Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Diaries Part Six

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

Having just birthed the Rebel Alliance and lost its leaders immediately, Galen had been outed as a Sith before his master had tried to kill him…

Luckily, Juno Eclipse located him in the snow and got him aboard the Rogue Shadow. She asked why Vader had allowed us to create so much chaos, and Galen reasoned that it was to root out all who opposed the Emperor in one swoop. He decided that we were going to save the Rebels, so he laid down to meditate as Jedis could sometimes see the future — and he was a Jedi now. He called out Kota’s name before saying that he had seen a massive space station…

That’s right, we were heading for the Death Star — still under construction. The Rogue Shadow stopped to let Galen jump out, and knowing that she might never see him again, Juno kissed him and he left, falling quite a distance before landing without injury.

I spent the next 10 minutes fighting endless waves of Imperial forces that attacked relentlessly, preventing me from working out how to open some hatches in the floor. Eventually, I just used a Force Repulse bubble that did the trick, and I dropped through to the next level. Unfortunately, it happened to be in the path of a massive beam of green energy!

The beam was being tested, firing over and over after a brief cooldown, so I used those seconds to get down the laser tube, and the beam to dispose of various Troopers. There were several massive focusing lenses in my way that shattered with a little Force Push, and as I went further some lasers built into the floor began attacking me… But in the end it was nothing that I couldn’t handle.

In the final room on the right was a plate locking down the door, so I had to use The Force to move that before it would open. After opening the next door the same way, two Purge Troopers attacked, frustrating me as I couldn’t Force them through the windows and into the energy beam blasting past the room… Following the hallway, I wound up back in front of said beam, more specifically right before a series of amplification chambers designed to intensify the energy.

While there were elevators which took me down to the bottom of each chamber, they were pointless apart from collecting Holocrons. What I actually needed to do was stop each of the three sections of the spinning devices, then cross using the platforms which extended when they were in position. They stopped when the beam fired, or when Forced in the few moments between test firings.

Once across both amplification chambers, I went through a door on the right and followed the hallway out into what Juno referred to as a convergence array. The Death Star had seven of these massive areas with a total of 64 laser tubes like the one I had just been through. At the top of the array was a central platform with a door leading directly to the Emperor’s observation dome, so Juno suggested that I use some graviton beams in the chamber to get up there.

Much to my surprise, I didn’t come under fire immediately after Juno stopped talking. Dropping down to the bottom level as I grabbed a Holocron, however, I was immediately shot a horrible amount by a pair of AT-STs. Once those were destroyed, I pushed a generator into place and some glowing discs rose up in beams of anti-gravity, and I hopped inside one to try and get to the platform.

After killing one sniper, I dropped down onto the central platform and the door unlocked itself — followed by several Imperial Royal Guards and a Shadow Guard exiting. We fought, they died, and then I came under fire from other Troopers, so I left the platform to try and kill them first. Once I was done, I returned to the big door and used The Force to open it up.

A cutscene began showing the Emperor Palpatine sentencing the Rebel leaders to be interrogated, tortured, and killed. However, Galen’s arrival interrupted the proceedings, and Palpatine dispatched Vader to “deal with the boy.”

We fought in the hallway for a few minutes, me gradually gaining the upper hand, before Vader retreated into the room behind him. The floor was covered in a red forcefield, with an island in the middle where Vader stood and easily fended off my attacks while pelting me with things he ripped off of the walls. It was frustrating, so I grabbed some upgrades: Lightning Shield, Fortitude, Aerial Throw, and Aerial Slam. I was slightly annoyed at being one point shy of obtaining all of the Force Combos…

Whittling down Vader’s health, he left the island and we fought on the one piece of metal not now inside the force field. Beating Vader within an inch of his life, I Force Pushed him through a window and we joined the Emperor and his prisoners. Palpatine egged me on, telling me to kill Vader and take his place! Rahm Kota attacked the Emperor but got a face full of Force Lightning for his trouble. Bail Organa shouted at me to help the Jedi, but I really wanted to kill Vader…

Unfortunately, I misunderstood what I had to do, since the camera angle had Palpatine taking up most of the screen. So, I ran over and fought the Emperor, instead of embracing the Dark Side…

The fight was less brutal than before, but featured much more lightning, and had some Imperial Senate Guards join the fray. But the Emperor fell and a cutscene began with him demanding Galen destroy him, give in to his hatred! Kota talked him down and they began to leave for the Rogue Shadow which had just landed outside? The Emperor seized the opportunity to hit Kota with Force Lightning again! Defending his Jedi mentor, Galen held back the lightning and told the others to run! Galen pushed back so hard that there was an explosion, and the Rebels escaped…

Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine were none worse for wear, but Galen was dead. His sacrifice would inspire the Rebels, which meant that even though this was all apparently Palpatine’s idea in the first place, the Rebellion that he unwittingly created would be his downfall…

Back on Corscoront, Organa was reaffirming the creation of the Rebel Alliance. Off to one side, Juno was looking at the night sky. Kota joined her and admitted that he knew who Galen was — the Sith who tried to kill him — but he had detected a glimmer of hope inside him. That bright spark was Juno…

In the mission summary, there were no bonus objectives, but I killed 91 assorted enemies (not counting Palpatine), and collected 10/15 Holocrons.

Final Thoughts

While I didn’t get the ending that I was aiming for (evil characters forever!) I thoroughly enjoyed Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. I recognised the characters from the movies I’ve seen before, and The Force was a fun weapon to wield. When it worked correctly, that is, it didn’t always aim at the right thing, sometimes exploding barrels would just explode for no reason, and that damned Star Destroyer was really hard to move…

But on the whole, very positive experience. If it had Steam achievements I’d definitely play some more, if only to hit that alternate ending. But for now, I’ll move on to Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II!