Star Wars fans and gamers were treated to plenty of great Star Wars games in the 2000s. Battlefront and its sequel, the Knights of the Old Republic games, and Republic Commando all came out in the first half of the decade. Heck, even the movie tie-in game for Revenge of the Sith was pretty good.
The Force Unleashed games came out in the latter half of the 2000s, and made players feel like the most powerful lightsaber-wielding, Force-using character in a game yet. They were wiped from canon when Disney purchased Star Wars and Lucasfilm in 2012, but they weren’t wiped from my Force-loving heart. While not perfect, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and its sequel are fun romps that Disney should bring back in its rebooted continuity.
Set between the prequel and original trilogies, the Force Unleashed games follow Darth Vader’s secret apprentice Galen Marek, AKA Starkiller. In the first game, he’s tasked with hunting down Jedi who escaped Order 66 and takes down Stormtroopers along the way. (Why Stormtroopers? Starkiller is supposed to be a secret, so he basically kills anyone he comes across.)
The gameplay isn’t as intricate as the later Star Wars Jedi titles. Instead of having to switch sabers to counter enemies or parry their attacks like Cal Kestis, playing as Marek is a power fantasy. His Force powers cannot be contained. Stormtroopers are so weak that Force Pushing one into a group will topple them over like a bowling ball crashing into pins. Because Starkiller starts as a Dark Side character, he gets the best powers, like Force Lightning and Force Choke. His lightsaber isn’t too shabby either, and you can string together lightsaber strikes and Force powers for combos.
Marek grows into a bit of a rebel over the course of the first game, and it was even intended as something of an origin story for the Rebel Alliance at the time. I won’t give away too much of Marek’s fate, since both games are still available on Steam for first-time players to check out, but the decision rests in the players’ hands if they want Marek to embrace the Light or Dark Side. No matter what happens in the first game, he pops up in the sequel for more Stormtrooper-kilin’ good times.
The first game reviewed well enough across platforms — it’s a quintessential 7/10 fun time — and sold more than six million copies in less than a year. The Force Unleashed 2 was met with a poorer reception, with one reviewer calling it a “desperate cash grab.” Oof. It sold 500,000 copies in its first week, and estimates peg it somewhere between 1.4 million and 4 million copies sold over its lifetime. Either way, significantly less than the first game — not great, Bob.
A threequel never materialized, though lead writer and the first game’s director Haden Blackman had ideas of where the series could go next, including turning it into a co-op and open-world experience. With Disney’s acquisition of the franchise, a disturbance was felt throughout the canon, and the Force Unleashed games were regulated to being considered non-canonical “Legends” stories.
Series star Sam Witwer, who played Starkiller, was down for a third game in 2013, and he’s still down for one now. “I would shave my head in an instant. Very happy to do so,” he told Polygon ahead of Star Wars: Maul — Shadow Lord, which he also starred in. “I love that character, and he’s really the reason I’m here.”
Obviously a canon continuation of Starkiller’s journey isn’t on the table, but that doesn’t mean some version of Starkiller couldn’t find new life in the Disney canon. His role as Jedi hunter during the years before A New Hope has functionally been taken over by Darth Vader’s Inquisitors; why couldn’t Galen Marek be brought back as a canon Inquisitor who begins to doubt his mission, like in the first game?
A rebooted The Force Unleashed game blending new and old ideas would be a great way to revive a series that fans describe as both a “hidden gem” and “batshit insane” fanfiction. Sure, there are already plenty of Star Wars games on the horizon, but there’s always room for one more.
