With EA’s Star Wars shooter canceled, it’s time to revisit a classic
Amid a layoff wave at the end of February, EA canceled a Star Wars first-person shooter that was in development at Apex Legends developer Respawn Entertainment. Considering this is a genre that Star Wars once dominated, as well as Respawn’s mastery with games like Titanfall 2, the news especially stung, even if it’s small potatoes next to all the jobs lost in EA’s layoffs. If you’re yearning for a Star Wars FPS and don’t want to wait for the Star Wars: Battlefront remaster launching later this month, you’re in luck.
On February 28, the Atari-owned Nightdive Studios released Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster. Employing the proprietary KEX Engine used on remasters of classic Turok and Quake games, Nightdive enhanced the 1995 MS-DOS and Macintosh shooter that follows the escapades of Rebel mercenary Kyle Katarn. Playing this game for the first time in 2024, I’ve found that it still holds up immaculately and is worth checking out if you’re worried about the future of Star Wars games.
Rebel scum
Star Wars: Dark Forces follows Katarn as he pulls off a series of missions for the Rebel Alliance and attempts to stop the creation of ultrapowerful Dark Troopers that could eradicate any of the Empire’s enemies. Although its story isn’t that deep, for the time it was released, Dark Forces contained a surprising amount of cutscenes and well-voiced dialogue.
Dark Forces conflicts with Disney’s Star Wars canon — its first mission is about obtaining the Death Star plans — so this feels like more of a rerelease for the game’s sake rather than the franchise at large. Still it’s neat to see where ideas like the Dark Troopers, which have since appeared in The Mandalorian show, were first visualized.
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