Rebel Assault showed that bringing over the familiar trappings of Star Wars could make even a limited game into something very evocative. At around the same time as that game’s FMV-driven success, LucasArts also produced X-Wing, a Star Wars space combat sim which was more of an expansive game and less of an interactive roller coaster ride. X-Wing couldn’t match up to the quality of the music or graphics of Rebel Assault, but the same principles still applied. You get to feel like you’re playing the part of one of the heroes, or at least their supporting cast, in the world of the movies. And having established that model so successfully, where best to go next but to subvert it?
TIE Fighter, more than either of those predecessors, relies on familiarity with, and affection towards, Star Wars. The twist is that you are on the side of the evil empire. And hey, there’s something about just straight out deciding to be the bad guy (duh). But as TIE Fighter provides mission after mission of doing routine enforcement work, there’s not actually a great deal that makes it interesting or even any different from being on the other side. If you’re into flight sims (you might have noticed I’m generally not) then it might be cool regardless, but the context of Star Wars gives it almost everything it has.
Following logically on from my reaction to Rebel Assault, my favourite thing in TIE Fighter was just pressing fire and hearing the familiar delightfully tactile laser noise. If I didn’t already know it, that wouldn’t have the same emotional appeal. More than that, it’s only seeing the familiar inverted, seeing the opening text crawl refer to rebel terrorists while the imperial march kicks in on the soundtrack in MIDI glory, that gives TIE Fighter its transgressive kick. The game’s combination of steady bureaucratic briefings and secret extra secondary missions given by a hooded figure ready to welcome you into the emperor’s inner circle would be tonally jarring if it wasn’t building on an outsized world already built up with a little more care.
The problem is that the context that the game thrives on now runs up against other contexts, hard. 2019 is a really bad time to be playing and thinking about TIE Fighter. If the devil ever needed any advocates, that time is over. Flying interception on behalf of oppressive forces to a background of Star Wars and video games isn’t a clever and unique idea; it’s half the comments sections and Twitter mobs of the internet by volume. “Ah, from their side, it looks like they’re preserving the order of the universe as it should be” isn’t a revelation of perspective any more. It’s just a familiar dull background humming of evil.
[final two gifs taken from video by Andy Keunen]
PC chart, Edge 013, October 1994