Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Diaries Part One

I’m not what you’d usually call a Star Wars fan, as I’ve only seen five of the movies all of the way through, and episodes of the TV shows have been on while I was in the room. However, I have read a bunch of comics and played some of the games, and honestly I’ve been in the mood to cut through some stuff with a laser sword for a while.

As such, I decided to install Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, get it in working order according to PCGamingWiki.com, and write about what happens as I play it! So join me as I embrace the Dark Side…

This is my exploration of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed where I will chronicle my playthrough like a text-based Let’s Play. This time I start Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… Darth Vader had been dispatched to kill a Jedi Knight named Kento, who had taken refuge on Kashyyyk, homeworld of the Wookiees. Landing amid a pitched battle, TIE Fighters zooming overhead, lasers flying this way and that, an officer approaches to explain how they were ambushed upon arrival, but Vader has no interest in the failures of others.

Taking control of the Dark Lord of the Sith himself, I approached a large barricaded door and used Force Push to decimate it. Wookiees ran to fight me, but their blasters were useless against a master of The Force. I pushed them, threw them off of cliffs, sliced them with my lightsaber, threw them off of cliffs, chucked rocks at them, threw them off of cliffs… I was having a ball; it was literally never not funny launching them for miles into the ocean below.

Leaving the clifftops, I entered the village proper thanks to an elevator which took me into the treetops. Well, “top” is a strong word, but at least it was high enough to keep launching Wookiees into the air. Approaching a bridge, a TIE Fighter smashed into it, destroying both the structure and the spacecraft. With some irritation, I took the longer route to a second bridge, battling Wookiees all the while before finally approaching a building adorned with the Jedi symbol.

Out strode my target, Kento, uselessly pretending to not be a Jedi despite the flags behind him and the fact that he was a human on a planet of giant plushies. We engaged in battle and he tried hitting me with TIE Fighters several times before I finally defeated him, throwing him through the door of the temple.

In the cutscene, Darth Vader held Kento with The Force, wanting to know where his master was as there was another Force user nearby. However, Vader had apparently killed Kento’s master some time ago. Before Vader could strike the Jedi down, his lightsaber was snatched from him by a child using The Force… Vader snapped Kento’s neck and approached the boy but was interrupted by an Imperial officer and three Stormtroopers who took aim at the child. Vader snatched his lightsaber back and blocked their shots before striking them down. He told the boy, who we would later learn was named Galen Marek, to follow him, apparently to keep him safe from more Stormtroopers…

Fading from the flashback, Galen was older and kneeling in front of Darth Vader. He christened him as his apprentice, saying that his training was almost complete and that he was sending Galen after a Jedi by himself. Rahm Kota was currently attacking an Imperial shipyard, so Vader wanted his lightsaber, and while the apprentice was at it, he was to kill anyone who got in the way. The Emperor wasn’t to find out about him, no matter the cost in manpower.

Galen left and was ambushed by Obi-Wan Kenobi! However, upon being hit with a lightsaber, the hologram vanished revealing PROXY, Galen’s droid, who apologised for being unable to kill him yet again. As they entered the hanger bay, Galen spotted his new pilot — his eighth — and asked PROXY about her. Juno Eclipse, a decorated combat pilot who had been a part of the elite Black Five Squadron before being reassigned to a secret mission — which was when she overheard the pair talking and came to find out what was going on.

From the comic book adaptation published by Dark Horse Comics in 2008

As they boarded the ship (the Rogue Shadow), Galen explained that the last pilot had been killed personally by Lord Vader, which Juno took in stride. She was there to keep the ship running, fly it, and not ask questions. They boarded and set a course for Nar Shaddaa.

While on the way, PROXY gave a summary of Rahm Kota, who had escaped assassination by Clone Troopers when Order 66 was given because he had specifically chosen to avoid having them on his squads. Meanwhile, at Nar Shaddaa, Kota was running through his plan again with his men — funnel all forces towards him, and let the explosives they had set do their work. One of his troops showed him a hologram of the arriving Rogue Shadow, which he took to be Vader’s ship…

Upon being deployed aboard the orbiting station, I was given control of Galen and started down the hallway. After Force Pushing the doors open, I found myself in a hanger bay under siege, so I killed a bunch of people before noticing that the locks on the exit were susceptible to The Force, so I unlocked the door and left. There were more doors that required Force Pushing open, including one that hid a Jedi Holocron, allowing me to upgrade my abilities.

