The Making of Shadows of the Empire

when luke skywalker was most vulnerable this is a dangerous time for you it is you and your abilities the emperor wants when a renegade hero became a friend in desperate [Music] and need dark villain faced his greatest challenge join me and together we can rule the galaxy's father and son when the empire turned more and more to the forces of the underworld bounty hunters we don't need their scum the underworld moved in to crush the empire and the rebellion in a single stroke after the empire strikes back and before return of the jedi there was a time when heroes and villains alike lived in the shadows of the empire what most people think is just a video game for the n64 was actually a multimedia project from 1996 that came out before the star wars prequel trilogy and the special editions writing off the momentum of the thrawn novels and the growing popularity of games like tie fighter and dark forces shadows was one of the boldest multimedia campaigns by lucasfilm that didn't involve a film it would use all of lucasfilm's licensing deals to create a movie without a movie it'd be treated as seriously as a film with a novel to establish the plot a revolutionary video game for a new system a dark horse comic series with extra scenes that aren't in any other media official toys to add to the already expansive star wars toy line and even an original orchestral soundtrack in this video we're gonna dive in for the full storyline and the making of shadows of the empire [Music] in 1994 lucasfilm was preparing for the release of the star wars special editions which is the original trilogy but their infamous changes such as greedo shooting first the weird sarlacc thing and a little ship we might recognize in a little bit also a quick reminder to look up harmy's de-specialized edition it's the only way to watch the theatrical release of star wars in high definition but you didn't hear that from me so with the special editions and prequels coming soon lucasfilm saw an open time frame in 1996 that was prime real estate for a new star wars story to thrive so while lucasfilm was discussing a future book with phantam books their novel licensee at the time an editor named lou veronica pitched that the books should be just as powerful to readers as the films were to viewers and he recommended using pre-existing licensing deals to create a multimedia adventure where they would advertise everything except for a feature film internally people would start referring to this project as a movie without a movie but this wasn't lucasfilm's first foray into a multimedia project defenders of dynatron city was their first multimedia experiment with a cartoon pilot toys comics and a game and while it didn't actually pan out for lucasfilm they had learned from this project and that experience would translate into shadows of the empire thinking is boring let's just smash down the factory blow up everything in sight and pound mayhem's head into a shattered bag of skull fragments what do you think i think that's my kind of plan let's go so then it was time to decide where in the timeline this new project would take place but lucasfilm had overlooked overlapping continuity until 1991 when the first book of the thrawn trilogy was released heir to the empire this book sold incredibly well becoming the first star wars best seller and as the thrawn trilogy unfolded it was widely recognized as the sequels that were never made the thrawn trilogy reignited fan interest in star wars and lucasfilm saw the untapped potential in the extended universe they had but there was a problem numerous side stories have been written for star wars in the 70s and 80s before the 90s there had been no real continuity management so positions were created internally to monitor the lore efforts started to reorganize what's canon and what's retconned to maintain a continuous unbroken story of star wars old media had to be scrapped even the first novel splinter of the mind's eye where luke [ __ ] slaps leia and they have a mud fight luke chops vader's arm off and vader trips over his own arm and falls into a hole and there's a weird implied romance what the [ __ ] is going on in this book and then there's the marvel comics from the 70s where han solo teams up with a six-foot green rabbit named jackson fun fact he was actually referenced in a clone wars episode so lucasfilm devised a new canon sorting system that ranked from g being the most important canon standing for george lucas films all the way down to end canon what if stories and parodies like the infinities comics where luke misses the shot on the death star leia turns to the dark side yoda takes control of the death star which is now the justice star and kamikazes the justice star into coruscant to kill the emperor which is pretty good so lucasfilm wanted this multimedia project to take place between a new hope and empire strikes back but during discussions at lucasfilms john knowles artist and game designer at lucasarts sent a memo to lucasfilm recommending that the new story actually take place between empire strikes back and return of the jedi instead this was because at the end of empire there were more cliff-hanging dramatic possibilities also introduced in empire were a slew of cool new bounty hunters adding a new element of a shadowy underworld to the galaxy so the plan was to tell the same story from different perspectives they would have a novel by bantam books that would look at the story and overall conflict between the rebels empire and a new criminal organization the black sun a video game from lucasarts to focus on action sequences from the eyes of a console exclusive character and the dark horse comics would give additional perspective from everyone's favorite bounty hunter the mandalorian from disney plus mandalorian and baby yoda [Music] the first ideas for shadows began at skywalker ranch with lucy wilson and howard rothman of lucasfilm at the time they just came up with a very few major plot points written that had yet to be fleshed out it pretty much just consisted of an assassination plot against luke luke has a new bodyguard character and there's an overlord of the underworld involved these initial story ideas were taken to a key meeting in november of 1994 between lucasfilm executives and most if not all of the licensees such as lucasarts dark horse and bantam books including an author from bantam books who is set to write the novel steve perry it previously written for bantam books including an alien series and he even had his own series called the matador which was about an ex-soldier fighting against a galactic confederation so he was a pretty good pick to write a star wars novel this [ __ ] don't miss no he's [ __ ] good that [ __ ] don't miss man but that's not entirely why he was picked for bantam for shadows he had written a last minute low-paying royalty-free job for his editor at the time tom dupree for a novelization of the mask although it was low paying he did it because he thought it'd be fun and the timing couldn't have been better since he had done his boss this favor he was repaid by getting a recommendation for this new star wars novel so during this key meeting in november 1994 perry mentions that there were numerous ideas coming from every direction for every medium this led to discussions like who was the star of the video game which was originally going to be boba fett we'll go into that more when we talk about the video game that idea was actually adapted into the dark horse comics instead as a side plot throughout the six issues other ideas that were bounced around during this meeting were that lucasfilm actually wanted leia to be completely seduced by shizuor instead of resisting his seduction but ideas like this were changed during the meeting and this is why it was important for them to hash out ideas during this brainstorming session where shizor might have been a misunderstood leader of the underworld that leia might fall for sort of a han solo type they thought it'd be better for shizuor to be a coldly calculating arrogant sociopathic leader of the black sun and that leia would stay loyal to han all these discussions proved beneficial to the book game and comics and after taking plenty of notes perry went off to go write the novel sticking to a general outline of the major plot beats the rebels are hunting boba fett to save han solo a new villain emerges the leader of a criminal syndicate the black sun who's in a power struggle with vader to become the emperor's second in command trying to make vader look inept by killing luke skywalker luke is finishing his new lightsaber and jedi training at ben kenobi's house followed by an exciting swoop chase through beggar's canyon by his assassins sent by shizor the rebellion is baited into attacking a freighter containing the second death star plans that is purposely given by shizuor leia takes a dangerous gambit to find the ones behind the assassination on luke leading to a seduction and test of will by shizor and finally the gang rescues leia in a final confrontation between all three sides the rebellion empire and black sun that takes place on coruscant the outline was approved by lucasfilm but they told perry to amp up the godfatherish feeling of the book when it came to the black sun at least then after that perry was given total creative control also in this book perry wrote taras kasi into the star wars universe it's based on one of many forms of pinkoxilot which i definitely just butchered that name but he is an instructor for this indonesian martial arts style so we have him to thank for this gem of a ps1 game he finished the first draft in four months and describes working with people at skywalker ranch as being easy to get along with helpful and not suits that are gonna give you a lot of corporate flack at the end of this video we're gonna fully cover the plot so there's a time stamp in the description if you want to jump right to the lore but don't do that because we're just getting started with the new story came new characters ships and locations that required a consistent design across all media lucasfilm hired artist mike butkus who had previously done character art for the star wars essential guide to characters as well as an in-house style guide for star wars in general he was given the task of conceptualizing the new original characters butkus reminisces how he found a secluded southern california beach with his boxer pup set up a tent in a campfire near some surfers and an old man selling burgers and sketched up concept art until sundown what a life for shizuor he'd pop in a tape of danny elfman's batman soundtrack for a darker seedy but commanding mood and for dash rendar elvis 60s rock and [Music] roll when shizuo's design was translated to the book cover comic and video game the design was mostly unchanged from butkus's original sketches but dash rendar on the other hand and his co-pilot libo and the new ships all came from