Honestly, it still hurts a little. If you grew up playing with a controller in your hand during the late 2000s, you remember the sheer high of pulling a Star Destroyer out of the sky. It was ridiculous. It was over-the-top. It was exactly what Star Wars The Force Unleashed 3 should have been building upon. But instead of a trilogy-capping masterpiece, we got a decade of "what ifs" and leaked concept art.
The tragedy of the third game isn't just that it was canceled. It’s that it was killed right when the story was actually getting weird—and I mean that in the best way possible.
What Star Wars The Force Unleashed 3 was actually supposed to be
We have to look at where The Force Unleashed II left us. It was a short game. Way too short. You finish the campaign in about five hours, Starkiller captures Darth Vader, and they head off to a Rebel base on Dantooine. It was a massive cliffhanger. Boba Fett was literally tailing them in the final cinematic.
Haden Blackman, who was the creative lead on the series, has been pretty open over the years about what the plan was. Star Wars The Force Unleashed 3 wasn't going to just be another "beat 'em up" through corridors of Stormtroopers. The idea was to turn the formula on its head. Blackman has mentioned in various interviews and retrospectives that the third entry would have featured a sort of "co-op" dynamic between Starkiller and Darth Vader.
Imagine that for a second.
You’ve spent two games trying to kill this guy, and now, because of a larger threat or a tactical necessity, you're forced to work with him. They were going to be an "unlikely duo" stranded together. It would have shifted the gameplay from pure power fantasy to something a bit more strategic and character-driven. It's a trope, sure, but in the context of the Force, it’s a goldmine for gameplay mechanics.
Why the game actually died (It wasn't just Disney)
A lot of people love to point the finger at Disney. It's easy. Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012, they cleared out the Expanded Universe (now Legends), and they shut down LucasArts. Case closed, right?
Not exactly.
The internal situation at LucasArts was messy long before the Mickey Mouse ears showed up. If you look at the development of the second game, it was rushed. The team had about a year to put it together. Critics noticed. Fans noticed. While the first game sold over seven million copies, the sequel didn't have that same cultural impact.
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Internal shifts in management at LucasArts led to a "reset" mentality. Before the acquisition, there were already rumors that the project was on ice or being shifted into something else. By the time the Disney deal was finalized, Star Wars The Force Unleashed 3 was basically a ghost. The new leadership wanted a unified canon. Starkiller—a guy who can disintegrate entire platoons with a sneeze—didn't really fit into the more grounded (relatively speaking) tone Dave Filoni and Kathleen Kennedy were moving toward with Rebels and the sequel trilogy.
The "Starkiller in Rebels" almost-moment
Here is a piece of trivia that usually blows people's minds: Sam Witwer almost brought the character back.
Witwer, who voiced and provided the likeness for Galen Marek, is a Star Wars encyclopedia. He’s the voice of Maul. He’s a legend in the community. Dave Filoni actually considered bringing Starkiller into the Star Wars Rebels animated series as an Inquisitor.
It would have been the perfect way to give fans closure without needing Star Wars The Force Unleashed 3. But they ran into a power scaling issue. Starkiller is essentially a superhero. If you put him in Rebels, he outshines Kanan and Ezra immediately. He’s too strong for the story they were telling. So, the idea was scrapped, and Starkiller remained a legend of the PS3/Xbox 360 era.
The mechanical legacy of the franchise
Even though we never got to play the third game, you can see its DNA everywhere.
Look at Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Survivor. Cal Kestis is, in many ways, a balanced version of Starkiller. The way he uses the environment, the "Force Echoes," and the cinematic lightsaber combat all owe a debt to what LucasArts was experimenting with in the 2000s.
But there’s a difference in feel.
The Force Unleashed was about "The Force on Steroids." It didn't care about balance. It cared about making you feel like a god. Modern games are more "Soulslike"—they want you to struggle. There’s a specific itch for chaotic, unchecked power that Star Wars The Force Unleashed 3 would have scratched, which remains itchy to this day.
What about a remaster or a reboot?
Every few months, a "leak" pops up on Reddit or 4chan claiming that Aspyr or Nightdive is working on a trilogy bundle. Usually, it's fake.
However, we did get a Nintendo Switch port of the first game recently. It sold well. It proved that there is still an audience for this specific brand of Star Wars action. But a full-blown Star Wars The Force Unleashed 3? That’s a tall order.
The rights are a tangled mess of licensing, and the "Legends" branding makes it a hard sell for a company currently obsessed with a single, unified timeline. If it ever happens, it would likely be a "reimagining"—a way to fit Galen Marek into the current timeline without breaking the power levels of the universe.
The plot we missed out on
Based on the breadcrumbs left by the developers, the third game would have likely explored the origin of the clones more deeply.
Was the Starkiller in the second game even the real one?
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Vader tells him at the end that he’s just another clone, but the game drops hints that he might actually be the original Galen Marek who survived the explosion on the Death Star. Star Wars The Force Unleashed 3 was supposed to settle that debate. It was supposed to show us the "dark side" version of the clone and the "light side" version finally clashing in a way that wasn't just a brief vision.
We also missed out on the Rebel Alliance's first major trial. Holding Darth Vader captive? That’s a death sentence. The game would have likely featured a massive Imperial assault on Dantooine or a secret facility where the Rebels were trying to interrogate a Sith Lord. The potential for set pieces was astronomical.
What you can do right now
Since the third game isn't coming out tomorrow, you have a few ways to get your fix.
First, go play the Ultimate Sith Edition of the first game on PC with mods. The modding community has done wonders with 4K textures and uncapped framerates. There are even mods that try to implement some of the "lost" powers discussed for the third game.
Second, read the novelizations by Sean Williams. They treat the story with a lot more gravity than the games do. They dive into Starkiller’s internal monologue and make the transition from Vader’s assassin to a Rebel hero feel much more earned.
Finally, keep an eye on the "Star Wars Jedi" series. While it’s not the same, the developers at Respawn are clearly fans of the lineage.
Next Steps for the Fanbase:
- Check out the "Endor" DLC for the second game if you haven't. It's a non-canonical "what if" scenario that shows just how dark the series could have gone.
- Support the official ports. The success of the Switch port is the only metric Disney actually looks at when deciding if an old IP is worth revisiting.
- Watch Sam Witwer’s livestreams. He often talks about his time as Starkiller and provides insights into the character's psychology that you won't find in any manual.
The dream of Star Wars The Force Unleashed 3 might be on life support, but in a galaxy where people routinely come back from falling down bottomless pits, you can never say never. For now, we have the memories of the most overpowered apprentice in history and a couple of games that, despite their flaws, dared to be weird.