Forced Unleashed: LucasArts Q&A

IGN: Would you say that this is the most 'cinematic' game you've worked on so far, in terms of mirroring film production?

Hayden Blackman: I think, for us, it's certainly an entertainment event in and of itself. It's a game on the one hand, because you're going to be playing the character, but you're embroiled in this epic storyline - which, again I think is very cinematic and very true to the movies. The cinematic moments in the game are part of telling the story - that's one component of it - it feels very cinematic because of the quality of the technology we have going into it and the quality of the actors we've been able to leverage.

IGN: Do you see The Force Unleashed as a good example of the games industry converging with the film industry? Or is the games industry expanding at the expense of films?

Hayden Blackman: Well, games are always going to be fundamentally different from films because you're not passive - you're interacting. You're there and you're engaged with the controller in your hand. But I truly believe that games are the next big form of entertainment, that every big game should be an entertainment event that everybody should know about - like everybody would know about a major blockbuster. We want the game to be immediately accessible, with broad appeal - obviously with advanced skills and techniques for hardcore players - but being able to play through the central storyline, have a really good time use your core Force powers, feel like you're using your force points for progress - that should be easy. My dad should be able to do that. And that's saying something.

IGN: Can you discuss how you approached creating the spin-off products? The toys, the comics and other merchandise?

Hayden Blackman: It was really exciting. It's been great. I mean, LucasFilm Licensing has gotten way behind this project, and part of my job has been working with LucasFilm Licensing. They've always been great with everything we've worked on, but again, because this is the next chapter in the Star Wars saga, they're behind this in a huge way. So we sat down with Hasbro and we helped which characters were going to be turned into action figures, and they've constantly been coming back to us for more - more types of characters, more feedback and keeping us in the loop on how characters have been developed.

I'm actually writing the Dark Horse comic, so the storyline will be very close to the game. But there's always been some stuff that I've wanted to explore with secondary characters that we'll be able to do, so that'll be awesome. There's also a novelisation and I've been working very closely with the author, Sean Williams. Del Ray is publishing it. So, we've been very involved - and I go back and forth with the author all the time and we've been able to do different things in the novel than we've been able to do with the games. If you read the novel, it adds to your knowledge; if you read the comic, it adds a little more and you make up your own stories with the action figure, so for me, it's really exciting that all those things are coming together.

IGN: Is this something that George Lucas really pushed for - making The Force Unleashed a 'complete experience'? Or was this internally pushed?

Hayden Blackman: This is an initiative of LucasFilms' - certainly, [George Lucas] has been involved in those discussions, but we're all part of LucasFilm and we wanted to make sure that this is a Star Wars event, just like any other one. I think we've achieved that with all the stuff that's going on and that's associated with it. There are going to be some additional things too, that we can't talk about yet; additional tie-ins and products.

IGN: Thank you for your time!

Hayden Blackman: No problem.

Read about our first impressions of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed here.

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