SW Episode III: Secret spilt, screens seen

There might still be 75 days to go but there is already a crumpled and mildly pneumonic nerd in a patch-covered sleeping bag waiting outside Mann's Chinese Theatre. You can even check on him and his vital signs via his webcam at .

But what the Princess Leia-obsessed lard-lad doesn't know is that the game of the film is out 12 days before he will take his first bite of an industrial-sized chilli-dog. Not only that; two of the producers have already spilt the beans on the titular tied-in game.

The first surprise that The Collective's producers Justin Lambros and Isa Stamos unleashed was the fact that the story mode of the game is played entirely as Obi-Wan, with Mace Windu and the rest of the Jedi Council only appearing in unlockable levels and in Versus mode.

Isa Stamos, despite risking a Vader-style neck pinch from George Lucas himself was happy to say more: "There are challenge levels that can be played with AI or in multiplayer and, best of all, the head-to-head two-player duels in which all of the Jedi duellists are available and can fight in several different arenas."

All of these bonus levels and modes are the reward for earning and spending the experience points claimed in the main game. So if you want to learn better lightsaber combos or to show off more impressive Force powers, then you need to complete the story mode a few times to gain the power-ups.

Stopping you from completing the game time-and-again are the massed ranks of the droid and clone armies, and a few new designs and ranks of both have been specially created for the game.

But Isa promises that not everyone will be just cannon fodder: "There is also a wide variety of Jedi that the player characters will go up against at various points of the game for the intense lightsaber duels and, of course, General Grievous will be there to present quite a challenge."

Sadly the General will be the only character with the actual voice of the film's actor, as the rest of the sounds will come from the Clone Wars cartoon. However Hayden Christensen (Anakin) did perform the motion-capture for the fight scenes and the game will also feature lots of footage from the flick itself.

Finally, there was just enough time for Justin Lambros to taunt us with the promise of future Star Wars games, despite completing the movie trilogy.

"All I can say is that Star Wars is going to live on stronger than ever after the films and the games are going to be an even bigger part of that in the future," he enthused. "I'm very excited about the future of Star Wars games and the possibilities of what we can do on the next-gen consoles. Trust me, plenty of thought and time has already been put into it."

Star Wars Episode III Revenge of the Sith will be unleashed for PS2 and Xbox on 5 May