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We're excited to announce Star Wars™: Dark Forces Remaster!

Created in collaboration with Lucasfilm Games and fully remastered through our KEX engine, Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster supports up to 4K at 120FPS and features advanced 3D rendering, modern gamepad support, trophies and achievements, and more!

Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster is coming soon to PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC (Steam). Stay tuned for a release date announcement later this year!

A remaster of a classic adventure from the Star Wars vault previously announced this summer now has a release date that will sound familiar to those who played the original release. Nightdive Studios and Lucasfilm have announced that Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster will launch February 28, which is 29 years to the day since its original release in 1995.

Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster stars Kyle Katarn, a mercenary who joins the Rebel Alliance's covert ops team, as he takes on the Empire and their secret Dark Trooper project. The game is notable for being the first-ever first-person-shooter in Star Wars history.

The new remaster will support up to 4K resolutions and 120FPS on PC and all consoles except Nintendo Switch. The game will offer modern controller features like rumble and motion controls, as well as trophy and achievement support on PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam.

Dark Forces Remaster is the latest remaster project from Nightdive Studios, which also recently released the System Shock remaster and will soon launch a new version of Turok 3. Dark Forces joins the company's 2024 lineup, which also includes an updated version of System Shock 2.

Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster launches February 28 for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

Star Wars Dark Forces Remaster Launches Exactly 29 Years After The Original

Players can relive the adventures of Kyle Katarn in February.

www.gamespot.com

 

[Husky]

Cool, right after I finally played the original game
Gameplay looks pretty much the same as playing with The Force Engine, so I guess it's not a major remastering treatment.

 

[acm2000]

They are smashing out these bare bones remasters now

 

[DelireMan7]

Never played this one but spend countless hours on Dark Forces 2 : Jedi Knight ! Give me that remaster !

 

[GnomeChimpsky]

Gonna be sweet but I wish they'd finish the other remasters they announced ages ago...

 

[lh032]

too oudated for me to enjoy, sadly.

 

[Griffon]

Looks very barebones, except for worse looking cutscenes (the original pixel art was great as it is).

I'd expect for some proper perspective correction when looking up or down. But they didn't even do that.

 

[Raelgun]

Cool, right after I finally played the original game
Gameplay looks pretty much the same as playing with The Force Engine, so I guess it's not a major remastering treatment.

Looks like The Force Engine dev helped them port this to KEX

Nightdive Remaster FAQ · The Force Engine

theforceengine.github.io

 

[Mephisto40]

It looks like more of a port than a remaster tbh, the only thing that seems to have changed is the assets are higher reolution, and they've probably just whacked everything through an AI filter to do that, which probably took about 30 minutes to do

 

[Apocryphon]

They are smashing out these bare bones remasters now

True. Though after the amount of work they put into System Shock and the Quake remasters, I can’t say I mind given the titles that’s FE being released. I wouldn’t want them spending much time and resources porting stuff like this.

I keep hoping for an announcement that they’ve dropped System Shock 2 Enhanced in favour of giving it the remake treatment like the first game. They already have the engine and surely it sold well!?

 

[Dice]

Cool, right after I finally played the original game
Gameplay looks pretty much the same as playing with The Force Engine, so I guess it's not a major remastering treatment.

Only so much you can do with those old engines. They aren't even real 3D.

 

[mrmustard]

Day1, missed that one out back in the days.

 

[Salmon Snake]

Kyle Katarn's aim in the trailer is Stormtrooper level.

 

[acm2000]

True. Though after the amount of work they put into System Shock and the Quake remasters, I can’t say I mind given the titles that’s FE being released. I wouldn’t want them spending much time and resources porting stuff like this.

I keep hoping for an announcement that they’ve dropped System Shock 2 Enhanced in favour of giving it the remake treatment like the first game. They already have the engine and surely it sold well!?

and to be fair, they put these games out cheap so its not like the true scam artist scum lords who want to charge $50

 

[fatmarco]

I don't mind perfect ports of old games tbh. It gets to the point where the less is changed the better.

Having said that, I only want the modded upgraded to jedi knight 2 esque graphics version of Dark Forces 2.

 

[mansoor1980]

that FOV is giving me a headache

 

[Physiognomonics]

4K 120fps on consoles? That is unfair to the others selling old ports. How dare they?

 

[THE DUCK]

Based on how it looks, it should be running at 16k at 3000fps.

 

[Skifi28]

It looks like more of a port than a remaster tbh, the only thing that seems to have changed is the assets are higher reolution, and they've probably just whacked everything through an AI filter to do that, which probably took about 30 minutes to do

When it comes to nightdive ports, I like to think more of it like preserving gaming history. The majority of the changes are probably under the hood for the game to run without issues on modern system.

 

[CGNoire]

Yuck...they butched the cutscenes where the characters talk.

Its one thing to upscale the cutscenes and remove aliasing....it another thing entirely to change the art style by actualy removing colors from the color pallete. Blasphemy... this is a crime against the original artists.

 

[IDKFA]

Never played this one but spend countless hours on Dark Forces 2 : Jedi Knight ! Give me that remaster !

This. That game has incredible level design.

Hopefully if this sells well they'll do Jedi Knight next.

 

[CGNoire]

Only so much you can do with those old engines. They aren't even real 3D.

Source ports of Duke3D and Doom say otherwise.

 

[S0ULZB0URNE]

Gotta do better than this.

 

[Doczu]

Well it's great they are preserving old classics for bew platforms, but this is a quick job, just upscaled.

Mind you, i'm not mad or anything, but the same day they announced Turok 3 and damn they put a lot of good work into that.