a different source dash rendar was only a minor character in the book and comic and he was the character of the video game so john knowles from lucasarts talks about how they would take charge of dash's design i think the comic book artist had some really great ideas killian plunkett was his name he thought of him as the pirate han solo wished he could be right like the the guy the really rough guy like han solo has a heart maybe destroyed or doesn't right you know han solo always always ends up doing the right thing maybe this guy doesn't and he was wild looking crazy long hair scarred yeah just a spooky looking dude i thought that was cool but there's no way we could actually render that in what 75 to 150 polygons or whatever i had to work with at the time it was going to be a blocky guy he can't have long flowing hair meanwhile the novelist wanted him to look very dashing and regal and and have long flowing red hair and a cape and you know shiny stuff so he's kind of like where han solo is just kind of the working man smuggler this guy is the really slick professional uh smuggler more like lando i guess um and um that wouldn't work either for us they were amazing drawings but when i saw you know a couple of those sketches i was just like ah yeah he looks like one of them you look like you know a big hair heavy metal rocker from the 80s for cape i mean all he needed was a guitar instead of a gun and it would have been like you know the new member of whatever band um so i i was like no i got to convince everybody that we have to make him look more lived in more worn star wars was a world where everybody wore like functional clothes their spaceships were beat up at least in the original trilogy it's a lived-in banged-up world that george envisioned so that people would connect with it right and that wasn't just how it looked it was how it sounded like all the things you didn't hear spacey sounds things sounded like real machines oh yeah watch this that just made it feel like it's just it should be no different you watching these guys get into a spaceship and fly off as you get into your car and you drive off this is just how it is so i wanted to be that authentic to these characters and in a way you know dash's crazy shoulder pads don't really fit that so i was kind of stuck in the middle of that trying to piece it all together and say well it affects us more than it affects the novel or the comics right now so let us figure it out so i started working out some outfit ideas and we had to give them some big hulky shoulder pads to hide the fact that you know in those days we didn't have smooth joints for characters so you would see the arm penetrate into the body in weird ways effectively every joint is like a capsule that's pushed into each other and it looks really bad if you can't figure out a way to hide it so that's where the shoulder pads came in and it was a constant back and forth between lucasfilm licensing the novelist the comic book artists ourselves just to try to find a look that everybody was uh in agreement with i think we ended up driving most of that for the game but he ended up becoming an amalgamation of many different people's ideas and therefore kind of didn't really have that much of an identity that was actually you know not how you go about designing a video game character in retrospect but he had a role to serve and he served his role so you know i think he ended up working it was also hard to try to maintain a consistent appearance for him because you know everyone else is based on an actor right our storyboard artist hired a model to pose for him to do all these uh poses for the cinematics and i ended up taking those and scanning them and painting him in the computer and but he was a really young guy he's like 20 in his early 20s he had dark short hair and he just he didn't really look like we thought dash would look like so i always had to do something to age him up rough them up a bit we didn't really model high-res 3d characters back in those days you know that was just starting out as a thing right and so we didn't have like a high-res model we could use um and pose and so it was really that was a challenge actually for for me uh was trying to make him look the same scene the scene like in some scenes he looks like that model some scenes he looks like kevin costner some scenes he looks like um michael perry the actor from streets of fire you know it's just i don't know why you know i don't know that we were necessarily looking at those guys but maybe i was subconsciously thinking of them as i was as i was doing it and i just wanted to give them the same blaster han solo and look rolled around with because that was always my favorite one so yeah we didn't really come up with any fancy there deal 44 it's the best based on the idea of him running around the big gun didn't seem very star wars-y so we gave him a little blaster so you know not quite the most exciting video game action character accessory when you think about it but um you know it worked out nose also designed libo dash's droid companion and co-pilot yeah i designed him and his name came from a co-worker uh mike levine his nickname was libo and it just sounded like a great droid name so just change it to lb lb02d9 or something like that and libo for short and some of that was inspired by the han solo adventure novels where he had this droid named blue max who was kind of his sidekick back in the day and it's fun too because the solo movie the the droid played a big part in uh the solo movie too so that was kind of fun ship was one of the things i'm most proud of you know i had sketched some some ideas for that ship that i just wasn't happy with at all i didn't think they looked star warsy honestly doug chang who's the brilliant concept artist who's famous for the all the prequels and and all that stuff he was actually designing lots of things for the special edition at the time spaceships speeder bikes or swoops he was offered up to me as someone i could i could turn to for help so i did i asked him to help uh design the ship we both agreed it should be asymmetrical the name kind of implies that outrider brings to mind outriggers on a boat i i don't know these are the things artists think about and he also loved that idea so he just took and delivered up a sketch that was um amazing you know as soon as i got it i just ran to my computer and i fired up 3d studio and then that became the the high-res version of the outrider which then i had to make the the blocky one that you see in game you know but yeah it was uh that was cool that ship did age well actually not many things in that game aged well but the ship did it's a freighter but it's also fast and and agile and it's a mash-up between the viewing and falcon conceptually originally the cockpit would rotate independently of the rest of the ship right just like a b wing i ended up making the cockpit a lot more like the millennium falcon because it was just easier to do at the time from a technical point of view and so our our cockpit did not rotate independently from the ship so i think the toy ended up doing it the toy took a wild departure you know in terms of the the design but it was still it was still cool to see those things come together shizuru's ship the virago was another one of shang's designs this ship also became the standard star viper fighter of the black sun's navy and one of the coolest god damn ships around yeah that's another one of doug's designs and yeah it was a brilliant sketch and there were probably two or three of us who ended up building that model actually but i'm the one who had to animate it so i had to make sure you know the wings actually folded in properly and doug because of his industrial designer everything he designs is designed to work right so so you go off his sketches it's really easy to see how oh i see this piece folds into that piece and pulls this piece and rotates at that angle and so it was actually pretty easy to bang that together [Music] i've seen pulse cannons and gladiator droids i've seen beggars canyon and imperial sewers i've seen dead ends an infinite space i've seen 360 degrees tomorrow [Music] around the time that shadows was in talks at lucasfilm nintendo requested a game from lucasarts for their new project reality system which would eventually be the nintendo 64. so i i would always work like three days a week on the super nintendo games and couple days a week on x-wing and then tie fighter and then the expansion so i was doing a lot of that work and i believe at that point uh we had started to hear rumors of this thing called project reality it was nintendo's new system and we had an early dev kit and we hired three brilliant guys from spectrum holobyte which is a flight sim company in in the bay area but those guys were well versed in all things sgi and it was a silicon graphics based machine so we needed to some experts in that tech and we were just sort of told to sit around and think of something to come up with and we were going to do western i was already a little bit you know burned out from star wars so i started to cook up ideas of a console style spaghetti western had a train and low 3d that was snaking through a canyon as one of our first tests and it was kind of mind-blowing like none of us had ever you know we'd seen games when you're on a train and it's usually a static train that might be going up and down a little bit with the background scrolling on either side but you'd never be on a train that was an actual 3d object moving through a world and rolling and banking and turning with two canyons or being a character on that train jumping while it's moving and sounds familiar but it didn't take long to realize that it was kind of fruitless to try to have a launch title for this new system that wasn't tied to star wars i mean it just made sense it kind of came down as hey there's a multimedia type thing that lucasfilm is thinking of doing to sort of continue the momentum that the games are starting to build and the timothy's on novels are starting to build in this sort of resurgence of star wars which you know had been almost 20 years and i think they wanted to you know really ramp up for the re-release of the the movies with the special edition with some sort of new multimedia project and so the idea was because we're all one lucas family lucasarts look licensing and ilm and all those groups there was a lot of talking going on to try to work together towards something so shadows of the empire kind of was the result of that so lucasarts was set up to make a shadows of the empire game but they still had to decide what kind of game they were going to make and what it was about i had a real soft spot for the bounty hunters and sort of that underworld of star wars and that was the world that you know i wanted to play in and i thought other star wars fans like myself would want to play in as opposed to you know playing luke and han solo again and again and