O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
While I’ve played every other entry in the Jedi Knight series of games, the very first entry has eluded me for years. No one I knew talked much about it in the 90s, as prior to the sequel we didn’t hear about it and after the sequel was out we were more interested in it and the expansion that followed. While in the 00s, after Jedi Outcast was out, I got interested in revisiting the earlier games, but they were very hard to launch on the hardware I had at that time. When Dark Forces was re-released on GOG in a playable state, I… didn’t care, to be honest. And only recently, when the fantastic fan made Force Engine was made available decided to give it a go, before abandoning it about half-way through.
Now that an official Remaster is out, made by NightDive who rarely disappoint, I decided to give it another chance. And I almost wish I didn’t. As for how important this game is in terms of historic value, it’s also one of the most frustrating classic FPS titles I’ve played in years.
To quickly explain the importance of Dark Forces – while this was not the first licensed Star Wars videogame (far from it, in fact), this was the first official FPS in the setting. It was also incredibly technologically advanced, easily competing with id Software’s Doom II and beating it in some aspects. Which, for this genre at that time was important, as the majority of other titles it had to compete with were far more primitive in comparison. The game also relied heavily on fitting into the lore and atmosphere of SW and became an important part of the Expanded Universe.
Apart from this, however, the game was a relatively simple FPS and didn’t push the boundaries of the genre as much as its sequels did. The levels here feature more layered and complex geometry than what you would usually find in the classic FPS titles of that era and interactivity was quite high for the time. Nothing comparable to the later Build Engine titles, of course, but still impressive. There’s a selection of various weapons that range from something immediately recognizable from the Original Trilogy to some more novel and weird ideas. The overall game structure is mission/level based but you keep your weapons, ammo and lives between the missions as you go through the game. And the types of levels are surprisingly varied, not just visually, but also structurally, so you can never fully expect what the next level would be.
But unfortunately, I can tell now that I’ve completed the game, is that the next level is always worse. That’s the big issue with Dark Forces – it starts with some genuinely fun and exciting Star Wars themed adventures, but by the half point the game becomes outright miserable to play. It starts with minor weirdness like boring maze-like structures that are not fun to navigate and awkward platforming on high cliffs. Then it becomes more obtuse with its progression requirements. Then it introduces a lot of horrible unfun enemies to fight with – if you’ve played Jedi Outcast and remember those idiots who throw thermal detonators everywhere, you would be pleased to know they were as horrible in the first game. Then it throws you in a level that’s specifically designed to kill you a lot with first starting you with no weapons and then placing enemies and mines behind every corner and every door so you have zero time to react to them before you get hit. That is the lowest point of the game, but it doesn’t improve in the last couple of levels by much.
All of which isn’t helped by a complete lack of a save system. Those lives I’ve mentioned – they’re the only way to not restart a level if you die. And for most of the time, apart from that level that’s designed to waste most of your lives, the system isn’t that bad. The issue with this lack of saving lies with the fact that if you don’t complete the whole game in one sitting, you have to start from the beginning of the last mission you’ve started. Except, not really, because if you do that – you start the mission with nothing. Unlike a lot of Doom maps, you may get huge chunks of the level with no weapon drops at all, so this basically means that you can’t continue. But if you start a level that you’ve completed, than the game remembers what you had. Meaning that if you want to play through the game in several sessions, you will always need to start a session with replaying the last level you’ve completed before. Or use cheats that are at least available (but they do disable your achievements until you restart the whole game). Ironically, this isn’t an issue with The Force Engine, where you can simply save.
Star Wars: Dark Forces has not aged all that well. It’s not outright terrible, but even at its best during the first couple of missions, it’s not that interesting. And if you keep going, all that comes later is frustration. I appreciate that Dark Forces Remaster exists, has cool bonus materials and attempts to make this important piece of videogame history playable in a way that is as close to the original as it could be nowadays. But I also don’t see a reason anyone should play it. Even a remake of the game sounds pointless, as almost every best idea from this game was later done better in the sequels. So i can only hope that the sequels get this treatment. As for Dark Forces Remaster? I guess, I’m glad that it exists.