'Star Wars: Dark Forces' - 1995

DOOM in a galaxy far, far away...

These days Star Wars is everywhere. The sheer volume of material set in that long ago galaxy is staggering. What is notable about the current crop of Star Wars media is that it is obsessed with filling in the blanks between the movies, providing a bunch of sprawling detail as to what was going on in-between the major events depicted in the movies. So far this has been a mixed bag, some of this new glut of Star Wars media is great, and some is just expensive but pointless filler. However you feel about it, what’s indisputable is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to remember a time in which Star Wars media was a sporadic treat.

But, if you were a Star Wars fan in the 90s, that is exactly what it was. People are dismissive of the 1998 “Special Editions”, with their often pointless changes, but if you were born late enough to have missed Star Wars the first time around it was exciting to have the opportunity to see the films in a cinema, changes be damned.

From day one, Star Wars was as much about toys as it was movies. It is now well established that the astonishing array of model spaceships and action figures that accompanied the release of the films did a huge amount to put the films front-and-centre in the public consciousness, and contributed to their massive success. This also applies to videogames, which started to accompany the films from the early 80s.

During the 90s, as videogames increasingly became a medium capable of sophisticated visuals and storytelling, a sudden rash of Star Wars games released. This was partly the product of a desire to test the waters of public interest in Star Wars before committing to making new movies, the multimedia event Shadows of the Empire in particular was conceived to gauge whether audiences would engage with new stories and shell out money for products (including new toys) that did not feature the major characters of the original films.

It was in this environment that we saw LucasArts release Star Wars: Dark Forces in 1995. Two years previously Doom had hit the PC gaming market like a train, totally shifting the paradigm re the technology, gameplay, and tone that sold games. Doom had been a megahit, and other studios were keen to capture a chunk of the market. Dark Forces is, somewhat cynically, Star Wars Doom. While it has some of its own ideas and approaches, fundamentally it does not stray especially far from the game design approaches that had lead to id Software’s success.

Dark Forces is in many ways a darker version of the Star Wars setting than had been seen previously. Kyle Katarn, the player character, is presented as a more complicated version of Han Solo. Kyle is a former imperial agent, and is presented as perpetually grumpy, does what has to be done type character.

And what has to be done is shooting storm troopers. Lots of them. Dark Forces does a better job than just about any other game of presenting shootouts that feel like they’re from the original films. It’s hard to express what it is that is “right” about them, but you know it when you feel it. Blasters feel punchy and dangerous, not like flimsy lightshows. I was always struck by the ways the original films depicted blasters as leaving gaping, burning holes in the walls wherever they hit, it made them feel like genuinely dangerous sci-fi weapons. This is the only game to ever convey that feeling to me. The blasters are genuinely satisfying to shoot, up there with the best guns in any shooter, and the enemy animations when they are killed by them sell the effect completely.

Where Dark Forces perhaps does not work for me is its level design. It does an amazing job of replicating the feel of the films, especially the first couple, where mazes of featureless, confusing corridors are the norm, however that does not necessarily make for a fun time in a videogame. They do the job, but this is not a game that you’re going to hold up as an example of how to build level architecture.

The story also hits some great beats, great enough that after Disney excised much of the wider narrative told in the “extended universe” bits of Dark Forces have crept back in. Kyle starts the game stealing the Death Star plans, an idea solid enough that they later decided to build an entire film around the premise. It’s actually a clever conceit as an opening level, as it instantly ties you into the established narrative of the films, and sells you on the idea that everything going forward must be at least as important. The main plot revolves around foiling the Empire’s plan to deploy robotic “Dark Troopers”, a plot recently restored by the Star Wars TV shows, and sees you shooting your way through various parts of the underbelly of the Star Wars universe.

Kyle Katarn’s adventures would continue in a handful of confusingly titled sequels, although the general tone of the games shifted considerably. Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II was part first-person shooter, part third-person action game, and saw Kyle awakening to the Force and wielding a lightsaber for the majority of the gameplay. That game’s story was told through FMV cutscenes, essentially being the first piece of live-action Star Wars media since Return of the Jedi. Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy are good games in their own right, but drift a very long way from the tone and gameplay of Dark Forces.

Ultimately Dark Forces is a relic of both a very different period of PC gaming, and a pivotal era of Star Wars media. It might be a challenge to play if you’re not approaching it through nostalgia goggles, but I maintain that it is one of the best expansions of the world presented in George Lucas’ original trilogy of films.