again and just retraining the movies and that time period you know was kind of their little moment in the sun right where you met you met all the bounty hunters and then purse strikes back and as much as i'm a huge han solo fan that's why i'm in in his ship right now i knew that you know he'd be frozen at this particular time but the really cool story and the character i wanted to be the star of the game was actually boba fett and so the concept was um boba fett battling on competing bounty hunters who are trying to steal han solo from him as she tries to get from cloud city to tatooine and you could make a whole a whole bunch of great stories out of that but that's kind of a compelling character to play he looks really cool he's got all these weapons you know he's got i mean it's boba fett and he never got to uh to really be a star at that point you know he'd shown up in some of our games and you know in the side scroller as an enemy i think we had him in empire strikes back as an enemy and i think he made a cameo appearance in dark forces so that was the goal and we were going to go with that and then at some point word came down that nintendo wanted which is a polite way of saying demand demand that there be a character the character you play is exclusive to the nintendo for some amount of time i can't remember a year or it wouldn't be on any other console for some amount of time so that meant you couldn't play any of the core characters um it had to be a new a new character so it couldn't be both that couldn't be han couldn't believe any of those things so uh we had to come up with a a character and simultaneously the novelist needed a character to sort of fill the vacuum that han solo left you need a tough gruff you know space pirate guy who can smuggle guns to get things done and ultimately became dash rendar who became the the player character not as cool as boba fett would have been but sometimes you're given a box and you know you got to figure out how to how to work within it back when lucasarts made the super star wars series for super nintendo it was critically acclaimed large in part to the multiple game modes throughout the game it wasn't just side-scrolling platforming but the remote seven segments that made it feel like an epic adventure when it changed from level to level for the n64 game they would take the same idea for shadows of the empire but expand on it and each of the gameplay modes for shadows of the empire would pull from their previous games at lucasarts there were low altitude and free space flight levels that was inspired by tie fighter there were on-rail shooting galleries like rebel assault there was a high-speed bike chase and third-person shooting levels reminiscent of dark forces except now the player can switch between first person third person bird person and fourth person but it turns out multiple genres would not work out that well in early 3d on a brand new console as easily as it did in the 2d games in my experience in the super star wars games you'd spend some levels running around blasting stuff and then you'd get on a speeder bike and that mix was really appreciated by uh by fans and critics alike it's honestly the kind of thing you know you expect to see that kind of thing when you see a star wars movie and this is supposed to feel like a movie without a movie so we can't just have you you know running around always or just flying a ship and uh you know in retrospect i i never would have done that that's it it's a it's a really uh scary way to you know get yourself into a design hole right you're just making five or six games instead of one and that yeah that puts a lot of pressure especially on a really small team that we had to try to do any one of those things really well and you know i think the game suffered from a little bit the first thing we did and the most successful thing we did and the thing that ended up spawning the entire rogue squadron series um which was fantastic was the snow speeder battle yeah and dash was not in the battle of hoth but you know we just snuck him in there and said well he could have been right he's a hotshot pilot he could have been there to help the rogue guys um but it was really we want the player to experience that snow battle from the empire strikes back we're going to work it into the story even though it has nothing to do with the story that's going on with the novel or the comics it was really about you know that's an experience we want to we wanted to nail and i suppose we could have done a snow bat snow speeder battle on another planet or you could have flown the outrider around the legs of a walker but that wasn't what we're after we're after scene that they will always remember for the rest of their lives and just start the game off that way and it also gives us a chance to kind of have han and dash you know share a couple words before han uh disappears right because that's kind of um they knew each other you know all these corellian guys must know each other maybe if we'd done more of that a little less of some of the other stuff i think the game might have benefited from it but there is that you know feeling that players expect to do lots of different kinds of things and experience all the things that they see in a movie so trying to weigh those against each other was always a challenge and nintendo japan did have somebody sort of on site with us embedded with us for a while which was both helpful and and stressful at the same time the controller was so top secret um that no one was allowed to see it outside of our group so no one had ever seen an analog control before and at the time they didn't have the form factor yet so it didn't look like the nintendo 64 controller but what we had was a thing in a box and the box had two holes cut in the side and you had to put your hands through the two holes when you were playing it so that no one could see what you were holding and so you know other coworkers would come by and say well you know what what's it like and we make up all kinds of ridiculous stuff like what's like this gelatinous ball and you just move your fingers slightly that can totally i mean we just made up all kinds of stories the lucas arts team would also get feedback from miyamoto who was always adamant that you should be able to see dash's feet but recommendations like that would more work for a mario game not so much a third person shooter i was trying to do a camera that was like mario's camera it just doesn't work in a shooter you know the standard two-stick shooter paradigm that we're all familiar with left stick is you know forward back left right and right stickers look around that works we were trying to do other things that just didn't work as well it was weird enough to get this controller that you held in the middle and it had this really cool analog stick that nobody nobody ever seen anything like that before and he had another little analog stick for a camera because it was designed for mario one is for the camera one is for the character so we ended up mapping all the aiming and movement to the left stick which is a little weird and it's also a little difficult to make a third-person shooter where you're far away from your character as far away as we were i mean unless you're going into like an aim mode right like like uh gears and and uncharted do right um we just hadn't figured all those things out back then but regardless of the odd control scheme the game was still groundbreaking for both console shooters and the star wars movie experience this idea that you could run through a world that you saw in the movies and have the letting falcon fly over you as you're running through there and be like oh i'm in the movie i mean that was that was really mind-blowing back then or to be running around underneath one of the two-legged walkers as it's stomping around i mean there was a perspective nobody had ever had before and you are the camera so you're running around looking at it from all kinds of angles and that was a unique experience and i remember the first time we showed the game people were kind of blown away by it it was state of the art welcome to our star wars super mario and street fighter alpha 2 hint video this is so jam-packed that we're going to get started right now with shadows of the empire levels like gall spaceport which was this vast sprawling thing you could see forever and it took you like 20 minutes of walking and jumping and running to to get there and figure out what path you're going to take i mean that was really cool in those days like you didn't really get that sense of of space in a console game in a shooter most shooters were all set in hallways and dark forces had done that the year before and i was lucky enough to get a bunch of their level designers on shadows that they wanted to bring that same idea into shadows and for a lot of them it was even more exciting to do that because of the way they got to build it and the best way i can describe it is in the early days of shooters you weren't actually building geometry in a world you were chiseling the world out of a block if that makes sense you're creating negative space and that's why you were always in hallways and the dark forces team were the first ones i think to figure out how to fake it and make you feel like you're in a vast world right that aesthetic they brought gave the game at scale but yes it didn't age very well it's very low poly world very small textures that you have to stretch across very large walls and so you there's this weird aesthetic you're trying to make something that looks kind of real and lived in like the films are like a first person shooter at the time like dark forces but you have nowhere near the memory right nowhere near the bandwidth to do the kind of textures you want to do so it almost created its own look it's very sharp and pointy and with blurry textures and all this kind of stuff so you know as an artist it was it was always frustrating you're just like oh my god this is going to look terrible but the overall effect was so new and novel and interesting that i i think we looked past that you know going back you always want to make sure that the visual look of the game can be supported by the hardware you're building it for right so i think the best looking n64 games in those early days were games that just put more reliance on simple clean beautiful graphics like mario like pilot wings but golden i they were kind of doing a similar approach we were right they're trying to make it look as realistic as you can but they got a whole another year and ig 88 was one of the one of the coolest bosses i think we'd seen in the game in a while that dude was just scary he was everywhere he was scary he had some clever ai pathing that he somehow always managed to jump right in front of you and scare you so i mean there was some cool stuff in there and then when the mandalorian you know comes out and you see ig-11 doing all of his amazing stuff i