We interviewed Haden Blackman, the Project Lead for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed video game from Lucasfilm. He told us what it’s like to write the screenplay for a game and how his vision translated into novel format—all from a gamer engineer’s perspective.
Question: Can you first tell us a little bit about your role in the creation of the FORCE UNLEASHED video game?
Haden Blackman: I was the project lead, which is basically a hybrid between creative director and executive producer. I was responsible for setting the overall vision for the game, and rallying and managing the team throughout the development. I directly managed all of the leads, worked very closely with the design staff, and wrote the “shooting script” for the cinematics.
Q: As the lead writer of the game story, how much input were you able to give Sean Williams while he was writing the book?
Haden Blackman: He was on a pretty tight schedule, and I was deep in crunch on the game, so we only had a few opportunities to talk and exchange notes. Fortunately, he was able to use the game’s shooting script as his starting point, which I think gave him a strong foundation. After he finished his first draft, I was able to take a few days reading it and providing notes, most of which he incorporated into the final draft. A great deal of my feedback was centered on keeping the characters true to the way they are portrayed in the game. This was really important because, in the game, we can’t get into the characters’ heads the same way a novel can, and there were thoughts and feelings expressed by the characters in the first draft that weren’t always true to our vision of the characters. Juno was probably the toughest character in this regard: The novel spends a lot of time exploring her character, and I really wanted to make sure that it was aligned with our take on her personality, motivations and psychology, even in areas that aren’t explored in depth in the game.
