Darth Vader

Darth Vader
Franchise	Star Wars
Voice by	Matt Sloan

Not to be confused with: Anakin Skywalker

"Join the Dark Side and together we will rule the galaxy."
—Darth Vader, when placed on the Disney Infinity Base

Darth Vader (Anakin Skywalker) is one of the main antagonists in the Star Wars universe. He appears as a playable character in Disney Infinity: 3.0 Edition, and is playable in all three Star Wars play sets. He is sold as a single figure, and was released on September 29, 2015 in the US and on October 2nd, 2015 in Europe. He is force-sensitive.He was confirmed playable on Toy Box TV, but was seen on a leaked image of the box art for the game prior to this.

Star Wars

Darth Vader is the lord of the Galactic Empire. He was originally a Jedi named Anakin Skywalker until Emperor Palpatine (later to be known as Darth Sidious) brought him into the dark side of the force by telling him to kill Jedi Knight Mace Windu. He assassinated many Jedi at the Jedi Temple while other Jedi (who were clone trooper generals during the Clone Wars) had Order 66 activated to their clones, which resulted in the deaths of many noble Jedi. Later, Skywalker dueled with Obi-Wan Kenobi on Mustafar, losing the duel after his legs were sliced off by Kenobi, resulting in Vader being placed in his infamous armor. During the Battle of Endor, Palpatine attacked his son, Luke Skywalker with force lightning, with Luke begging his father for help. Vader then picked up Palpatine and threw his master down the Death Star II's bottomless pit. However, Vader was severly electrocuted and was placed on the floor of the docking bay, asking Luke to take off his mask so he could see his son with his own eyes. However, without his helmet, Vader couldn't breathe. His last words to Luke were "Tell your sister, you were right." Vader then died in Luke's hands and his armor was burned on Endor, and Anakin's ghost appeared with Yoda's and Obi-Wan's, thus making him one with the force. Many years later, his melted helmet was recovered by his Grandson, Kylo Ren.

Disney Infinity 3.0

Vader appears as a playable character in the game, and, as a villain, is a crossover character in all three Star Wars play sets. He is also a boss in the Rise Against the Empire Play Set, his "native" play set.

He has a lightsaber combo, and 2 breaking defences combos, and an air combo. He can also throw his lightsaber that follows targeted enemies. His finisher is a very powerful Force Choke, that you can fling an enemy by flicking the right stick either way. His special, 'The hand of Vader' make him push enemies away a strong blast with the force, when you upgrade it, it can be charged by draining up to 4 meters, making the range and power absurdly strong, making it the third most powerful special move in the game (putting it near Yoda's and Hulk's special moves).

In addition to being playable, Vader can also be spawned in the Toy Box using the Boss Battle Creativi-Toy.

Development

Concept art of Darth Vader.

The Infinity team has called Vader a challenge to bring into the Infinity world due to the difficulty faced in figuring out how his movement would work in the game. The biggest hurdle they faced was collaborating with Lucasfilm on whether or not Vader should be able to run like the rest of the Playable Characters in the games. As John Vignocchi recalled, "One thing that was a very interesting, anecdotal backstory is when we got the call from Lucasfilm who said, “We’re reviewing the latest version of the game and Darth Vader is running. And we have to tell you guys that you’re going to have to cut that from the game because Darth Vader doesn’t run.” And we said, “Well this is a video game and so we want to make sure that Darth Vader is just as strong and can do just as many things as the other characters can.” And the Lucasfilm team said to us, “While we respect that from a gameplay perspective, your fans will appreciate more that you’re being true to that character than anything else.” So as a result, Darth Vader does not actually run inside of Disney Infinity 3.0, but he does walk relatively quickly." Interestingly, in official (now non-canon) games such as Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Vader actually ran in-game which would be impossible for him to do in the Star Wars universe, due to his cybernetics and life-support system holding him back.

The process of creating the character was very much a collaborative effort between Disney and LucasFilm. John Vignocchi later recalled, "We would make a version that we thought was appropriate for Infinity and we’d send that over to them (LucasFilm), and we’d get notes back saying ‘Well, we understand that’s what you want to do for Infinity, but this is what’s important to the Star Wars brand.’ We just would go back and forth until we got it to a place until we were both happy."

When asked about the character's positioning, Jeff Bunker said "The nice thing about Darth Vader is he’s a one note character. He doesn’t express any remorse–in the very end he’s redeemed–but there wasn’t a lot of need for us to express much emotion other than power and control. That goes into his pose. We wanted to come up with an iconic pose that expresses who he was with a single statement; that’s why we went with the choke-hold.”

One particular detail which prompted a great deal of debate between Lucasfilm and the Infinity team was Vader's helmet. Jeff Bunker went back and forth with Lucasfilm over whether the helmet should be matte painted (like the rest of the figure's body, which is what the Infinity team wanted) or glossy (which is what Lucasfilm wanted). Ultimately, Lucasfilm got their way, and the glossy helmet was what ended up in the final figure. However, before this happened, around five hundred Darth Vader figures were produced with dull, matte painted helmets. These early figures were later given to Avalanche Software employees by Bunker as a gift.

Trivia

Spoiler warning! This article or section may contain plot details about an upcoming or recent film, franchise, TV series, etc. Proceed at your own risk, or you may learn of major spoilers!

• Vader/Anakin Skywalker is one of five Playable Characters in Disney Infinity 3.0 who are deceased in the current timeline of events in the Star Wars saga. The others are Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, Han Solo, and Darth Maul.
• Vader is one of the four characters who was given more than one figure (him and Anakin Skywalker), along with Sorcerer's Apprentice Mickey/Mickey Mouse, Iron Man/Hulkbuster, and Captain America/Captain America - The First Avenger). Vader is however the only Star Wars character, and the only one where the two figures were introduced in the same game.
  • The Disney Infinity development team considered giving many of the Star Wars characters more than one figure, but in the end, they decided that they only needed to do that for the two versions of Anakin, as they are two totally different looking and differently powered characters.
• As Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader is one of the only four characters to appear in all six original Star Wars films along with R2-D2, C-3PO and Obi-Wan Kenobi.
• He has a variant in the Light FX series.
• Darth Vader is voiced by Matt Sloan, who began voicing him in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed series and many other Star Wars based shows that featured Vader.
• Vader is one of four Star Wars villains to be playable (along with Darth Maul, Boba Fett and Kylo Ren).
• The Force Choke is the most powerful force finisher.
• If frozen by Kylo Ren while throwing his Lightsaber, he'll stay in place and the Lightsaber will just keep on going.
• He doesn't slouch in a combat ready stance like most characters, he stands instead (once again likely due to keeping true to his character portrayal as shown in the Original Triolgy).

Gallery

For more game related media, see Darth Vader/Gallery.

Darth Vader's packaging

Darth Vader's figure.

Vader in Star Wars Episode III.

Vader as he appears in Star Wars Episode IV.