Dining With Developers, Vol. 2: Haden Blackman, Part 1

Crispy dines with The Force Unleashed lead producer Haden Blackman. Go behind the scenes on the game and LucasArts in our second installment of Dining With Developers.

Very enjoyable read. I'll look forward to part two.

I must say, I can't empathize with Blackman's bellyaching about the reviews, especially reviews that called the targeting out. That system was fundamentally broken in the game and they deserved to get heat for botching such a huge portion of gameplay. This made TFU one of the most frustrating games I've ever played. Well that and the ridiculously overpowered Dark Troopers. Battles with those guys ended up devolving into me taking pot shots and hiding, rise-repeat. That's not fun. Also, why give me all of these great Force Powers and then have the endgame full of enemies that are essentially immune to them? And what's with the first bay of enemies in the Death Star? It's nigh impossible to actually fight them all, but the game gives you zero indication that you should just rip up the floor panels and drop through. I can't say how many times (at least a dozen) I retried that area before finally consulting a FAQ that told me I shouldn't be trying to fight at all. But discounting all the rest, the targeting system was abysmal and made the game far more frustrating and difficult than it should have been.

I'd love to have Blackman address why there were unskippable cutscenes before brutally hard segments. Inevitably I would die a few times and each time I did, it was more and more frustrating to be forced to watch the cutscene again. There is no excuse for that.

Regardless, the story in TFU was so damn good, I powered through to the end. That's saying a helluva lot for me, given the number of aneurysms I was *this close* to suffering during my time with the game. The story really is good enough that in the end I was glad I had followed it all the way through.

@RyanKuo:

there were a lot of problems with the game that were glossed over in this interview. Still it is good to hear about process.

I can't remember playing a video game I enjoyed that didn't also frustrate me in some way. TFU had some unforgivable problems as far as bugs go. The fight scene with Proxy just stopped working at one point. There was a situation where I got caught in a little crevice of rock and couldn't get out. Little things like that are annoying just really ruin the illusion.

But, I've played so many games where the illusion gets ruined. From trees that explode when you hit them twice with your combat knife, to buildings that the Hulk can't smash.

Every game comes to a point where the engine defies straight-up logic. When TFU failed, it felt like an error. Not something where the developers hoped we'd never find the problem (like impervious cows in Hulk: Ultimate Destruction). I resented that the Dark Troopers were so powerful, as well, but I was able to understand why. The Jedi were hunted down and killed off. Which means there must have been something out there that could do the job.

For the most part, I liked TFU, not just the story, but the gaming part of it as well. It was fun, and I didn't feel too insulted by the game engine. Except for the fact that I could pull down a Star Destroyer, but I couldn't throw the Emperor around a bit. That kind of broke it for me, but at that point I was already at the end of the game and willing to finish it up.

Essentially, I liked the game and never understood the amount of negative press it received. It was a really good game.