SoulCalibur 4 (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3) director Katsutoshi Sasaki recently had a nice post over at the US PlayStation blog. In his write-up, he explained why Namco chose Darth Vader as the exclusive SoulCalibur 4 character for the PlayStation 3, and he shared some of the experiences they had in the process.

Sasaki says the rationale for picking Darth Vader as a playable character in Namco's latest fighting game is because of the character's massive global popularity and his status as a symbol for the Star Wars franchise.

The challenge, Sasaki said, was bringing the character to life in a video game. Resources were limited, according to the director, as he confided some of the biggest challenges in constructing the Sith Lord.

"Admittedly though, recreating Darth Vader for SoulCalibur 4 was harder than I initially thought because there is not a lot of reference material as he was only in a few lightsaber fights in the movies," he said.

Another challenge that the Namco team encountered was that of making guest characters "fit in." The devs wanted to make Darth Vader feel as much like himself as possible with the use of the Force, but at the same time they wanted to keep that power in check so that he doesn't end up dominating the rest of SoulCalibur 4's cast.

"Ultimately, we created a Force gauge to put a limit on using the power," said Sasaki. "However, we felt players would be frustrated if they couldn’t use the Force on an empty gauge, so we are allowing them to use the Force but it will be counted as a penalty against their character."

At the end of the day, Sasaki said that he believes their team has "brought Darth Vader up to a level" where fans can have a genuine experience of the movie icon. Let's hope they deliver on that promise as they have most of the time.

---

Related articles:

• Namco Bandai says Soul Calibur 4 demo will come after game release
• SoulCalibur 4 goes gold
  

Buy: [ SoulCalibur 4(Playstation 3), (Xbox 360) ]