I think it’s absolutely criminal that we haven’t had a Star Wars game that focuses on ship-based space combat in so long, especially since it’s such a big part of what we all love about the movies.
Yes, the Battlefront games had some aerial vehicular battles, but while they looked pretty, they really weren’t all that fun to play. For my money, the last truly great Star Wars game to get us in a cockpit was Rogue Squadron II, and that came out nearly 20 years ago.
It sucks, but all we can really do at this point is wait for EA to realise that there is fact a crushing desire among Star Wars fans to for the publisher to release a new flight-sim set in a galaxy far, far away (which will likely never happen given its current track record of Star Wars games).
The good news is that we’ll always have the wonderful work of fans to tide us over while we wait for our next official fix, which brings me to the stunning remake of Rogue Squadron’s Jade Moon level, which has been recreated in Unreal Engine 4.
You can check it out in action below, courtesy of Thanaclara (via PC Gamer). It’s a seriously impressive effort that retains the essence of the fantastic 1998 original while updating it with better lighting, smoother models, and textures that are easier on the eye.
Brilliantly, the original music and sound effects remain unchanged, which is just filling me with a joyous nostalgic glow that I didn’t know I needed today.
According to a DSO Gaming interview with Thanaclara, the ambitious aim of the project is to rebuild the entirety of Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, including every ship, level, and mission.
Thanaclara explained:
It’s been in development for a couple years so far but we’re confident we can get everything that was in the original game finished in a reasonable amount of time. Certainly less than a couple more years I would hope.
Given the rate at which EA puts out Star Wars game, I sincerely hope the publisher doesn’t decide to pull this project before it can come to fruition. Such a move would surely go down like a fart in an elevator among fans.
If you’re interested in keeping an eye on this one, you can stay abreast of any development updates by following along with the team over on the project’s Subreddit.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.