can say well you know i did it first we made it cool all right we were one of the first teams to use motion capture ilm had a motion capture rig set up to do the casper movie i think that they were working on casper the friendly ghost the technology at the time was really crude like you had the actors had to wear they still have to wear lots of dots but they had to wear dots connected to wires that were all connected to a train kind of like vr helmets are now right you're you're leashed to a bank of computers so the actor couldn't really move much more than 10 feet dash running is just me hand animating a model because we couldn't actually get motion capture of somebody running and now they have you know places where you know which is professional studios that can they can have a horse on a treadmill you know motion capture i think when you shoot a storm trooper there's still some motion capture in there but there's honestly not much the rest of the game i would like to see dash on a horse riding on a train shooting some stormtroopers yeah i would like to say that was something we cut like you know dash on some sort of cool running creature but no we didn't have that one unfortunately shadows didn't make the nintendo 64 launch in north america but it did release by christmas of the same year the pc version of the game came out about a year afterwards with fully animated and voiced cut scenes dash rendar was voiced by john sagan known for other gaming roles such as solidus snake and metal gear solid 2 and mandalore from the kotor games when we finished the n64 version of the game the game was just going to be effectively ported up to the pc as best as possible without a whole lot of changes to the to the content itself besides cinematics so i assembled a small cinematics team um which i was included and we did a bunch of uh full motion video sequences that that we used instead of the sort of 2d cinematics from the other game and had voice and all this kind of stuff which made it a bit more immersive i think the cinematics we did for the pc version came out really well except for the talking head stuff those are terrible the dash render you know face and the luke face and a leia face and the camera should never get that close to an asset that is that crude we were so proud of the fact that we had lip syncing uh faces um we really weren't at the cutting edge of facial animation and rendering so we probably should have dialed that back but the spaceships shots all the action shots those came out pretty well and we are also uh one of the first one of the very first games to ship on a with a 3d accelerator of support because that was a whole new thing the 3d accelerator cards were just starting to come out it took us about six months i think to bang together a good pc version after we shipped the n64 game it did like 10 times what anybody thought it would in terms of you know sales so that turned out to be pretty cool and you can play it at a higher frame rate which is always a better experience although the game wasn't received the best critically it sold above expectations on both pc and nintendo 64. and despite the game's flaws and aged controls and graphics the pros outweigh the cons and it retains a cult status among gamers and star wars fans to this day it also helped usher in a new generation of star wars fans during the renaissance of lore in the 1990s so i wouldn't have made six games in one i still don't know which stuff i would would have cut but i know i would have cut at least half of those modes of gameplay just so we could spend more time polishing the ones that we know worked i know that the low altitude flight stuff and even the space flight stuff honestly worked really well there would be no rogue squadron series had there not been shadows right i mean that i mean factor five is awesome we had a lot of guys from lucas working at factory five around the corner from us making making those games so absolutely not taking away anything from that but we literally handed them the code to shadow the empire and said you know hey why don't you guys go make a whole game that just does this because the the big lesson we came out of that was just do one thing and do it really well right so i'm proud of the legacy that shadows left because that core team and i went on to do podracer which was doing one thing and doing it really well we think rogue squadron was doing one thing and doing it really well and we were able to kind of um carry all that that knowledge that we had learned forward so i'm kind of proud of that uh more than anything else a bum that we we didn't exactly hit the launch date of the console i think we came out a month or two later like almost at the end of december but i am proud of the fact that we we did get it done like nobody told us we get another year like those goldeneye guys but uh we did get it done and it it was very successful i mean critically mixed um understandably so it was tough too because it was being compared against the only other games like it which were on pc which could do so much more so you know these guys just got done playing dark forces and they expect to get that plus more on the console and so it was kind of hard because i i just come from you know a whole string of games where every review that was written was like you know double thumbs up you know for super star wars or the x-wing and tie fighter series so that was the first time i'd worked on a game that you know got some bad reviews and that was kind of tough for me but it was all a learning lesson right but uh yeah proud of the very small team that put together something no one had ever seen on a console before that was that was pretty cool [Music] in the early 90s lucasfilm had a license deal with varis serabind records who had already published four albums for a tv series called the young indiana jones chronicles lucy wilson at lucasfilms had previously proposed the idea of composing a full soundtrack for a star wars novel it was originally intended though for the thrawn trilogy but it never happened they decided to revisit the idea for shadows of the empire joel mcneely a prime time emmy award winner for his work on the young indiana jones chronicles was set up to compose the soundtrack for shadows but he initially turned it down because he was trying to work on other films at the time but when two weeks opened up in his schedule he took the role and wrote the entire soundtrack in two weeks mcneal used events from different chapters of the book to inspire the sound of each track even using original concept art by ralph mcquarrie to visualize what was happening unlike a film score it was composed with no visual timing of a film this means that mcnealy could place himself in any scene and stay there as long as he wanted and he had creative authority over the pacing of the soundtrack the pieces from this soundtrack were used in the video game and the original audiobook and although it was completely original there are still stings of john williams music throughout the album like the imperial march or the force theme after the soundtrack was written it was recorded by the royal scottish national orchestra and released in april of 1996 on cd and cassette the cd also included a program that could be ran on windows 3.1 computers that had biographies concept art advertisement material and all sort of extra information for shadows of the empire the soundtrack invokes the sound of the original star wars trilogy but instead of sounding too much like john williams's scores it was a bit darker toned and more sinister it was a very well received addition to the shadows project but in retrospect mcneely is critical of his own soundtrack and regrets writing it in only two weeks one of the more memorable tracks thanks in part to the video game is the destruction of shezor's palace this track includes some epic sinister choir chants but these chants aren't just nonsensical words it was a new star wars language mcnealy had went to ben bert from lucasfilm a sound designer and creator of some of the most iconic sounds in star wars burt was also a creator of alien languages so mcneely asked bert to write a poem one that would have guttural syllables to be used in the soundtrack so bert wrote delore de verda a poem mixing germanic language elements creating an ancient coruscant language burt never gave a translation for this poem but he told the story to mcneely that was an ancient story of violence and romance of two ancient warring races the tongue and the zell battling on coruscant aeons ago when suddenly a volcanic eruption wiped out the zell the tongs survived and lived in the shadow of the volcanic fallout for years naming themselves the warriors of the shadow a.k.a delaware deverta anyways the site of the final battle between the zelda and the tongue before the volcano went off would be the basis for imperial city on coruscant the capital of the empire and where a lot of shadows of the empire takes place so mcneely used parts from this poem for the choir chant where he saw fit regardless of context [Music] the word averto would be built upon in the republic commando video game where it was reworked as a mandalorian war chant for the clone commandos and the new language was dubbed as the canon mandalorian language isn't that exciting up [Music] the dark horse comics team they were gonna go a little deeper with the bounty hunters because like boba fett's bad week you know i ig 88 wanted a piece of them and so that rivalry between those two uh was really was really cool to see in the comics dark horse had already published over 80 star wars comics before shadows most notably the popular dark empire series enter john wagner as the writer of the shadows comics he was a co-creator of judge dredd and had previously written some boba fett comics at dark horse he was a perfect fit for the shadows comics which was going to feature exclusive scenes of the famous bounty hunters comic artist killian plunkett was given the challenging task of drawing for star wars up to lucasfilm's continuity standards certain challenges noted by plunkett were vader with his dark rigid shape and helmet reflections which worked easily for film because the lights reflected naturally but it was more difficult in static comic art capturing the likeness of real actors was another challenge the comics also introduced two new characters gixx a spy who was hired by vader because he doesn't trust jizor so jyx is instructed to go to tatooine to ensure that luke survives any assassination attempts by jabba's thugs fun fact jyx is based on a background extra in return of the jedi the second new character is big giz he's the leader of jabba's swoop gang out to kill luke other than these new characters and the bounty hunter stuff the comics pretty much just give a quick recap of the shadow's story there were also some other comics some mini comics that came with the toys and a pop-up comic about the bounty hunters there was