys. So by a factor of, I can’t even do the math on it. Bearing in mind the permutations I think the artists did a stunning job to get something that actually looks like the TV show.
(brings up screens on DS)
One of the things on the game as you go through that you can unlock is the model view. So there’s our Battle Droid. He’s only got 250 polys but he looks just like a Battle Droid from the TV show. You might want to see a Nightsister, (brings up picture of a nightsister) There’s one of the Nightsisters.
JN: Cool.
FC: The brief we gave the animators when they were doing the combat animation was “Darth Maul in a bar fight”. And they are lethal. Here’s Mace (brings up picture of Mace Windu). He’s in a T pose as we did not have any live animation for him, As you can see, bearing in mind the limitations that they had I think they’ve done a really good job.
JN: It looks just like it does in the show.
FC: In our game you go to Ziro’s palace and bar and Ziro’s in the game.
JN: Same voice?
FC: Same voice. Truman Capote as a Hutt. (laughs) Opinion is so divided. I think it’s a fantastic voice. Some people do and some people don’t.
JN: The character without the voice I think is brilliant but when he opens his mouth, it’s just so wrong!
FC: For the entire set of his palace we only have 2000 polys for every piece of furniture and every single character that you have on screen. He’s probably 6000 polys on his own in the TV show. You wanted to see a Rancor didn’t you (brings up the Rancor), there you go.
JN: Brilliant.
FC: And I’ll show you Ziro. Have you seen Padmé in the show yet?
JN: We’ve seen her in the film and in pictures but not actually in an episode. (FC brings up Zero). That looks fantastic.
FC: IGN showed some of the Nightsisters content. We have a range of Nightsister bosses and there are mini sisters about as well. We actually have a range of Nightsisters.
They started animating the TV show and then George got more and more involved. Originally this was just a thing for him to do. One of his many things. It was only when he started seeing the results he became more involved in directing them. And then he said well why not make a movie. So the movie was originally the first episode. Originally it was a trilogy all about Jabba the Hutt’s son. I think it’s episode 24 that they actually wrote as the bit where Anakin and Ahsoka and Obi Wan all meet. They then put them all together and made the movie. So the one that airs on Friday is Episode 5. It’s very good actually. It’s really, really cool.
JN: Does George have any involvement directly in the game?
FC: He does and he doesn’t. He didn’t on this one, or the Wii game. I know at TFU they had to go and present it to him.
JN: I’m guessing because of the the era that it was falling into and not wanting to mess up any plans he had….
FC: Howard (Roffman) runs my division and I took him through everything that we did and I was not quite sure how he was going to react to the Nightsisters because they were EU but he really liked them.
Then George did a secret visit for the premiere of the movie in Singapore and came round the studio then and loved the artwork we’d done. Then he started messing about with the Nightsisters saying they could do this or they could do that. Maybe they don’t like men and they defeat men and if a man defeats a nightsister then they’re disgraced? Then they’re not allowed to be Nightsisters. Only ones who can kick the a** of a man can be nightsisters.
And then you remember I was saying about the Lightsaber crystals being shipped back from Ilum. We showed some of our concept art to Dave Filoni and he loved that ship and he wants to put the ship that we created into season 2. You know the shuttle that Princess Leia’s on in the opening scene of Episode IV?
JN: Tantive IV.
FC: It’s a derivative of that. More engines. They thought it was great. We’re starting to feedback to them and there’s a crossover
JN: We had an interview on the site with Dave Filoni earlier on in the year. We were able to get quite a long interview with him.
Anyway, that pretty much wraps things up, so we’d just like to say thank you very much for your time.
FC Thank you.
Thanks to Feargus for giving us his time and for Lisa for arranging this for us – it’s very much appreciated.
Feargus Carroll Interview: Copyright 2008 LucasArts and Jedi News. No part of this interview can be reproduced without prior written consent from Jedi News.
