The force will be strong with this one

[W1nTry]

New Star Wars title seeks to redefine 3D games

GDC 007 Mix of physics and storytelling

By Theo Valich: Monday 12 March 2007, 11:38

LUCASARTS HELD ONE of most secretive presentations during Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco, but there was a pretty good reason for that.

Photography and recording were forbidden, so we are unable to provide you with a single picture from the event. The idea of forbidding photography even after all the powerpointery and demos were shown was just a bit too paranoid - quite close to paranoia levels shown by some Chipzilla and Graphzilla employees when you tell them you work for the INQUIRER.

Hosted by Haden Blackman, the session was entitled True Next-Gen Gameplay in Service of Story & Character and gave us a rare opportunity to see the approach LucasArts is taking for its next-generation title from the Star Wars universe.

Storytelling is the key
According to the hype, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is a game that plans to break the pattern present in games of today: games that want to be "as realistic as possible." With Star Wars: TFU, main factor of the game is storytelling aspect, while utilising will be immersing the player into the world which is far more complex, and yet more interactive than any of the current-gen games.

The Story
The story takes place between Episode III and IV, with Darth Vader taking a secret apprentice that would one day take over his role and probably even replace Emperor Palpatine. This story will show an uncertain side of Darth Vader that was present during Episode III and in the end of Episode VI, his belief that his life is wasted serving dark side of the force. Redemption is the key aspect, but you will of course, be able to choose will you turn into a knight of light side, a Jedi or will join the ranks with the Sith.

DMM for a game? You must be kidding...
As you probably know, Lucas firm Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) uses a digital production system named DMM (Digital Molecular Matter), powered by servers and workstations running on AMD Opteron and Nvidia Quadro cards. The system consists of many different plugins, ending up in a multiple synchronised production pipeline that supports creation of movies, animated movies, TV shows and as of this game, computer games.

During the creation of The Force Unleashed, the team and ILM created several plugins for game production, which may be a sign of ILM's entry to the world of computer game creation. On the other hand, those plugins just might stay exclusive to LucasArts games.

Instead of being realistic with tons of gore, The Force Unleashed is a title that uses proprietary engine codenamed Ronin. This mixes Euphoria AI and Havok physics engine in order to create a virtual world with complete interactivity.

Some of the physics engine demos reminded us of upcoming PhysX-enabled Warmonger, but fell short in some other ways.

Graphics and physics are not the only things on the table. All of the motion capture and facial expressions were done by VFX crew from movie Pirates of The Caribbean, and the demos were impressive indeed. The Euphoria engine will generate a lot of interest for the gamers, because this fully autonomous bio-mechanical AI solved the problem of animating storm troopers and other NPCs (non-playing characters). The gamedev team promises that no animation is ever the same, since the characters should react differently every time an interaction happens.

When will George unleash The Force in stores?
The game is impressive, but if you are asking yourself when it will become a reality, the answer is: spring of 2008, with the target set for May.

We sense a disturbance in the Force, and that balance can only be restored with a lot of multi-core processors and appropriate DirectX 10 graphics cards. Who knows, perhaps even R600 will be released by then. µ