![]() Besides, while it’s hardly impossible for the Empire to have sent one elite platoon to Cloud City to kill a Jedi several years before Empire Strikes Back and yet Han and Lando still treat it like neutral territory, it still grates a bit narratively for the Empire to show up on Bespin prior to ESB. It is kinda weird that Rahm Kota has apparently gone into hiding on the surface of the planet orbited by the TIE fighter factory he just blew up, but it would’ve given us a higher graphics look at a planet that had previously only been seen in previous gen games like KotOR II (or previous-previous gen games like Dark Forces). It’s not directly related to art design or graphics, but the PS2 version also has you find Jedi Master Rahm Kota on the surface of Nar Shaddaa, rather than in Cloud City on Bespin where you find him in the PS3 version. The evolution of the stormtroopers was one of my favorite details of the Force Unleashed, and turns out it’s not even in the PC version. In the PS3 version, they’re already using regular stormtroopers even on Kashyyyk, ten (ish) years before A New Hope. It’s only at the end, during the ambush on Corellia when Darth Vader betrays you, and then on the Death Star as you save the fledgling Rebel Alliance, that the iconic stormtrooper armor is used, thematically linking up the end of Force Unleashed with the beginning of the original trilogy. In the levels in the Jedi Temple (which don’t exist in the PS3 version, but which take place in the early part of the plot where you’re still Darth Vader’s apprentice), the stormtroopers have the black-and-white color scheme, but their design is different, with the eyes connected together into a single visor and less armor on the legs (they’re not scout troopers, the visor isn’t as big and their upper body is more heavily armored, but they look like a distinct stormtrooper variant the way scout troopers and snowtroopers do). In the PS2 version, the opening level playing as Darth Vader on Kashyyyk has troopers that still have blue stripe-y designs like they had at the end of the Clone Wars. ![]() The thing that really disappointed me, however, was the stormtrooper designs. The PS2 facial animations are all blocky and imprecise, as PS2 facial animations are, but they’re at least good at being the level of graphics they’re at, rather than bad at being something better. The facial animations on the PS3 version are certainly more detailed, but the animators either weren’t used to the tech, didn’t have enough time, or just weren’t good, because the facial animations are all really bad and uncanny any time there’s a closeup on a human (some aliens’ animations do alright, probably because their faces are sufficiently non-human that my human brain doesn’t notice anything weird). For starters, the PS2 has Starkiller wield his lightsaber like a regular person, while the PS3 version has him reverse-wielding like a dork. Looking at a randomly selected screenshot, the PS3 version looks way better. Now, the PS3 version plainly has massively more graphical horsepower behind it. I figured that was fine, this would be an upgrade, probably the same basic concept even if the levels were different, and the PS3 version would look much nicer. The version sold on Steam as part of the May the Fourth sale is the PS3 version, though. I played the PS2 version growing up, because it took me a long time to get a PS3. One version was released on the PS3 and XBox 360, while the other was released on the PS2 and the Wii. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is one of those transitional games that was released on two different consoles.
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