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Cutting and Tuning
One unique aspect of The Phantom Menace involves the use of the lightsaber to block as well as strike out at enemies. The block was something that Sharpe had put in at the last minute before a meeting with George Lucas. As it turns out, that was one of the things that Lucas liked best about the game. "George loved it," says Sharpe. "He just thought it was great that there was something to do other than killing people." Sharpe ended up spending about three weeks working on the block, toying with it, tinkering with it, until it became an integral part of the game. Originally, he tried to make it a highly skilled move, but ended up making it very easy to do because in the Star Wars universe, any respectable Jedi would have been able to pull it off. "Literally, [the Jedis] are just like 'Yeah, OK. Get out of my way,'" Sharpe says, explaining the Jedis' general nonchalance when confronted. "It seemed fitting that [the block] was something of a gimmee you didn't have to worry about [mastering]."
Lightsaber play in the game (PC version).
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A Battledroid patrols the surface (PC version).
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Qui-Gon Jinn discusses matters with Watto on Tatooine (PC version).
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Obi-Wan Kenobi negotiates a Federation trade ship in the PlayStation version.
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Things that couldn't be done well went by the wayside - vehicles, for example. Originally, there were going to be a variety of craft to operate in the game, but as crunch time set in, Big Ape realized learning to use them would be one thing too many for players. "I don't like games where you try to do too many types of games," says Sharpe, "and [driving] was almost a different type of game. It was too much to expect the player to, once again, figure out a different set of controls, a different look, a different feel." So although vehicles-focused sequences are very much a part of the movie, they were dropped from The Phantom Menace.
Things worked the other way around as the movie was tweaked during postproduction. An early draft of the script called for a scene involving a taxi on the Empire's homeworld of Corsecant, so the group at Big Ape included a similar sequence in the game. However, much to the chagrin of the developers, Lucas decided to cut the sequence from the film. The developers left the sequence in the game, which will no doubt lend fuel to the fire, as Star Wars aficionados discuss the missing "taxi scene" for years to come.
One element that might have been missing from the PlayStation version of the game was the 3,000 lines of real-time dialogue recorded for the PC version. (Jake Lloyd will reprise his role of Anakin Skywalker,
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but other lead actors such as Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor do not return.) Despite the fact that the programmers only had six months to port the game from the PC to PlayStation, they implemented new technology to bring the voices and music to life.
"What makes us proud about it is we actually got to put in new technology as well as trying to adhere to a tight deadline," says PlayStation game programmer Jon Menzies. And that they did. With the PC version practically complete, and the PlayStation version coming along, the developers are confident they'll make their deadlines, despite the fact that the port of the PlayStation version has to be completed in such an incredibly short period of time.
One down, one to go.
The Race Begins
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