Not-so-smart Alec

I know Force Unleashed wasn’t even a glimmer in the eye of the Star Wars universe back in 1977, but you get the feeling that what is portrayed in the game is an adequate representation of what a Jedi purge would be like.  No stone left unturned, the use of the best of the best to hunt them down and an empire that would not stop until all the Jedi were extinguished.

So here are two questions:

1. Why did Obi Wan Kenobi think that by merely changing his first name to Ben he could evade the purge and never be found? It’s not like he was hiding his last name; the dumb farmboy who wanders to seedy places like Tosche Station and hangs out with Jawas implied that “Ben Kenobi” was a well-known figure on Tatooine, or at least one that wasn’t particularly clandestine. And Kenobi isn’t exactly “Smith” in the Star Wars universe as far as I’ve seen.

2. Why wasn’t he found?  When you have a Jedi who all-but murdered the now-Dark Lord of the Sith hanging out in suburban Hive of Scum and Villainy City, there is a fair chance some bounty hunter or extra-sharp Tusken would catch a sniff of his existence.  One dorky imperial probe was able to find Luke on Hoth (I know the rebel base was bigger than Obi Wan, but it was still one probe on a gigantic ice planet) so how could a guy with the same last name, who is tops on Vader’s hit list, who freely dispenses his not-so-incognito identity not get instantly found and sabered into pulp?

One answer I’ve heard is “Obi Wan and Vader had a tacit agreement not to meddle in each other’s business.”  The only supporting evidence here would be Vader’s line “You should not have come back, old man,” which could imply he was chiding Obi Wan for stepping out of retirement and onto DV’s turf.  But it seems unlikely that in such a power-grabbing environment that the imperials operated in, Vader would allow for such a gentlemens’ wink and nod.  After all, Obi Wan could easily be expected to feel the need to correct the wrong of his protege turning into molten fury and so it wouldn’t be any surprise for him to come back with Anakin 2.0.