Do What You Want With Me But Let The Girl Go: Why Starkiller is a Whiny Bitch

SPOILER ALERT: THIS ARTICLE WILL CONTAIN PLOT SPOILERS TO THE FORCE UNLEASHED AND (what little plot there is of) THE FORCE UNLEASHED 2. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

The Star Wars universe is a vast one. Six movies, well over 50 video games, and copious amounts of comics and novels. Some are canon, some are not. The most recent addition to this ever-expanding franchise is “The Force Unleashed” video game series. This planned trilogy fits itself into the time between Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith, and Episode 4: A New Hope.

The condensed story of the first game is as follows:

While hunting a rouge Jedi on the Wookie homeworld of Kashyyyk. Darth Vader finds a small child strong in the force. He takes this child and raises him in the ways of the dark side, dubbing him Starkiller. At first, Starkiller blinded by the dark side, but of course the love of a woman, the devotion of friends, and blah blah blah turn him to the side of light, causing him to work as a triple agent (working for Vader to spy on the Rebellion to spy on Vader) but of course Vader, being the mastermind that he is, sees past Starkiller’s facade and betrays him. Long story short, by the end Starkiller has two choices: fight the emperor or fight Vader, which gets you killed or turned into Vader’s Sith Lord replacement, respectively.

In my opinion this is where the plot ends. The good plot anyway.

Yeah, there’s a second game. I wish I could just say “what second game?” but I can’t. I can’t get those 60 dollars and those five hours back (that’s right, it only took 5 hours to beat >.>)

Out of the endings of the first game I mentioned above, dying was the canon ending. Gutsy move right? How are they supposed to make a new game? New character? No, of course not! We’re gonna fucking clone him! Makes perfect sense! Granted, the imperial army is entirely clones, but come on! You can’t clone a Jedi! WTF?

I’ll admit that despite this horrible plot device, I was still excited for this game. I pre-ordered it from gamestop and everything. I had high expectation for the gameplay at least, but what I didn’t expect was for Starkiller, clone or not, to turn into such a whiny little bitch!

Starkiller’s dialogue in this game can be summed up in 3 words: “WHERE IS SHE?!” That’s right, this plot-lacking monstrosity has you chasing a girl, one Miss Juno Eclipse from the first game…The. Entire. Time.

He whines, bitches, and moans about how he’s haunted by the memories of Juno (he thinks he’s a clone. Vader tells him so, but doubt is casted on this theory early on) so he runs away from Vader like an angsty teenager with devastating force powers running away from home. He spends the ENTIRE GAME searching for a woman he may or may not have met. He treats all the supporting characters like shit, unlike the game before, and little character development is made. At the end you again have two choices: the dark side ending, in which you strike down Vader and then get to watch everyone around you, including Juno, die (I won’t spoil who does this killing. It’s the one good plot twist and it’s not even fucking canon! *facepalm*) or the light side ending, in which the rebellion takes Vader captive to drill him for information and Starkiller and Juno have a little happily ever after and fly off into the suns- I mean into deep space…Give me a break.
 
If this isn’t grasping into the dark for a plot, I don’t know what is.

The graphics and level designs were beautiful, but could not save this game from my disapproval. I am a story driven gamer. I can’t just run through a game shooting (or in this case chopping) up everything in my path.