Decades before Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, a very different kind of hero stole the Death Star plans for the Rebel Alliance. His name was Kyle Katarn. In the Legends story of Star Wars: Dark Forces, the mercenary for hire fearlessly took on the entire Galactic Empire himself with just a blaster in his pixelated hands.
“Kyle Katarn really can do just about everything,” Nightdive Studios’ Max Waine tells StarWars.com, “and while he's doing everything, he manages to generally stay very cool and calm. Stealing the plans for the Death Star? Yep. Defeating Boba Fett? Yep. Punching out kell dragons? Yep. He can do that. And that's just in Dark Forces.”
Thanks to Lucasfilm Games and Nightdive Studios, a new generation of Star Wars gamers can experience Katarn’s first adventure on consoles and PC with updated high-resolution graphics, realistic lighting and atmospheric effects, a new playable level, and more in Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster.
A long time ago…
Dark Forces, which blasted on to game store shelves in 1995, holds the distinction of being the first Star Wars first-person shooter (FPS) video game. Originally developed by LucasArts, the PC-only FPS was one of the first times that gamers felt like they were stepping into the Star Wars galaxy themselves.
“Dark Forces is very interesting, especially if you come into it with a mindset of its contemporaries,” says Waine, the Dark Forces Remaster project lead. “The stuff it managed to do for the time, I wonder if it’ll be lost on people coming to it for the first time.
“You have proper room-over-room environments. You have, in a few special cases, fully 3D models, which is something that you wouldn't really see in regular standard first person shooters until Quake, which was a whole year and three months later. The technological feats are really impressive.”
“A strong foundation in the original”
With upgraded gameplay, enhanced lighting and texture rendering, and support for modern consoles, Nightdive Studios’ work to update the original game was extensive — but it’s not a remake.
“We have the original source code to the game,” Waine explains. “We still have such a strong foundation in the original. [While] we have higher-res versions of things like the sprites, the textures, the cut scenes, all of the original stuff is still there as options… It is still very much the same game. We haven't made just about any alterations to the original levels, for instance, which is something that a remake probably would do.”
Dark Forces veterans who will definitely notice the visual upgrades might be delighted to (literally) hear that one thing remains exactly the same: the music and voice files are unchanged. However, Nightdive Studios took the audio experience one step further for anyone looking for a healthy dose of nostalgia. “We provide the users with two options of how to play back MIDI [music files],” Waine says, a feature for gamers who want to listen to the music as they would have heard it in 1995.
All aboard the Avenger
Dark Forces Remaster also includes behind-the-scenes content and a new playable level that takes Kyle Katarn to the Star Destroyer Avenger. Originally the pre-release version of the game’s first level, the Avenger was cut as Dark Forces went through development and replaced with an opening level set on a secret base. Now, almost 30 years later, Katarn can once again set foot on the Avenger. Look out, Imperials.
“It was definitely the most significant of all of the cut content that we put back in, both in terms of restoring it and in terms of significance,” Waine says. “Unlike a lot of the rest of the [additional] content, the Avenger level was known about beforehand because a couple of screenshots were in promotional material and old coverage.
In Dark Forces Remaster’s new behind-the-scenes vault, players will also find assets captured during the original game’s development and presented to the public for the first time. “There are two brief little videos of Justin Chin, the lead artist and writer for [Dark Forces], dressed up in roughly what Kyle's clothes would look like, doing rotoscoping for a couple of scenes,” Waine reveals.
A new generation
While welcoming the challenges of updating Dark Forces for modern consoles, such as the additions of a selectable weapon wheel and modern controller support, Waine most appreciates bringing the classic Star Wars FPS to a new generation of gamers.
“It's really special to be able to bring back and make more readily accessible something that so many people have fond memories of. It's a big privilege to be given the opportunity to work on something that's so beloved and so respected. Just the thought of being able to help people relive those warm memories is very much something that you wake up in the morning for, for that feeling.
“And there's the prospect of people introducing their children on their consoles to games that were special to them. It's very hard to describe how lucky I feel to be able to do that.”
Dark Forces Remaster is available now on Windows PC via Steam, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One and Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.
