Throughout literature, film, and any other telling of the Arthurian legend there is usually a hard line stance taken on characters or ideas being indisputably good or evil. The heroes and villains are on conflicting sides of a fundamental and absolute morality despite reality often being much more complicated. The Star Wars franchise followed this school of thought- casting the Empire as the evil and soulless reflection of Western history’s teaching of the axis powers of World War II. It parallels the post-French Revolution narrative that all democracy is good and all imperial reigns are heinous and wrong.
It is because of this that we can remember LucasArts’s 1994 PC flight simulator Tie Fighter as such a refreshingly bold and surprising experiment in a world of video games where the narrative is always fixated on “the good guys.” In Tie fighter, you are- from start to finish- fighting on behalf of a faction that the movies portrayed as dark and merciless dictatorship that is completely void of humanity. No change of heart in your character halfway through (as in this year’s disastrous Battlefront 2), no surprising twist- you’re essentially waging war with all that is good and just in the galaxy. It’s one of the first and possibly few games that take this perspective, and – for one of the first times for a mainstream game of this caliber- Tie Fighter gives the player a unique chance to embrace the understanding that morality is often a form of perspective.
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