Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire

[Whofan]

It's been fifteen years since this came out. The first major Star Wars multimedia project not tied to a movie, SOTE came out in 1996 and basically told the story of what happens between ESB and ROTJ. It also was somewhat unique in that in order to get the whole story, you needed to get the video game, comic book and the novel. (Although each story was self-sufficient, the project's three major incarnations left 'gaps' for the other story element to take place). In addition, SOTE also had a soundtrack (Not by John Williams but by Joel Mcneely, containing many SW themes but also original music) an action figure line, Applause statues, and some other stuff.


The novel pretty much followed Luke and co....the comic focused mainly on Boba Fett's attempt to get Han Solo back to Jabba without running into other bounty hunters (and also featured some additional scenes with Vader and Xizor) and the game followed Dash Rendar, who was pretty much a Han Solo fill-in character, complete with his own Falcon-style ship.

Basically, the story involves Luke, Leia, Lando, Chewie and the Droids in their attempt to rescue Han from Boba Fett. However, things get complicated when Prince Xizor-a rival of Vader's and ruler of the organization Black Sun-sets out to usurp his rival and become the Emperor's new second-in-command. The story also deals somewhat with the second Death Star, the Bothans, and Luke's growth as a Jedi. Shadows also spawned a few sequels and follow-ups, most notably "Evolution" a comic series which dealt with the fate of Xizor's female cyborg, Guri. Black Sun has also appeared in various SW spinoffs such as the Darth Maul comic series.


Some people wish that "Shadows" had been a film or TV series, and certainly with Star Wars mostly computer-animated these days, it's sort of a possibility, but Lucas still seems determined to flesh out the prequel universe rather than work on other eras.

 

[Captaindemotion]

SOTE was one of the few OT-era novels that I actually liked; though the best scenes were from EBS (the Vader-Emperor encounters, as viewed by Xizor). But the writing was pretty lame - Perry actually uses the line 'X looked at Y as if he had turned into a giant spider' not once but twice! Ye gods!

Never played the game or read the comic.

 

[Bishop76]

The game was fun enough for the time and the comic was about the same quality as the book - which is to say, it was pretty meh. I don't think a lot of people were clamoring at the time, and certainly not now, for this to be made into any more than it was. If anything, the Zahn trilogy is what people wanted to see in movie or TV show form.

 

[Kirkman1987]

The game was one of the first N64 games I purchased back in the day, and I remember being very excited. The snowspeeder level blew everyone I knew away, and the game had very atmospheric levels (helped by the awesome soundtrack).

 

[Mr Light]

That game was absolutely amazing at the time. Particularly the way there was a fog that obscured things far away. It was so realistic!

 

[marillion]

^^Agreed.. I never read any of the other stuff, but I LOVED the game.. Geez I remember wasting so much time on that.. Still have my 64 packed away somewhere.. I may have to dig that out this weekend..

Sadly, I'll probably be underwhelmed by the graphics compared with stuff like Rogue Squadron...

 

[TheBrew]

When I talk about difficulty levels with my friends, I bring up the "Jedi" mode from the game. Yeah, you could die really fast, but so did your enemies. I really prefer the harder difficulties to be like that as it made it challenging but in a different way that just simply making the enemies hit harder and have more health.

 

[Harvey]

I've mostly forgotten the book at this point, but Joel McNeely's score is terrific and I'm happy to have it on CD.

 

[Gaith]

I remember the book as being decent enough; the characters weren't as cool as those of the Thrawn trilogy, but the story was pretty exciting, considering the ROTJ limitations, and the sexytime passages struck little adolescent me as pretty damn hot!

In short, Shadows joins the Thrawn trilogy and the non-SE OT as the only valid parts of my personal SW canon. (The Hand of Thrawn duology, not so much, I think, and while I might be inclined to accept a few more pre-PT books, I can't be arsed to read them.)

 

[Set Harth]

The book has the best Vader POV out there.

 

[The Wormhole]

Honestly, I only got as far as the fifth or sixth chapter of the book before giving up because of how bland and dull it was. I got a few of the action figures, though I'm not sure if I still have them.

 

[JediKnightButler]

I thought that it was a pretty decent story that fills in some of the gaps between ESB and ROTJ. The rivalry between Xixor and Vader is good and it shows that Emperor Palpatine's iron grip on Vader is weakening following the events of ESB. Joel McNeely's score is pretty good, especially the one that includes Williams' themes and motifs. I wouldn't mind it being made into a computer animated feature at some point but want to see Zahn's "Thrawn Trilogy" more.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

It brought us Xizor's theme.