 

[Dice]

Source ports of Duke3D and Doom say otherwise.

Translate them into a completely different engine that is legitimately polygonal and then the original is magically 3D? What an interesting notion. Why don’t you go play some build engine games in the build engine and use the mouse to look up and down a lot. Just give it a go for a couple hours, tell me how that works out.

 

[Patrick S.]

That's cool and I'll buy it, but only at a reasobale price. There are ports of this game to other engines that work really well already, and I think the old cutscenes are quite charming in their low res presentation, actually.

 

[Beer Baelly]

Ive got a lukewarm feeling about this one

 

[drganon]

Cool. It's been over 20 years since I played the ps1 version.

 

[CGNoire]

Translate them into a completely different engine that is legitimately polygonal and then the original is magically 3D? What an interesting notion. Why don’t you go play some build engine games in the build engine and use the mouse to look up and down a lot. Just give it a go for a couple hours, tell me how that works out.

I understand your skepticism but thats exactly what has already been done. The source ports take the BSP structures from the orginal engines and in realtime converts them to polygons allowing for fully 3d enviroments and the ability for mouse aim and looking straight up with zero disortions.

Look up Eduke32 for the build engine port.

 

[Drizzlehell]

 

[Unknown Soldier]

DOOM: Star Wars Edition was a pretty good game in it's day. Not sure how well it's gonna play now.

This was the game that introduced Kyle Katarn. He ended being in so many other things that he became an official part of the old EU which was nuked by Disney to non-canon status.

 

[Puscifer]

I honestly was waiting for the remastered footage to show up at some point and I know I can't be the only one. And LOL at that cutscene "remaster," those assets looked arguably worse than the original

 

[Laptop1991]

I played all 4, best Star Wars series for me, especially the 2nd game, no Jedi in the first, Dark Forces, i hope they remaster the rest, especially Jedi Knight

 

[Drizzlehell]

DOOM: Star Wars Edition was a pretty good game in it's day. Not sure how well it's gonna play now.

This was the game that introduced Kyle Katarn. He ended being in so many other things that he became an official part of the old EU which was nuked by Disney to non-canon status.

That's because they want to create their own, totally unique and original character called Bryce Karan, an ex-imperial mercenary currently working as a resistance spy together with his pilot sidekick, Jen Orin, on their mission to steal the plans for the Starkiller base, giving the New Republic a much-needed chance at fighting against the evil First Order.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

Source ports of Duke3D and Doom say otherwise.

Those games also have had the source codes released to the public for 20+ years. Millions upon millions of hours dumped into modding those. Dark Forces has had no such love. Prior to Luscious release of the Dark engine….which he spent YEARS working on….the only way to play DF was through DosBox. I remember hearing about the DarkXL engine a while ago to the point that I was legit shocked then it came out, cuz I had long forgotten about it.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

I am extremely grateful this is coming out. Nightdive is working hard to preserve gaming history. They did a great job with Blood, Quake, Quake 2 and of course System Shock.

I just wish those ports of SiN and Kingpin would come….

 

[CGNoire]

Those games also have had the source codes released to the public for 20+ years. Millions upon millions of hours dumped into modding those. Dark Forces has had no such love. Prior to Luscious release of the Dark engine….which he spent YEARS working on….the only way to play DF was through DosBox. I remember hearing about the DarkXL engine a while ago to the point that I was legit shocked then it came out, cuz I had long forgotten about it.

For the price there almost certainly gonna charge for this 30 year old game the least they could of done is lisense it. Oh well.

 

[RagnarokIV]

Day one son!

 

[RagnarokIV]

Kyle Katarn the best in Star Wars. Legend.

 

[RobRSG]

My favorite Star Wars game as a kid.

Day 0.

 

[Ozzie666]

I had really good times with this back in 1995. they have my attention on pure nostalgia at this point.

 

[darrylgorn]

 

[ZehDon]

Source ports of Duke3D and Doom say otherwise.

… those are literally different engines. That’s what a “source port” is. This is a remaster. It’s intended to preserve the original game, brought up to snuff to run on modern hardware. This isn’t intended to be a UE5 remake that looks, plays, and feels nothing like the original.

 

[Stuart360]

They are smashing out these bare bones remasters now

Well as a conttroller using PC player, the fact that Nightdive add full controller support to all these old classic games is the main thing for me. Even if they did nothing else in the remasters, adding official controller support is the big hook for me.

 

[violence]

I owned this game, but not doom for some reason. It has a lot of nostalgia for me.

I’m also looking forward to the turok 3 remaster. That game was up there as having one of the crappiest frame rates on the N64. But I remember liking it when I rented it.

After they run out of stuff to re-master, I’m wondering if nightdive will eventually make their own original boomer shooter since they will be extremely seasoned/capable.

 

[SmokedMeat]

Gotta say Dark Forces never did anything for me. I also think it would’ve been better to keep the old scenes in.

But glad this is out of the way so Nightdive can work on better games.

 

[Fake]

Day one for me. Love this game back in day.

 

[Scotty W]

Looks like ass!

 

[lmimmfn]

The original has also been ported to the Amiga recently - https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=115115

 

[CGNoire]

… those are literally different engines. That’s what a “source port” is. This is a remaster. It’s intended to preserve the original game, brought up to snuff to run on modern hardware. This isn’t intended to be a UE5 remake that looks, plays, and feels nothing like the original.

Eduke32 and Zdoom arent remakes either they just convert the BSP information into 3D polygons. The experience otherwise is the same. No one said remake.