Star Wars: Dark Forces

Um, Jason taught himself to develop games using GameMaker, uh, eventually ended up using, uh, Unity and Blender, um, for this.

In addition to Blood, you know, we talked about this, he, he cites the play and environments of Resident Evil 4, which you can definitely see, and then the retro aesthetic of Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II as-

Mm-hmm

... main inspirations.

Yeah.

Um, I don't have deep catalog on the Dark Forces games.

Mm-hmm.

I do remember playing them a little bit.

Sam, did you play this game?

I have not played Dark Forces.

I've played the Jedi Knight games.

Well, I was talking about Shadows of the Empire.

Yeah, I found it tremendously satisfying.

I think I'm going to go and play Dark Forces again.

Oh, excellent.

Because I was going to ask you, if you're someone like me who's never really got on with the XCOM style games, but who loves Star Wars, is this one worth a

yeah oh yeah i loved it it's one of my favorite

it shares a nearly identical plot with star wars dark forces i've played a little bit of that and dark force is the main character uh kyle katarn he works for rebel line steals initial planes for the death star huh yeah yeah that

would be what we call legends right

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

And then, um, my go-to Doom clone was Dark Forces.

Uh, that game, uh, it was a first-person shooter set in the Star Wars universe.

Uh, graphically about the same.

Um, but some people say that, you know, Dark Forces was a little bit better because LucasArts, they created their own game engine.

Um, they didn't simply just borrow one, you know, from id Software.

Uh, so there was a little bit of verticality to Dark Forces.

Yeah.

I'll give you a couple of different answers.

But one that came to my mind first off was Kyle Katarn from the video games, the Dark Forces from 1995 as well.

And that was a fun series of computer games.

Being a computer nerd, I was into it.

I always got either blasted by somebody or somebody would just walk by and slice you up and still had fun.

Good, good fun memories of doing that with friends.

I got to tell you, I suck at video games.

Like, I have zero aptitude at video games.

Number six.

Kyle Katarn first appeared in the Dark Forces video game and appeared in five subsequent games in the series.

Kyle Katarn.

X-Wing? X-Wing?

I'll take it

back.

I do think he first appeared in Dark Forces, but five subsequent games...

That doesn't sound right.

Jedi Outcast was the first of that Jedi Knight series that I played.

I know that there was Dark Forces and stuff before that, but obviously the game that introduced Kyle Katarn to us that really, honestly, it was the game for me that really kind of took lightsaber combat to a place that was much more interesting than it was before.

I think that's kind of what I was looking for.

at that time was like the fantasy of being able to use a lightsaber and unlike some of the previous games where it was like a little bit more stiff or a little bit more you know turn-based something like that like jedi knight uh in the in the jedi knight series like you were able to wield your lightsaber with a little bit more freedom so um overall i mean obviously um, Katarn coming in a huge, uh, piece of this story and of this franchise that people still enjoy to this day.

All of this with full audio versions, sound effects, music, everything.

And then things got really wild when they did audio versions of the Dark Forces trilogy.

And this is from 1997 and 1998.

Dark Horse produced these three deluxe, very fancy hardback graphic novels, Soldier of the Empire, Rebel Agent, and Jedi Knight, all based on the then very, very popular and still actually very popular Dark Forces video game.

And now these audio dramas based on the Dark Forces trilogy are These were produced by Tom Vagley Productions.

Yes, the Tom Vagley superstar from the radio dramas and the incredible Raiders of the Lost Ark on record.

And you can hear us talking to Tom Vagley all about especially Raiders of the Lost Ark on record and the Star Wars radio dramas all the way back.