After 29 years, the definitive Star Wars FPS finally gets the remaster it deserves from an incredible remake studio
Oct. 24, 2023We finally have a release date for the Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster
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Earlier this year, Nightdive Studios announced Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster, and now we finally have a release date for the game - it’s coming almost exactly 29 years after the original.
The original Dark Forces launched in an era when thebest FPS gameswere still called “Doom clones,” and Dark Forces does essentially take the form of a Star Wars-themed version of the id Software classic. You run through 3D environments shooting at sprite-based enemies with a wide array of Star Wars weaponry, ranging from blaster rifles to grenade-style thermal detonators.
Dark Forces enjoyed the benefits of several years worth of post-Doom genre development - you can look upward, for example - but its most notable feature was probably its extensive story segments, including animated cutscenes with proper voice acting. The game told the story of protagonist Kyle Katarn, who became a figure so beloved thatfans are desperate to see him in Star Wars Outlaws, and plot elements like the stolen Death Star plans and theDark Trooperprogram are still being revisited in modern Star Wars canon.
For my money, Dark Forces remains the definitive Star Wars FPS after all these years, and I couldn’t be more excited to see Nightdive - the studio thatcollaborated on the excellent Quake 2 remasterand many other classic shooter revivals - putting its hands on this one. There’s already anexcellent fan-made Dark Forces remaster called The Force Engineout there, but Nightdive is the one studio I’d trust to do a modernization even more impressive.
Kyle Katarn would go on to star in several of thebest Star Wars games, as Dark Forces spun off into the beloved Jedi Knight series.
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