We speak to Force Unleashed writer Haden Blackman, as LucasArts announces the Ultimate Sith Edition

Apparently, you pitched several ideas to George Lucas – why did he opt for The Force Unleashed? What is it about the story that struck a chord with him?

HB: We did pitch several concepts to George Lucas, mostly for approval over some specific elements like the time period. He gave us very general, high-level feedback in those early meetings regarding what he liked and didn’t like about each concept. Eventually, we pulled elements from several concepts and crafted those into what ultimately became The Force Unleashed. But the game was really green-lighted based on some early pre-vis work we did to show the potential of the over-the-top Force powers, which George evidently saw as well-suited for a game. In terms of basic story advice, he encouraged us to create new characters based on familiar archetypes – a comic sidekick, a love interest, and a mentor specifically. We then went away and developed characters that we felt were 'familiar but new' and wrote a first draft of the story on team. We later presented all of this to him for approval and feedback. My biggest concern was that he wouldn’t accept that Darth Vader would take a secret apprentice, but he seemed to support that idea.

What was the difference between writing The Force Unleashed and your other projects?

HB: Compared to other games projects I’ve worked on, we really put a huge amount of emphasis on story. It was one of our pillars from the initial kick-off meetings. I’ve seen other projects where the story has been at the mercy of the design and has been butchered as a result of gameplay or level changes. On The Force Unleashed, we tried to strike a better balance and let both story and the game design needs drive decisions. Obviously, the game design changed over the course of the project, but we weighed every change against the impact to the story and always tried to find solutions that would work for both design and story – they truly were of equal weight.

Compared to other mediums I’ve worked in, the biggest difference writing for games is obviously wrapping your head around the notion of interactivity. It’s so obvious, though, that I think people really underestimate how it transforms the writing process. I think there’s an assumption that if you’ve written for comics or television or film you can easily make the transition to videogames because all are visual mediums. But the interactivity and a desire to allow the player to remain in control as much as possible changes everything. As just one example, very few games feature any kind of major setbacks for the character, which is a key part of traditional story structure. The character needs to hit rock bottom at some point and have a moment where he is worse off than when he started. But games are all about a series of 'successes' – defeating an enemy, finishing a level, solving a puzzle, earning a high score, and any setbacks often feel like 'failure.' Therefore, it’s incredibly difficult to design satisfying ways for players to succeed and 'fail' at the same time without taking away some degree of control or downplaying the payoff for success, which leads to players feeling cheated or let down.

Another big difference is the degree of collaboration. I’ve worked closely with artists on comic books, but writing for a game really requires a great deal of outreach to every discipline, especially design and art.

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