#unfortunately that means disney plus would still have a lot of control because the platform and the studio are connected

[redtail-lol]

Pros and cons of forcing companies to forfeit the rights to any IP they don't want to continue making content for

Cons:

Shitty sequels and spinoffs made to keep the company from losing the property

Shitty sequels and spinoffs made by people who were not on the original creative team that completely betray the previous canon that was not given sequels because it's story was complete

Canon gets messy

Stories might not ever get a proper end

Pros:

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Season 2

All your favorite cancelled shows come back

Companies stop cancelling shows as much because they don't want to lose rights

[candescencearia]

Video Game Retrospective - Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire

George Lucas had a thing for “multimedia projects” before and after going crazy and messing up his own franchise with ill-advised ideas and direction and generally not having any proper oversight. that might’ve salvaged the prequels. A more recent pre-Disney example was The Force Unleashed, which was a really neat concept but fell flat for me gameplay-wise because, well, it feels a bit quaint after experiencing the versatility and general flexibility of Jedi Knight and the awesome insanity of Metal Gear Rising. (Speaking of which, a Star Wars game done by Platinum Games with the right budget, time and director would be absolutely incredible.)

The one big project Lucas worked on before the prequels was Shadows of the Empire, which was functionally an exercise of creating a whole bunch of material around a theoretical interquel film between Empire and Jedi without there actually being a film, though I think the idea of actually producing a film was entertained at one point. There was a fairly decent novel by Steve Perry, comics by Dark Horse, and an absolutely incredible soundtrack by Joel McNeely (who was recommended for the job by John Williams himself), but arguably the biggest part was the video game, which initially released on the N64 and later ported to the PC with CGI cutscenes and voice acting.

I’m gonna say this up front - I have genuine nostalgia for this game, and not just because of the surprisingly faithful recreation of the Hoth battle. That being said, after recently getting the PC version of this game myself, it’s... Not good. It’s playable, especially with mouse and keyboard controls that allow for strafing, but unfortunately there’s more bad than good. That being said, it’s still worth examining.

Shadows of the Empire focuses its game adaptation around Dash Rendar, who is a rather shameless expy/clone of Han Solo, though it’s a bit more justified by the fact that he’s friends with Solo and in some ways a bit of a friendly rival. Frankly, you could do a lot worse for a Star Wars protagonist, it can be said that the much-beloved Kyle Katarn from the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight saga was at least partially cut from the same cloth. But at any rate, if you want to play as a Jedi, you’re out of luck here. On the bright side, though, you get to do some pretty badass stuff as Dash - fighting an AT-ST on foot and winning, a jetpack duel with Boba Fett (plus fighting the Slave I when Fett decides to get pragmatic), flying directly into Prince Xizor’s skyhook base to blow it up from the inside... This game has quite a bit of variety.

One thing to get out of the way quickly - the game’s mechanics are “janky” and feel poorly-programmed in many ways. Moving down a downwards slope causes Dash to fall down it rather than walk in many cases (which has resulted in a otherwise-avoidable deaths), the way the movement works in general can be awkward in dangerous areas if you’re not using an analog stick due to Dash’s high maximum movement speed, jumping doesn’t account for the velocity of moving platforms (making the junkyard sequence awkward to navigate) and the Stormtroopers (among other enemies) are more accurate with their blasters than you are (and I don’t just mean they’re still inaccurate, they’re actually as precise as Obi Wan said they were in this game) and are often placed in awkward locations, making shooting them without getting damaged to be often difficult if not impossible in later stages. The game is playable, but it can be fairly difficult due to unfair mechanics and enemy placement. Oh, and the speeder chase doesn’t intuitively inform you how the hell you’re supposed to make jumps. I could go on for a while about, this. Also, the PC version, to my knowledge, doesn’t let you rebind keys, and mouselook controls both turning and moving forward and backward, which makes it a bit awkward if you find the mouse and keys fighting for moving your character.

In general, it feels like this game was made in that period where developers in general had the unenviable position of trying to figure out how to make things work in 3D. While the devs of this game weren’t really able to make something that aged well, it wasn’t for a lack of trying. The only things that they really did well were the flying/space vehicle levels, and even those would be later outdone by Factor5′s Rogue Squadron. That being said, this game deserves the recognition it gets for being the first game to successfully recreate the Hoth battle, complete with bringing down AT-ATs with tow cables.

Before we continue, I might as well talk the differences between the two versions of the game - the PC version replaced the N64′s ‘simple’ cutscenes (mainly just static images with simple tweening animations) with CGI FMVs, and provided full voice acting. The voice acting is fine, but I honestly prefer the N64′s cutscenes in many ways. Aside from the use of just the one theme for all the cutscenes (granted, it’s a damn fine theme and provides enough atmosphere), the visuals are really nice compared to the even worse-aging CGI of the PC version’s FMVs, and some scenes are outright superior in the N64 version - IG-88′s introduction, for example, is unsettling, with him rising out of the junk pile, and his appearence with the red eyes is genuinely creepy (the guy scared the hell out of me as a kid, but I guess I was more easily scared back then, I used to be terrified of Andross in Star Fox 64/Lylat Wars as well back then, amongst other enemies and bosses during that generation), whereas the CGI version makes him look much less threatening and his voice doesn’t help either. Really, the N64′s cutscenes are absolutely dripping with atmosphere, which the PC cutscenes lack. On the bright side, both versions use McNeely’s soundtrack, which is impressive considering the N64′s known space limitations.

This game does have some replay value, just to note - every level has a collection of “challenge coins” (which are actually floating, silver Imperial emblems) to find, and beating the game on hard or above nets you a secret ending revealing that Dash successfully faked his death while escaping from the Skyhook by hitting hyperspace just as it blows up. None of the other media for the project reveals this twist, and the novel ends with Luke assuming that Dash perished because he wasn’t on his game because he failed to save an allied ship during an earlier space battle (turns out he couldn’t have done anything about it anyway) and was still reeling from the guilt.

In summary, it’s not a good game. But it is still noteworthy as far as Star Wars games go for what it did and what it tried to do, and its genuinely redeeming qualities (mainly the soundtrack). If nothing else, at least watch a let’s play of it or something if you haven’t experienced it in some form, or get the PC version via Good Old Games.

Oh, and amongst the other stuff that was in the recent Star Wars Humble Bundle, there’s the excellent Rogue Squadron 3D, and Galactic Battlegrounds, which is basically a Star Wars version of Age of Empires II, made by AoE’s developers, which is really cool and worth playing if you’re an RTS buff.