even a sequel spin-off about guri shizor's sexy ass assassin droid sexy ass ass ass android but they were a good supplement to all the other content that was coming out at the time and dark horse's comic art gives awesome interpretations of what was going on during the novel [Music] prepare yourself for star wars shadows of the empire the cruel crime lord shizuor directs the carbonite capture of han solo and his imprisonment aboard bounty hunter boba fett's battle ready slave won now luke skywalker goes undercover with soldier of fortune dash rendar as he rips through space in his battle transforming outright but can they stop slave one in time it's the ultimate ships for the ultimate battle dare to enter the shadow star wars shadows of the empire because in vehicles sold separately from kenner lucasfilm used their license with hasbro to produce a toy line under the kenner name to make numerous action figures for shadows princess leia and the bounty hunter boosh's disguise chewbacca disguised as infamous bounty hunter schnuva with a blaster and vibro axe that he never has or uses dash rendar with a heavy weapons pack he never has or uses prince chizor with energy fans that he never has or uses luke in his coruscant imperial disguise these elite red guards were made for shadows of the empire by john knowles it comes with a stun baton that he never has or uses there was also a versus series pitting two characters against each other these actually came with an issue of the dark horse comics there was shizuor vs darth vader where jizor would get [ __ ] rocked boba fett versus ig-88 outside of their ships as opposed to inside their ships there was also boba fett in the slave one with han and carbonite and a red imperial version of a swoop bike rider confusingly the outrider was also made though it looked odd and there were also plans to make a version of shizor's virago star viper but it never happened there are also plans for guri with a big purgan gun there was also a limited run of statues by a company called applause oh hey look i got it right here there were only 5 000 of these ever made so it's like kind of a big deal just kidding it was like 60 bucks there was also an amazing shizor applause it to me for statue silver other than those there were also micro machines tops trading cards embossed metal collectible cards there was no shortage of toys to collect when shadows was released [Music] the story begins at the battle of hoth during the events of the empire strikes back dash rendar is hired by the rebellion to smuggle food supplies to echo base this is also where the video game begins but in the game dash is smuggling assault blasters instead of food levo get this stuff offloaded and into those transports before they take off i just found out the empire is about to ruin our day han solo told me that imperial walkers have been spotted on the east ridge i'm going to jump into a speeder and help rogue group slow them down you'll pardon me for saying so captain but it's been quite some time since you've flown an airspeeder in combat and don't get your servos in a twist now just make sure you collect the money for this load by the time i get back and be sure to count it this time will you after helping rogue squadron and the shield generator is destroyed dash returns to the base and escapes in his ship at this point dash abandons his work for the rebellion and disappears from the story for the time the book begins with vader speaking to the emperor and empire strikes back and prince shizor is actually four meters away from palpatine and this is when shizuor learns that luke skywalker is vader's son the son of skywalker must not become a jedi after having a talk with the emperor jesus meets his assassin droid guri who reports that the bounty on luke skywalker was successfully manipulated from wanted alive to wanted dead your meeting with the emperor went well as planned prince chizor of course i promised 300 ships for his majesty's construction project on endor i bowed and scraped to every one of lord vader's demands they couldn't have found a more amenable business partner or a more dangerous enemy you've informed jabba's bounty hunters that lord vader's order to capture luke skywalker alive has now been changed yes and no one will know that the new order to kill skywalker came from you excellent my hand must not be detected in this vader will surely suffer the emperor's wrath when he fails to deliver skywalker alive as promised with both of them out of our way and the emperor's growing dependence on black sun's substantial resources there is no limit to the power i will attain since shizuo knows that the emperor is expecting darth vader to deliver luke alive he knows that killing luke will make vader look inept he also has a personal vendetta against vader which will be revealed later in the story this is where we fast forward through empire the most relevant plot points for shadows of the empire are that han is frozen in carbonite and taken away by boba fett to jabba's palace and vader still wants to find luke and turn him to the dark side boba fett is in route to tatooine to deliver solo to jabba the hud when rival bounty hunter ig88 ambushes vet to take solo for himself he takes out ig-88's ship but fed has to head to a nearby imperial spaceport for repairs on a moon called gaul ig 88 retreats to a salvage yard on orb mantel for his own repairs in the video game dash is working with the rebellion on a long-term basis and is helping hunt down boba fett but can't find him but he does track down ig-88 he hijacks a train and smashes into the salvage depot where ig-88 is hiding 88 runs some calculations and determines that he cannot be defeated so he does the dumb villain thing and spouts vital information about boba fett's location sounds like you got your wires crossed ig-88 as there is a zero percentage probability that you will survive this encounter i see no risk in informing you that i have tracked my esteemed competitor to the jar system where he will soon lose captain solo to me now i must conclude this interruption you will detain me no further dash promptly defeats ig 88 and learns that boba fett is in the jar system meanwhile luke lando leia chewie and the droids are all on tatooine trying to avoid imperial attention for a while after they were recently attacked luke is at ben kenobi's house working on his jedi training and building a new lightsaber from a book he found in the house he doesn't have a lightsaber crystal so he cooks up an artificial one in an easy bake oven which takes about one month over in mos eisley cantina lando meets with leia and chewbacca lando tells leah that he gets a tip from a reliable unnamed third party that boba fett is headed to gaul and that he'd contact an old acquaintance of his rendar to check it out who in the book is coincidentally hanging out in the jar system at the time zolando leia luke chewie head to a secret rebel moon base near gaul called kyle this is where they first meet dash rendar meanwhile at gall spaceport in the cantina boba fett meets up with bosk and zukus who offer a truce to work together to deliver han more safely to tatooine and to split the bounty boba fett realizes that it's an ambush and kills a sniper who is set up to kill him and then he escapes from the cantina luke and rogue squadron head to the orbit over gaul to attack the empire and create a diversion for the heroes to sneak onto the planet the heroes consist of lando leia chewie and dash dash leads the falcon through the grand trench canyon towards the imperial spaceport where fed is hiding they spot the slave one and head towards it but then tie fighters react and attack them at this point dash dips out saying he's not paid for this [ __ ] once again he disappears from the story for a time under attack by thai fighters lando and leia and the malayan falcon are overwhelmed and are forced to abandon the mission while the falcon is trying to attack the slave one fett gets back to his ship and finds four law in it with some other bounty hunters trying to steal han solo he blasts four lawn to pieces and kills the other goons in the game the attack on gal is drastically different dash hunts boba fett alone before i fried his circuits ig88 said boba fett is here in the jar system most likely he's at the imperial moon base on gaul now that we're on the empire's hit list the only way in there without being blasted out of the sky is to hide the ship in smuggler's gorge then i'll have to sneak in the hard way it looks like i go in on foot from here he also finds a jet pack which is exclusive to the video game he finds boba fett and defeats him but he's chased off by the empire but yeah in the book he just [ __ ] dips meanwhile over on coruscant shizor meets with vader and vader reiterates that he doesn't trust she's or for [ __ ] she's or then gives vader the location of a secret rebel shipyard knowing that the emperor will send vader there whether he likes it or not and vader gets more pissed and he gets more suspicious of shizuor of doing something back over gaul one of rogue squadron's astromech droids goes rogue and takes control of wes's x-wing trying to blast luke's x-wing and kill him thanks to the force luke senses the lethal shots and dodges and maneuvers to shoot the haywire estar mech droid without destroying less's x-wing our heroes reconvene at the rebel moon base and learn that the rogue astromech droid was purposely programmed to assassinate luke the spy lashes out and tries to kill luke on the spot barely missing luke's head wedge quick draws his blaster and puts a bolt in the spy's chest they find that the spy's bank account is linked to a dummy corporation they believe to be vaders so they suspect that the empire's behind this assassination dash reconvenes with the rebels and says lol my bad leia asks luke to go back to tatooine to lay low for a while while they investigate the assassination leia also asks dash in secret to follow and protect luke while she lando and chewie go to rodia where they have a contact to get in touch with black's son they want to go off the grid to find intel on luke's assassination even if it means going to the largest criminal syndicate in the galaxy they head to rodia the planet with the greedo people and eventually get a meeting with guri guri is prince shizuo's personal advisor a hot pants blonde human replica droid who's fast as [ __ ] and stronger than a wookie shizor also implies that he bangs her when he's lonely shizor also secretly wants to bang leia because she's a smart pretty independent woman so he has guri arranged to bring leia to shizuo's palace on coruscant to discuss the assassination among other business if you know what i'm saying luke and dash rendar both go to tatooine dash hangs out in mos eisley and overhears jabba's gang talk about going to kill luke at ben's house and decides to follow them luke heads back to old ben's house on tatooine to finish building his lightsaber made