| S.Peelman said:
Guessed by coolbeans Often overlooked in how important this game was for the development of first person shooter games is 'Star Wars: Dark Forces'. In this game, it as finally possible to aim up and down, and enemies could stand floors above or below you. When I first played it however, I knew nothing of these things, because I knew basically nothing of video games yet. After having played 'Star Wars Rebel Assault II' (#42) though, I wanted more Star Wars, and we had a demo, on a demo disc, those were a thing, of Dark Forces consisting the first level of the game. Dark Forces was completely different to my other experience of course, but I though it was super cool so we got the whole game shortly after. Rebel Assault is a lighthearted series however, and I wasn't really prepared for this dark and gritty shooter that had some tense moments, and scary scenery. In the second level, there's bodies of dead people scattered around a deserted colony, and in the third level, there are monsters in sewers. "Dianogas" like the one that pulls Luke Skywalker under water in the trash compactor in Episode IV. The sewers have dirty, murky water you can't look through as well. This was too scary for my young self, and I'd develop a bit of a phobia for dark water levels. Especially sewer levels. Even to this day, even though I'm not scared of fake stuff anymore, I will hesitate a second, when I need to enter a sewer in any other game. Weird how that works. |
I don't see myself Dark Forces as so important on a technical level. Let's not kid ourself, id software was it who again and again brought the technical improvements. Others like this game or Duke Nukem 3D made some gradual improvements, but not big jumps. But I see Dark Forces bringing something new in another area. Doom had something of a story, but not much, and the levels and textures hardly resemble anything one can recognize as something real. Dark Forces produced levels that clearly resembled places from the movies or at least places that clearly would've fit into the movies and LucasArts sew that all together to a coherent story. So I would say, Dark Forces really developed the shooter genre by combining it with storytelling and level-design fitting to that story. That is something that was a standout for a long time, I would say Half-Life is the next shooter with this level of storytelling. Sadly Dark Forces wasn't praised as much as Half-Life for that improvement.
