As one developer, who asked to remain anonymous, told us, the control was exercised because these were games recognised for a certain earning potential: "The development of the game was supposed to be 100% top-secret," they said, "It was internally announced in a Raven company meeting when a mysterious towel-shrouded head was produced… underneath which was a bust of Darth Vader. This was an iron grip holding on to the Star Wars licence – and with good cause. This became our MO from there on out when dealing with Licensing." An iron grip I can’t remember what it was that we slipped in for them to veto, but if they let Sith undead in, it must have been crazy. "We figured if we put something in our design proposal so out-of-this-world crazy, and then slipped in the real idea we wanted, they would veto the crazy thing and let our real idea through. Then we got this crazy idea… It seemed as though Licensing rejected at least one thing from each of our submissions, almost as if they had to veto at least one thing from our designs to validate their existence." Licensing came back and said 'No, only Jedi can wield sabers'," he said, "We went back to the drawing board and spent a few days trying to work around this limitation. This made it a challenge to figure out how to have lightsaber battles as a game element."īut, as Kevin pointed out, the team found a way around this particular roadblock: "We had originally proposed some sort of Sith Apprentice, a non-Jedi wielding a lightsaber. Stephen Shaw, project leader and designer on Mysteries Of The Sith explained one particular hurdle that has stuck with him: "The largest restriction that was put on us was that we weren’t able to create any new Sith lords for our protagonist to battle. Well, somebody talked to somebody and the next thing we knew he was on board so we went ahead and made him a key plot point."īut it wasn’t always as easy as getting Lando on board, with restrictions and rules in place and a constant back and forth between the development team and licensing. "I think we talked about Lando Calrissian as a joke at first," Kevin continued, "Like we would only do it if we could get Billy Dee Williams. ![]() ![]() Kevin pointed out two of the less impactful restrictions placed on development: "We did have a longstanding 'no mistreatment of Ewok' policy in place (which we broke in Outlaws) and there was later a 'no mistreatment of Jar-Jar' policy." Yet sometimes the policies weren’t as clear cut as the creators of the games initially thought. While the games were based on Star Wars and being made by – or in close conjunction with – Lucas's own company, there were still restrictions, hoops to be jumped through and arguments to be had. Each of the five Dark Forces/Jedi Knight titles carried a fair bit of baggage with it, thanks in no small part to licensing. While the man who put his name to the studio wasn’t directly involved in the various productions, it didn’t mean it was all smooth sailing. When the interview was over, he leaned over to Daron and said 'This is really violent!' From then on I don’t think he was too interested in games until around The Force Unleashed." He sat down and played it while they filmed it. "There’s a funny anecdote Daron Stinnett, project director of Dark Forces, told me," Kevin recalled, "The local news wanted to get a story on George and Dark Forces. ![]() Not so, said Kevin – in fact, George Lucas wasn’t really involved with production at all back then. Playing with an entire universe of someone else's creation, you might expect the man himself – George Lucas – to have some involvement in the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight games. "We would often spread that resource material all over the floor and look for ideas and ways to tie things into the existing Star Wars universe," Kevin continued, "Since I had such a passion for it, I thought I owed it to the franchise to stay as true to the source material as possible. While Disney might have nuked all of the expanded universe mythology, it doesn’t change the fact that – back in the day – these were people, often Star War fans, who were working on, adding to and enriching the universe they cared deeply about. But I finally had a venue for all the Star Wars knowledge I had stored up for so many years." "The three original level designers on Mysteries Of The Sith got a little worried when I pulled up with my personalized plates (MTFBEWY: May The Force BE With You). He was also a devout superfan of the Star Wars franchise. Kevin Schmitt, now senior designer at 343 Industries, worked on Jedi Knight: Mysteries Of The Sith and Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast. The love of the universe was something that would be expected of many who worked on the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight games.
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