Report from Wonder-Con: Lucasfilm Presentation…

BR: Yes you do. That’s one of the seminal moments of the game. It’s really cool right now. I think you guys are really going to dig it.

SS: The Force powers seem so over-the-top. It’s not quite what you see in the movies. How do you justify that, or explain that?

BR: Basically, early on in the project, we looked at the very first Clone Wars cartoon and saw how they were dealing with Force powers. Because it is a video game, George allows us to do these things with the medium. He understands. He’s a savvy person. He understands that we really need to take these things to 11 to really pay off on that. It’s not breaking continuity; it’s just a new way of envisioning Force powers. And it’s a lot more fun for the game. You guys are really going to dig it.

SS: Give us an update on exactly how The Force Unleashed is coming along at this stage.

BR: We patched our Alpha Stage right before Christmas.

SS: What exactly is an Alpha Stage?

BR: It’s where we have code and content complete and no major bugs are in the system. Right now — I just came in from work, the whole team’s there –optimizing, bug fixing. We really want to deliver on this game for you guys, the fans, and it’s something that we’re really proud of. So it’s coming along great.

SS: One of the reasons the game has been a little delayed, as I understand it, is that there two or three new technologies that all are done by different companies that have to be merged because everything touches everything else. Do you want to explain a little of that?

BR: Basically with new hardware you always have to build a new tool-set.. So to develop for the XBox 360 and PlayStation 3, not only do we have to have a new rendering engine, we also want to add these new technologies. One is Pixelux, which is Digital Molecular Matter or DMM, and the other is Euphoria, which is Natural Motion. Pixelux allows us to create realistic tables, chairs, buildings, structures made out of wood, cement, glass, whatever. And we can create these things where you can make these things break in real-time realistically so it’s not just a canned animation, it’s something unique every time. And the same applies to Euphoria, with Natural Motion. It’s kind of a BioMechanical AI

SS: So it’s actually the characters –