Yeah... not a good sign. | |
Huh...whelp, I suppose he might've already done pretty much the gist of TFU 2's writing. And in spite of the 'old Star Wars guard' being frightened of the possibility behind the prequels being tied to the original trilogy, I genuinely liked how he handled it in TFU's story (at least the non-Nintendo version). Guess one last holdout of the Lucasarts cleverness divison departs...good fortune to thee. | |
Good for him. After that much time working on a single franchise, it'll be good for him to escape it for a little bit. And judging by his work in The Force Unleashed, he must be a fairly decent writer. Trying to bridge the gap between the solid latter trilogy and the embarrassingly written prequel trilogy could have resulted in something far worse. | |
I call bullshit on this. Without Blackman being there, Lucasarts is just going to rush the development time and we'll end up with another Knights of the Old Republic 2 mess. I really liked Blackman. He knew that fans don't like their continuity being mess with, and he managed to make a great story that was unfortunately trapped within the confines of an otherwise mediocre game. | |
Well, best of luck in future projects. Well, I suppose Lucasarts are now up a certain creek without a paddle... | |
Awesome! No more TFU sequels :D At least not made by him. God i hated that game. | |
Didn't he have his fingers in the whole SWG debacle? Could be wrong--has happened on occasion--but there's a tiny Cloister Bell going off in my head everytime I hear his name... | |
The Force Unleashed was a great concept, unfortunately, it was ahead of its time. The game you got to see was not what the game was slated to be. Using two physics engines, and one AI engine and mixing these three things in with their own in-house graphics engine provided for a very, very challenging task. Not to mention, the PS3 release held the whole thing back. | |
This executive's speech looks like a generic "farewell" script. I've seen that speech spat out dozens of times, almost verbatim. "I was pleased to work at <this company>, but despite my <recent work project> I feel it was time to move on. <kiss company's ass>/<vague empty conclusion>." The only thing this announcement said was that he left the company. Knowing Lucas Arts (they might as well remove the "Arts" from their name, because they haven't made 'art' in years) he left because they either didn't want to pay him, or he saw the virtual morgue of creativity that is their software development department. | |
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The Force Unleashed Executive Producer Leaves LucasArts
Haden Blackman, the executive producer and writer on The Force Unleashed, has resigned from LucasArts to "explore new creative challenges."
Blackman worked on numerous Star Wars games during his 13-year career at LucasArts before taking the reins as the executive producer and lead writer on the 2008 hit Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, for which and his team won a Writers Guild of America award. He returned to the role for The Force Unleashed 2, which makes his departure a bit of a surprise, but he told IGN that it's simply time to move on.
"I've had a fantastic time working with the team at Lucasfilm and am really grateful for their ongoing support," he said. "While the decision to leave LucasArts did not happen overnight or come easily, I really feel that now is the best time for me to move on and explore new creative challenges and I look forward to the next phase of my career."
It was just last week that Blackman was talking up The Force Unleashed 2, referring to it as a "big Star Wars event" even as he admitted that some previous Star Wars videogames haven't really been up to snuff. "We are so paranoid about tarnishing Star Wars," he said at the time. "We want to make every game as good as possible, but it doesn't always work out that way."
Despite Blackman's prominent role, a LucasArts rep said his departure won't affect the development of the new game. The Force Unleashed 2 is currently slated for release on October 26 for the PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii.
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