Star Wars: The Force Unleashed was one of the few great Star Wars games that released last generation. Battlefront 3 was in development hell, there were some mediocre tie-ins to the Clone Wars TV show, and there was seemingly no interest in expanding the universe in the form of video games. The Force Unleashed followed a powerful Sith operative by the name of Starkiller. He reported directly to Darth Vader and was one of the deadliest forces in the entire galaxy.
The Force Unleashed spawned a sequel that was met with lukewarm reception, combine that with the fact that Disney acquired the Star Wars rights shortly after, it killed any possibilities of a third game. Speaking with Sam Witwer, the voice actor of Starkiller, on his Twitch stream, project lead Haden Blackman discussed the future of TFU and the character of Starkiller.
"I wanted to build a more open world [with The Force Unleashed 3]," said Blackman, "a game that had more exploration to it and a more open-world feel without going the whole hog.
"The one idea I had related to that was Boba Fett being sent after the Rogue Shadow and basically shooting it down and you literally play as Vader and the Apprentice trying to survive and they have to join forces together to work their way off the planet – and you never know when you can trust Vader.
"Then you find out Boba Fett has been sent by the Emperor to make sure neither of them gets off the planet because the Emperor has his own plot…"
Other ideas included having Darth Vader get captured by the Rebels at the end of The Force Unleashed 2 and then having him disassembled so he could be "kept under wraps", essentially making him a weak prisoner.
"I remember pitching a nightmare scene where the trap is sprung as they're trying to bring Vader to justice," said Sam Witwer. "There's going to be the trial of the century – they're going to put Vader on trial – and then the Imperial Star Destroyers turn up, Boba Fett turns up…" Vader would then gain his strength, in order to presumably defend himself and escape, and would assemble his armor back onto him via the Force.
Sadly, Blackman knew that there wasn't much to be done with a third entry as he was already planning to move on to go create Hanger 13, the studio behind Mafia 3.
"There was not even any concept art that I recall," said Blackman. "I obviously had ideas about where the story could go – maybe I wrote up a couple of plot synopses just for my own brainstorming – but I knew that I was leaving LucasArts to found my own studio well before we done with TFU2 so there wasn't a lot of work put into any kind of TFU3 that I'm aware of."
Sam Witwer also teased that the game would have two different endings and they had a cool vision for the final level but he kept it to himself. Witwer also revealed that Starkiller almost became a character in the TV show, Star Wars: Rebels. Witwer plays Darth Maul in the show and he's a major Star Wars fan so he knows what could've been for his character.
"Dave [Filoni] did share with me he considered making Starkiller an Inquisitor in Star Wars Rebels," Witwer said. "It didn't quite fit the story they were telling but he did think about it."
It makes sense, Starkiller is a massively powerful character and could be considered "overpowered". It would probably create more issues putting his character into the Star Wars canon simply because he would be able to fight his way out of almost every situation with no problems.
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 1 & 2 can be played on Xbox One right now via backward compatibility.