out of spare parts from mos eisley and a home-cooked crystal and he turns it on for the first time while he's doing this he sees jabba's swoop thugs in the distance and hides behind some rocks eventually the swoop gang spots him and luke uses his own lightsaber in combat for the first time luke jacks a swoop bike and heads to beggar's canyon in a high speed chase but luke is still outnumbered even in becker's canyon when dash suddenly appears on a speeder bike and saves luke from overwhelming odds they head back to old ben's house when they notice a datapod dropping nearby they go and check it out and find that it has a message from the bothan spynat leader and needs to speak with leia since leia's busy on rodia investigating the assassination dash and luke had decathless themselves to represent the rebellion in the comics the beggar's canyon chase is slightly different jabba's swoop gang is joined by one of vader's spies gixx during the swoop gang attack jigs fires a premature shot at luke giving him a heads up telling his gang that he thought he had a clear shot eventually once the gang is chasing luke through beggar's canyon jix actually kills the leader big giz to further ensure that luke isn't hunted anymore giz utters his last words in the game luke never even sees a swoop gang member dash is in most eisely and gets a hint that's the swoop gangs heading over to ben kenobi's house to kill luke jabba will pay extra to the one who blasts his bones let's fry him dash follows and kills every swoop gang leader in most eisley and in beggar's canyon when dash gets told ben's house luke is just chilling on a speeder bike in his return of the jedi clothes and he already has the information from the datapod that would have landed they worked for jabba the hut and they had orders to kill you but something's not right i have a feeling someone else is pulling jabba's strings where's leia now leia is trying to find answers luke she thinks by infiltrating black sun spy network she'll find out who's behind this black sun one of their agents just delivered to us the time and root of an imperial freighter supposedly it's carrying an encoded super computer with detailed plans for a major imperial construction project i wouldn't trust those gangsters if i were you i don't trust them but we can't afford not to check it out it may be vital to the alliance want to come along dash why not gotta earn my pay meanwhile vader's taking care of the rebel base that shizor gave him information about vader gets into a fighter and imperial forces overwhelm the asteroid base vader has a moment of discuss of how easy it is to destroy the rebel shipyard while flying his interceptor ready to destroy the last x-wing he lets the fighter go vader wants an equal challenge and the proud warrior inside of him doesn't enjoy the political dance that shizuor and the emperor are making him do this is one of many characterization bits for vader in the book and his anger of putting up with shizuor is going to come into play later meanwhile aboard the slave one forlom secretly repairs himself among the other corpses in the ship bosk and zuckus tracked down four lom's location and ambushed the slave one prompting bobo to say bobo kills four long but not before four lom damages the slave one's weapon systems zuckus and a group of bounty hunters board the slave one and fet's captured but he tricks his captor gets his gun and kills everyone but zuckus bosk unknowing to what's happened on the ship gets tricked by fed fett forces zuckus to bait bosk into attaching his ship and fett sets off explosives damaging the hound's tooth slave one jumps into hyperspace and zukus is captured by fett leaving bosk in ruins meanwhile dash and luke head to cothless and they meet up with the bothan spymaster koth milan the bothans tell lucandesh that they're preparing an assault on an imperial freighter soprosa which has serious construction plans aboard they felt like it might be relevant to the rebellion which they're sympathetic for so they want to get them involved the bothans intelligence was correct and they intercept the imperial freighter over bothawe so they approached the freighter cyprusa to take it hostage when the imperial freighter surprises them with hidden missile compartments dash tries to shoot one of the missiles out of the sky and thinks he's hitting it but he can't take it out and it kills eight bothans four more bothans die in the onslaught when luke finally disables the freighter's engines many bothans died to bring us this information dash is shocked that he couldn't hit the missile and let the bothans die and he becomes horribly depressed the imperial freighter surrenders to the rebels the bothans board saprosa and obtain the construction plans about the size of a briefcase as usual the game is slightly different in the game luke and dash make a leisurely flight to the saprosa and dash boards blasting his way through the corridors and finds the large supercomputer containing the plans the outrider swoops in and picks them up after fighting a loader droid meanwhile shizuo and the emperor are having lunch together and they're replaying footage of the attack on the imperial freighter the emperor warns shizuor that his plan had better work the plan to purposely give the rebellion the plans to the second death star which is what was on the imperial freighter shizar reiterates that the rebellion will trust the black sun more and he'll be able to deliver the rebellion into his hands in a trap it's a trap shizor is skillfully playing for both sides so if the rebellion or the empire wins the war he'll have leverage by saying that he helped either side vader sort of realizes this and he gets more pissed the emperor likely also sees this but he likes trolling vader so he lets shizuor give the plans away anyways once the rebels and the bothans have the plans from the imperial freighter dash decides he doesn't need to guard luke anymore and heads to rodia to join up with lando leia and chewie luke heads back to cothless with the bothan spymaster to have the plans decoded by expert bothan slicers when luke and koth get to the base it's attacked by a bunch of bounty hunters made up of bear bells and nyctos mostly who kill many balthans including koth milan many bothans die yeah we get it go away now one of the bothans sneaks away through a secret door with the death star plans the kidnappers take luke alive letting him know that there are two bounties on him dead and alive and they're negotiating with both parties which are secretly the empire and black sun these bang hunters are trying to get maximum profit from either side this gives luke time to escape his cell with a jedi mind trick he finds his lightsaber and he tries to fight his way out but he's once again overrun until lando blasts through the wall and helps luke escape in the falcon meanwhile back on imperial city in coruscant the emperor sends vader decathless to collect luke personally they want to make it seem like the empire considers the captured plans so serious that vader himself would be sent there making their plans to make the leaked information seem real more convincing vader disagrees because he knows jizor is going to be up to some [ __ ] while he's gone but he has to do it because the emperor told him so vader arrives to cothless and just as luke is escaping they sense each other's presence the falcon gets away and vader lands on coughless to interrogate some bounty hunters using the dark side he tortures one of them learning that the death bounty on luke is likely coming from black sun confirming his suspicions about shizuor he vows to find proof that he can bring to the emperor that she's or is interfering with turning skywalker to the dark side and then he makes a metaphor about sand and how he'll finally bury she's or in sand by itself a grain of sand was nothing but with enough grains one could cover a city it would not do to tip my hand too early as of now i have enough sand to begin a bit more sand and i'll be able to bury she's or in sand i love sand while bringing leia and chewbacca to coruscant gary gives them both disguises of bounty hunters leia disguised as bouche a late bounty hunter who pissed shizor off and chewie is sanuva a well-known successful wookie bounty hunter they even gave him a fresh flat top haircut chewie and leia meet up with shizuore who starts to ooze his pheromones getting leia super hot and horny and shizuor sends chewie and leia off to go their own rooms leia gets all dressed up and sexy and they have a private meeting without chewie leia tries to talk about the assassination when shes or goes full send with his creepy pheromones and leia makes out with him until chewie comes banging on the door marching her ass out of the room leia gets pissed at chewie for interrupting the first action she's had since episode 5 but eventually comes to her senses and realized that she's or is using creepy pheromones to get her horny she also puts together something shizuor said during their makeout session and realizes that he's the one behind the assassination attempts on luke and they need to send her a quest for help leia goes back to shizuor to stall long enough for a chewy to escape and is now able to resist shizuor's creepy pheromones she needs him in his lizard dick she zore sends leia away and purposely allows chewie to escape setting up a trap for luke leia is locked in a room and has no means of communication meanwhile shizuora reflects on his nut pain and considers banging guri to let off some steam further making him one of the creepiest star wars characters ever lando and luke get chewie's distress signal and head to coruscant they sneak past the imperial blockade and get into the underworld leaving the falcon to r2 and 3po in case of emergency they knock out and take red elite stormtrooper disguises and find chewbacca in hiding when they're attacked by anti-imperial thugs once again they're outnumbered when dash rendar who also snuck on a coruscant from chu's distress signal comes in behind luke and lando and saves them from the underworld attackers with his sharp shooting at this point dash recovers from his depression and he's a somewhat changed character less of a dick more humbled but still pretty smug the crew heads to a dingy coruscant motel to plan leah's rescue it's at this point that dash gives luke a change of clothes his return of the jedi black clothing and robe they also meet up with one of dash's contacts on coruscant a sewer engineer to find their way to schizoar's palace through the sewer system at some point luke reaches out to leia with the force vader senses this too in his superstar destroyer that's hovering above coruscant but he's confused where there are two equally powerful force users on coruscant and he thinks that luke is somehow echoing his power in two locations implying that leia is about as strong in the force as luke also at the same time shizuor senses danger in his future implying that