Choosing Force Push, Saber Mastery, and Saber Sling, I carried on throwing barrels, crates, and things that used to be attached to walls at everyone I saw. Exiting the hallways through a Force’d door, I found myself in a large area which had TIE Fighters zooming this way and that. There was a lot of open ground and more than a few blasters firing at me, so I made liberal use of the crates along the path. At the end was a room with an elevator in it which took me up a level. Exiting to the right, I found another Jedi Holocron, then went back and to the left.

I had some points to spend, so I quickly upgraded with Defense Mastery, Combo Mastery, and the Sith Strike ability. Waiting for me were more Stormtroopers and inept pilots as another TIE Fighter crashed into yet another bridge, but this time, I was able to jump over it. However, TIEs were strafing the platform I was on, so I had to try and dodge those while fighting Kota’s men! Though, to be fair, I destroyed a couple of the ships with crates, so fair’s fair, I suppose…

In an alcove to the right, I did find another Jedi Holocron, but in general, tried to keep moving until I reached the doors at the end and entered a control room full of Kota’s men. As I killed them, some Stormtroopers also found their way inside, but once the coast was clear I exited into the next hallway.

Three of Kota’s men blocked my way, one with a Gatling laser, but some liberal Force Pushing cleared the way. However, in the next room, I was ambushed by more men who raised a laser gate around the room. Luckily for me, they vaporised nicely against said gate as I Force Pushed them, slicing others with my lightsaber when my Force power was low. With them all dead, I pulled the power block out of the wall and went into the next room which looked important. Oh, how I laughed when I accidentally Force Pushed someone towards a window and it smashed, exposing the room to the vacuum of space for a couple of seconds! It was so fun that I did it a couple more times!

In the next area, I killed some more men and took a side corridor as the main one had been blown up. Killing some Stormtroopers and using The Force, I pulled some platforms out to get to a higher area and Force’d a door open to reveal what appeared to be an AT-ST under fire. Of course, everyone in the room also wanted to kill me, so I made short work of the people before crushing the walker into a ball. It wasn’t quite an AT-ST, I noticed, because it had arms with guns on them, but it wouldn’t be until the end of the mission where I learned it was called an AT-CT.

As the room had TIE Fighter wings moving up an assembly line, I hopped onto one of them and rode it up to the gantry above. There were more of Kota’s men up there with me, so I used The Force to hit them with a TIE wing! Following the hallway past the gantry, I found another skirmish going on in another, albeit badly damaged, wing assembly area. The next hallway had more men fighting, and while assaulting them I managed to step onto an elevator which shot me up… I'm not sure how many levels.

The next room appeared to be laser welding TIE Fighter cockpits, and as I was fighting the Stormtroopers and Kota forces, imagine my joy to discover that I could use The Force to move the laser welders! Fun was had by all, by which I mean me. At the other end I was blocked by a laser gate and had to go up a ramp to find its power source — and to the right was another Holocron.

With the power source disconnected, the lack of a laser gate allowed me to continue through the welding area to the doors at the end, after grabbing a Holocron to the right. Juno radioed to tell me that Kota was just above me as I took the elevator up and strode into the command centre the Jedi was holed up in.

Kota was incredulous that Vader would send “a boy” in his stead, and we fought a little. Perhaps sensing his imminent defeat, Kota used The Force to set off explosives and send the entire command centre hurtling towards the moon below! We resumed the fight as Nar Shaddaa got steadily closer, though I won before things got too hot.

The cutscene began with Kota saying that he could sense the future, that Vader wouldn’t always be Galen’s master, and that he could “sense only… me!” before Galen threw him through a broken window. Galen grabbed Kota’s lightsaber and jumped through the hole himself, the Rogue Shadow swooping in and snatching him out of the air.

In the mission summary, I completed the “Destroy 5 TIE fighters” and “Force Points” bonus objectives, and killed 192 assorted enemies.

Returning to Darth Vader, Galen handed over Kota’s lightsaber and was dispatched to kill Kazdan Paratus, another Jedi. Vader said that if Galen were able to kill the much more powerful Jedi, it would put them one step closer to defeating the Emperor…