MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
It has been revealed that a planned original Star Wars trilogy sequel game would have featured a storyline not entirely dissimilar to that seen in Episode VII: The Force Awakens.
A few years ago a book examining the history of LucasArts lifted the lid on a number of logos for potential future Star Wars games. Several of them caught the eye, not least of which was Star Wars Episode VII: Shadows of the Sith.
Now Cinelinx reports that LucasArts creative director Haden Blackman has confirmed details of its proposed story.
"[The game] would have put you in the role of an adult Ben Skywalker, who was walking the line between the light and dark sides of the Force, unleashing new Force powers never-before-seen in games or movies as he investigated a new threat to the galaxy (a Solo…),” he explained.
With the parental identity of some Force Awakens characters still very much a mystery, this could in fact almost exactly mirror the events of the film.
However, it sounds as is only one of the ideas ever even approached the stage of becoming a reality. Instead, many of the ideas harvested were used to other titles such as The Force Unleashed.
Added Blackman: "In late 2004, we were focus testing/developing a ton of different concepts — over two dozen in all over about a six month period. To focus test, I basically just wrote up a ‘one-sheet’ — a brief description of the game, with a bit of concept art and a logo added.
We developed a bunch of logos for this exercise, and sometimes used similar names for slight variations in setting or features so we could do A/B testing (does a concept test better when it’s called out that it’s M-rated? Does the time period make a difference if all other features at the same? etc.).
But it really just validated what we already knew — the vast majority of gamers wanted to be a Jedi/Force wielder, and the setting, story, even the core features were secondary to that.
"Most of these were just short, on-paper pitches, which I wrote. The only one that had more traction — dozens of design documents, concept art, and even a few prototypes and pre-vis videos — was Scum and Villainy, a bounty hunter game.
"Eventually, I ended up pulling elements from several of the pitches to craft the pitch for The Force Unleashed. As we wrapped up TFU, I started working on some new concepts and revisited the far-future concept under the name Shadow of the Sith. The Darth Maul idea was also briefly resurrected after TFU2, and different versions of 1313 reused either the Underworld or Scum & Villainy codenames."