he may also be force sensitive and that these gut feelings have helped him climb the black sun ranks in the past maybe the emperor sensed the force inside of shizor and wanted him to become his next apprentice if vader failed him which makes sense because in the book the emperor is constantly testing vader's patience by making him put up with shizuo's suspicious and cunning behavior i think the emperor kind of likes shizura's style too what do you think she's or's darth name would be i think it would be darth sexual deviant also throughout the book vader practices dark side healing in order to breathe without a mask on he eventually gets up to a couple minutes using just his anger to fuel his healing i think that this was written in for it to eventually come into play as he talks to luke and his death throws in return of the jedi back in the sewers the sewer guide helps them find their way through the pipes and up to shizor's palace luke even kills the dayanogo with one lightsaber swipe at some point the guide feels threatened by the heroes and pulls a gun on luke dash quick draws and puts a bolt in his forehead and they sneak into the palace this is a little different from the video game all the heroes head into the sewers together but they split up at some point with their ships dash goes off alone and fights a giant dayanoga underwater and they sneaks into the palace separately sets ion charges that would destroy the palace the false bombs are set and luke has found princess leia just find a way out dash also fights shizuor's gladiator droid after she's or personally talks to dash via hologram captain render you have been a persistent thorn in my side not to mention a most disruptive uninvited guest of my cameras as the heroes storm shizor's palace vader's intelligence team brings back some information about shizuor back in the day vader had a secret biological experiment on the fallen home planet something went wrong with the experiment and the bioweapon contaminated millions of fallen to contain the disease vader genocided the race killing millions including shizuor's royal family evidence of this was erased by shizuor but somehow vader's agents found this information giving vader more knowledge of shizuor's motives revenge against vader dash luke and lando are sneaking through shizuru's palace when shizuor realizes that his palace is being invaded he sounds the alarm and grabs a modified blaster pistol to go kill luke himself the heroes continue rushing through shizuore's palace while leia tricks guri into her room and bonks her on the head with a helmet and locks her inside guri the human replica assassin droid who can kill without raising her heartbeat with no conscience who costs 9 million credits gets bonked on the head by leia's helmet completely taking her out leia gets away and runs into luke lando dash and chewie eventually black sun guards guri and shezor himself corner the heroes shizuor recognizes everyone except dash rendar simply referring to him as somebody he's never seen or heard of before in parts of the book shezor's mentioned he's jealous of the bothan spy net so the black sun spynet must really suck if he doesn't know who dash is shizuru actually manages to get a couple shots off at luke directly but luke deflects the blasts and then the heroes are outnumbered by shizuor's guards at this point lando reveals to his team that he has three thermal detonators leia yinks one of them and pockets it for later use which you see in return of the jedi but luke takes one of them and he holds it on a dead man's switch a setting on a thermal detonator where if the person lets it go it immediately detonates this forces shizuor to halt fire as the heroes start to leave lando takes the third thermal detonator and puts it on a five-minute timer and he drops it down a garbage chute right in front of everybody with a shit-eating grin on his face panic immediately ensues shizuor's men hilariously just quit their job on the spot and leave during the chaos guri tries to stop the heroes and luke takes her on 1v1 guri taunts luke into unarmed combat luke uses 4 speed to enhance his fighting capabilities and easily puts down the human replica droid he spares her telling her that she should join the rebellion but her programming tells her that she has to refuse and she escapes our heroes are picked up by r2 and c3po during the explosion of the palace shezor escapes in his own custom star viper ship and almost hits a yt freighter not initially realizing it's the millennium falcon and he heads to his skyhook that hovers above coruscant a skyhook is a lavish type of repulsor craft only owned by the incredibly wealthy the emperor also has a sky hook and there's a story about how she's or tries to steal the emperor's gardener but the gardener has a unfortunate trip down an elevator shaft once the emperor learns about it as shizuo approaches his sky hook he realizes the freighter he passed was the falcon and notifies the black sun navy commander on the skyhook to destroy the falcon and kill skywalker just as he's shutting his comms off he mutters skywalker's name meanwhile across coruscant vader's superstar destroyer intercepts this communication vader's agents are scanning all communications for any mention of the name skywalker and this communication is brought to him seeing that she's or does mention skywalker by name and that he's going to kill him vader finally has the evidence he needs to take action against shizor for treason and since palpatine is away from coruscant playing golf on the second death star vader's in charge of coruscant and heads for the skyhook to confront shizor our heroes leave in the falcon and dash boards his outrider in orbit very close to the skyhook that hovers above jizor's destroyed palace when suddenly they're attacked by black sun star vipers luke and lando pilot the millennium falcon while chewie and leia man the turrets while the falcon and outrider try to avoid the star vipers there's still tons of civilian traffic around the skyhook numerous civilian ships are destroyed by black sun's reckless pilots the falcon and outrider start to get overwhelmed and shizuor's commander even says that they'll need a miracle to survive which seems to be taken to heart in the final level of the video game which starts out infamously [ __ ] hard and you need multiple lives to survive this level on higher difficulties you crash your ship you better climb to the next one you see and get back in the air sister too much time goes by and you don't you get afraid to fly when all hope is lost rogue squadron shows up in the nick of time to help the heroes thanks to a message that was sent to the alliance by libo dash's droid co-pilot shizor lands his star viper on the skyhook and starts speaking with his commander on comms although rogue squadron showed up to help shizor still has numbers over the heroes and it looks like the battle's going to be won when suddenly the executor hops out of hyperspace next to the skyhook vader deploys his tie fighters and shockingly they pass the rebels and start destroying the star vipers instead shizuor opens calms with vader and vader demands she's or surrender giving him two minutes to give himself up to the empire under the charge of treason under the onslaught from the imperial navy the black sun commander begs shizuor for the order to surrender shizuo remained silent on skyhook for the last two minutes and it's unknown what was going through his mind or what happened during those final minutes but time runs out and vader fires on and completely destroys the skyhook killing all aboard the debris nearly takes out the falcon and luke sees dash's ship disappear in a major collision of debris dash is assumed dead luke and lando are kind of shaken up by his death in the comic they make a half-interested comment about his death and immediately move on the skyhook battle in the game is much different luke is somehow in his x-wing confusingly since he came in on the falcon this is a major continuity error i'm on to you john the outrider and falcon chase cheese or up to the skyhook that's sitting in open space with no civilians and start fighting the blacks on star vipers they're overwhelmed when both rogue squadron and an imperial star destroyer arrives not exactly vader's executor the x-wings and tie fighters join the fray dash proceeds to enter the skyhook and fire missiles on the power core destroying the skyhook and dash's presumed dead let's get out of here where's dash must not have made it out of the sky before through i can't believe dash didn't make it leia he was such a great pilot i know luke but he didn't die in vain thanks to him the alliance no longer has anything to fear from black sun and the imperial computer he captured is being decoded right now it may well contain information worth the price he paid with his life captain i do not understand why do you not want commander skywalker and the others to know that we survived and made the jump to hyperspace well as much fun as that was i don't see us joining the ranks of that crazy rebellion too dangerous and too much money to be made elsewhere my friend on top of that someone from black sun will take shizuo's place and when that happens you can bet your servo motors they'll send every thug in the galaxy after us but if everyone thinks we're dead who's gonna be looking besides it's good to be remembered as a martyr without actually having to be dead wouldn't you say the emperor pretends to be upset with vader over destroying the skyhook and killing shizor but then kind of laughs about cesar being dead the heroes head back to a secret rebel base and mentioned that the bothans learned that the missile that dash couldn't destroy back during the saprosa incident actually had experimental diamond armor so dash actually couldn't have destroyed it so it's not really his fault that the bothans died the book finally ends with luke recording his message to jabba on tatooine at old ben's house as they prepare to rescue han leading directly into return of the jedi and then finally in the comic fett and zuckus land on tatooine to deliver han solo to jabba the hutt as fett gets out of the ship with han on a hover lift he's ambushed by bosk and jabba's swoop gang the chase ensues and bosk captures han at this point it's revealed that boba fett is actually just zuckus dressed up in mandalorian armor and the hover cart that was supposedly carrying han solo is filled with four alarms trashed remains meanwhile fett delivers han to jabba the hutt pain-free and unscathed the comics end with vader reflecting on the recent events watching over the construction of the second death star and there you have it a comprehensive look at the shadows of the empire multimedia project if you enjoyed the video consider leaving a like and subscribing to the channel and check out the patreon link in the description if you want to support the channel and get early looks at upcoming videos catch you later

