Written by Sean Williams
Based on a story by Haden Blackman
Copyright 2008 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & Registered or Trademarked where indicated. All Rights Reserved.
Excerpt from Star Wars: Death Troopers by Joe Schreiber copyright 2009 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & Registered or Trademarked where indicated. All Rights Reserved.
In The Force Unleashed - written by Sean Williams - based on the video game from LucasArts for xbox 360, wii, ps3, Nintendo DS, and pc, based on a story by Haden Blackman - Darth Vader has a Sith apprentice and sends him to dispatch Vader's master's enemies.
With female pilot Juno Eclipse becoming the apprentice's pilot to fly them through Empire space, you would think that Juno would automatically relate to the apprentice named Starkiller since she was an empire subject herself and was against the rebellion. With the orphaned apprentice so mysterious, Juno was leery of him initially and even spied on the apprentice - and discovered that Starkiller is actually the apprentice of Darth Vader. Vader is secretly grooming his apprentice to help him overthrow the Emperor. With the apprentice sent by Darth Vader to search out and hunt down the Jedi who had escaped Order 66, it was hard for me to like Starkiller initially as he did so.
I felt the apprentice's journey from evil to good was not quite believable. It did not help in that I could never get into his character. There was no real characterization in the beginning of the book of the apprentice for me to relate to him in any way. In one sense, Starkiller's transformation was too abrupt, as for the most part he was pretending that he was good in order to get to his assigned victims. Although with Vader trying to kill his apprentice, it was quite appropriate that Starkiller starts to change. While Vader faked the apprentice's death to fool the Emperor at the cost of several clone troopers, there is still the weight of Starkiller being Vader's apprentice - with the stigma of The Sith always betraying each other. Having Starkiller's droid Proxy being his sparring partner and programmed to become holographic well-known enemies such as Jedi, was both quite appropriate and unpredictable as Proxy was secretly programmed to kill the apprentice. Juno was quite the obvious romantic partner for Starkiller, despite her fear and Starkiller's dismissal of Juno as his pilot.
While I have never played the game, I could never really relate as much to the characters as much as I wanted to, except for the Jedi. Probably because I knew of the Jedi characters that were used in the book from other books and media like The Clone Wars and not from the game. There is not as much initial characterization of the game characters as I would have liked - and by the time Williams really tried to start to develop the characters in the book, it was too late for me.
Pancho
All people smile in the same language.
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