Star Wars spinoffs

Star Wars is kind of like the Holy Grail for some folks. Like Indiana Jone’s father, they spend their entire life researching the lore, reading the related secondary materials, and generally speaking in awesome Scottish accents and calling their children “Junior” at opportune moments. That said, I am not one of those folks. Still, I can appreciate the amount of work that goes in to making sure all the stories are consistent with the official Star Wars canon. It really is a completely alternate reality, a whole universe represented by movies, books, and games.  Adding more lore (and work for the fact checkers) are these recent and upcoming releases:

• Star Wars, The Clone Wars–”See Star Wars as you’ve never seen it before!” is the tag line for this film, and I assume they mean the films, because I recall an animated Clone Wars series on Cartoon Network a few years back. Admittedly it wasn’t CGI, but it was animated nonetheless. At any rate, the Clone Wars film has thus far earned at least some praise, though it looks like the reviews are mostly mixed. The film is a set up to the new CGI series, set to air on Cartoon Network in Fall 2008–be prepared for more of the interestingly stylized animation, and lots more merchandising.

• Star Wars, The Force Unleashed–Ok, so I’m actually interested in this little spinoff because it will cover some new ground by introducing Darth Vader’s secret apprentice “Starkiller” (note the aside to the original planned name for Luke Skywalker…). This game will be released in September on just about every game platform you can name, though each will have appropriately embellished elements. The story for this game takes place between Episode III and Episode IV, so we get to see Vader and the new Empire during this time of great change and turmoil. The premise for the game is that the main character is actually a villian, and the player gets to use the force powers to kick some serious butt while working as Vader’s number one stunna’. While working as this henchman for the baddest dude in the universe (a long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away), the secret apprentice comes across some folks who become his friends, he faces a few moral dilemmas, and begins to doubt the rightness of his actions. I love stories like this, where the hero is forced to make hard choices and the story rewards the thoughtful audience. While I’m not sure this is a game I’ll pick up, I’m definitely interested in how it turns out–even though I’ve never gotten into the Star Wars lore, the premise for this game does make me want to browse Wikipedia to get caught up.

• Star Wars, The Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels–scheduled for a just-in-time-for-the-holidays release on Nov. 11th, this one will be a Wii exclusive. While the art work of this game will be identical to the new Star Wars CGI film, the main “story” here is typical for fighting games–bound to be a little confusing, but really not that important anyways. Lightsaber Duels makes use of the Wii-mote to (sort of) imitate lightsaber duels; although anyone who has used a Wii-mote can tell you that it is not exactly accurate when it comes to detecting quick movements where the wand is not directly pointed at the sensor bar. And, for those in the know, the irony of this setup is that Nintendo actually has a much more accurate one-to-one movement detection device (Wii Motion Plus) that they recently unveiled at a recent trade show, but Nintendo neglected to tell LucasArts about this handy little add on. So aside from the almost certain re-release of this game once the programmers have a chance to adapt the control scheme to the new one-to-one detection, this still looks like a fun game for the younger Star Wars fans.