Channel: Saintmillion

Views: 391,853

Keywords: saintmillion, saint million, shadows of the empire, back to the shadows, the making of shadows of the empire, star wars shadows of the empire, shadows of the empire boba fett, dash rendar, boba fett, star wars, shadows of the empire dash rendar, star wars documentary, sote, sote documentary, saintmillion star wars, star wars galaxies, star wars sote, squadrons, star wars squadrons, rogue squadron

Id: 6gsmE_hoNsI

Length: 79min 19sec (4759 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 06 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/DaddySkates]

This game was so magical to me back then. It felt like I was in it <3

[u/RidleyScottTowels]

A deep dive into the creation of a Star Wars multimedia project that takes place between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. We look into the story, comics, toys, soundtrack, and even ideas for a Boba Fett video game.

 

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire is a 1996 multimedia project created by Lucasfilm. The idea was to create a story set between the films The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and to explore all commercial possibilities of a full motion picture release without actually making a film. The venture was intended to reinvigorate interest in the franchise ahead of the theatrical Special Editions of the Star Wars trilogy released the following year.

 

Many products were released, including a novel, a junior novelization, a comic book series, a video game, a soundtrack, trading cards, role-playing games, posters, model kits, Micro Machines toys, statuettes, vinyl dolls, and a series of action figures and vehicles.[1]

The story introduces Rebel ally Dash Rendar, who aids the heroes in their attempt to liberate the frozen Han Solo from bounty hunter Boba Fett. Meanwhile, Darth Vader continues the search for his son, Luke Skywalker, whom crime lord Prince Xizor attempts to kill in his plot to replace Vader at the side of Emperor Palpatine.

[u/[deleted]]

This is so cool! I loved this whole project and bought into it 100%. I always had hope it would become a movie someday.

[u/rolfraikou]

Always shocks me how much people don't remember all the other media besides the game.

For me the comics were my main thing. Those and the action figures.

[u/timmymandering]

Loved this game as a kid!!!

[u/krayt]

Saved this for later, can't wait to check it out!

[u/Mactire404]

I watched this a couple of days ago and can highly recommend.
Well made documentary.
Reminded me of my live for SotE. I loved the comics, and the (PC) game. Read the book a few years back. It's a very decent francise in itself.
It's also very cool to see several things introduced in SotE which were used in the Special Editio OT.

[u/jedijoe9]

this documentary was great and really helped me tie up some loose ends about my childhood understanding of SOTE! I remember getting the action figure as a gift and being unclear how to learn the story of Chewbacca with a haircut or Luke as an imperial guard. Also, the soundtrack, which I learned about from this video, is pretty fantastic!