E3 Previews - Force Unleashed and Fracture

LucasArts has been focusing of late on a tight integration between technology and story. Their two big E3 offerings are great examples of this philosophy, with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed probably the better known of the two. There was apparently just some footage shown at the event, which will be rebroadcast tonight during the show Entertainment Tonight. IGN has a slightly longer writeup on the game, looking into the idea of "kicking ass with the Force". The other title LucasArts was showing this week, Fracture , uses over-the-top terrain deformation technology to imply certain things about its future setting. From Joystiq's coverage: "We saw a bangalore grenade launcher, that sends a grenade rippling through the ground like you would see Bugs Bunny dig in Looney Toons. The ground above it would raise a little, and the explosive would eventually pop its head out of the ground to claim its victim. A vortex could be created which acted just as its namesake implies, and also seen was a gun that created a large boulder from surrounding terrain and hurled it like a bowling ball. We also saw an extreme use of terraforming with the the magma spike, which shot a column straight up into the sky. If you're standing on it, you get a new, higher platform. If you destroy it, the remnants serve as a hindrance to incoming traffic."

Interesting

[MajinBlayze]

WoW! the force unleashed seams pretty cool, and I will admit that I've been a fan of the Jedi Knight/Dark Forces series (yes, I *Have* the original Dark Forces game (I just might pull it out when I get home today)), despite the fact that a few have been fairly repetitive. It's too bad that you only get to choose one side of the force, as that has been one of my favorite aspects of the games so far. It would be kind of fun (albeit frustrating) to play a light side jedi trying to save people, only to end up

Re:

[Wicko]

Haha the original Dark Force game is fantastic, good ole Doom style star wars shooter :)

Re:Interesting

[Rakishi]

As long as I can force grip people then drop them over a ledge I'll be happy.

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[Katmando911]

Continuity be damned! They could have multiple endings some of which just aren't canon

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[SnowNinja]

In Jedi Academy, or JK3 you get to dabble in both sides. If you choose dark powers, you have to adjust your strategy to reflect that, and the Jedi Masters warn you about your choice of force powers.
I don't want to ruin it, but if you so choose, at the end of the game you can fall to the dark side.

Am I the only one surprised?

[Wicko]

Fracture looks like a very promising idea, and a lot of fun, but I was very surprised when I learned it was by LucasArts. I guess I never pictured LucasArts making games about any other IP than Star Wars (as of late anyway), much less one so intertwined with physics. Valve, maybe, but LucasArts? Well, not that I'm complaining, in fact this is fantastic, a good example to follow for other developers.

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[ShadowsHawk]

Please don't give Valve any ideas! I really would like to get Episode 2 before the end of the decade.

But...

[Zencyde]

I'm pretty sure that they could have done so much more with this game by releasing it on PC and taking advantage of a physics card of some sort. Does anyone know how far they've come with GPU physics emulation?

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[AuMatar]

Sure- for both people with a physics card.

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[Zencyde]

I was putting more focus on the idea of using GPU based physics. Nvidia was developing software to take hold of a graphics card last I checked. I'm not sure how far it's come though.

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[bWareiWare.co.uk]

Nvidia have added some hardware primarily for physics to their newest graphics cards along with some driver support for using the GPU for more then graphics (as have ATI). Nvidia also released bunch of press about Havok's FX. This is an add-on to the most popular game physics engine that offloads processing onto modern GPUs (current reports indicate it works much better on ATI cards, so Nvidia probably isn't shouting quit so load now). However I don't think Havok have ported FX to consoles (where there ph

Scorched...

[huestis]

Just a thought... from the brief description of the weapons in Fracture does anyone else see similarity to Scorched Earth? Just wondering.

Re:

[bombshelter13]

Yes, that's exactly the comparison the author made in the article.