Vaderisnothayden said:If somebody could find a specific reference/article whatever showing Lucas saying it's canon I'd be very interested. Or even just specific details on him saying it's canon.
With Star Wars, Lucasfilm recognizes different levels of canon and an expanded universe thing like Force Unleashed would usually be in C canon, which is below the films/novelizations/radio dramas/screenplays and the new tv series stuff. Lucas seems to have his own views on canon. As of 2001 he seemed to include only the movies. As of May 2008 he seemed to be including recent tv projects too. So I don't know where he'd be fitting Force Unleashed. But if they're crumpling ATSTs it sounds more like Farce Unleashed.
Also, I'd be interested to hear of any other weird of far out things in Force Unleashed.
For more weird things in the Force Unleashed, I'd simply recommend searching it on youtube. You'll be able to find all the cut scenes there, they'll be labeled something like 01, 02, 03, etc. It is an interesting watch, far more entertaining to me than the new TV show. Watching those cutscene will pretty much give you the whole story in movie format, without the need for any hard work like reading or playing the game. To be honest, I actually found it more entertaining than the last two prequels, better acted too. Just some of those exaggerated things that hurt it, but in the end, it was a video game and its main appeal (as seen in its name) was the ability to use exaggerated force powers.
As far as an exact quote from Lucas, I am not sure if anything like that exists, but it is well known that he was very involved in the story process, something he has not done on any of the games before now. Just about ever article talking about the game up until its release mentioned that it was intended to be canonical.
Here is an example of such an article, http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/multimedia/2008/08/ff_starwarscanon_gallery?slide=2&slideView=2 notice at the very end it mentions how much effort they went through to ensure it fit with continuity, and that Lucas himself was involved. There are more detailed articles about this out there, but this one was nice and short, being only a couple of paragraphs.
Hayden Blackman, the main writer of the story said, "All these characters are going into the continuity, they'll all be canon, and they're all part of the Star Wars galaxy."
Lucas seemed to intend this to be canon. Now, knowing him, I would not be in the least surprised if later he says it is not canon. But in the end who cares? To me, none of this is canon. I refuse to accept the whiny character portrayed in AOTC and ROTS is the man who became Darth Vader, I can come up with much more convincing backstories for him in my head than what was put to film. Books like SOTE and the thrawn trilogy I have enjoyed enough that I like to consider them as something that really happened in the SW galaxy I like to enjoy. Also in my own personal Star Wars canon, Han fired first, and he never had a redundant talk with Jabba.