It seems the Force is strong with this one! Since its release on August the 21st, the demo version of The Force Unleashed upcoming Star Wars game has amounted more than a million downloads on the Xbox Live Marketplace, and a total of 2.3 million downloads overall. On the Xbox this topples all previous download records.
The previous record holder had been Silicon Knights’ “Too Human” demo which stands at approximately 900,000 downloads.
The game, which has already gone gold and is due to hit stores on September 16, has been in production for the past four years and has had George Lucas himself working on the project as a story consultant, making sure the plot of the game fits in and ties in well the two Star Wars trilogies.
Haden Blackman, The Force Unleashed executive producer at LucasArts had this to say:" George gave us a history lesson about what the major characters in the Saga were doing in that time frame, and offered feedback and suggestions about the plot and characters.”
Although it is too early to tell by the limited amount of content featured in the demo (only one partial level), chances are pretty good that The Force Unleashed will live up to its promises of fun, physics-intensive gameplay that, as producers say, will truly show the potential of the Force as a gameplay mechanic.
The story of The Force Unleashed is centered on Darth Vader’s secret apprentice, Galen Marek (codenamed “Starkiller”), who is on a mission to hunt down any Jedi remaining after the Great Jedi Purge of Episode 3. Producers say the story will give insights about other characters from the initial trilogy as well.