With the rise of console, there are whole genres that are slipping through the cracks in the transition from the world of PC gaming. One such genre is the flight simulator; a former staple of the gaming market, the flight sim used to be one of the most generally popular genres of the medium. The deep-rooted desire of man to take to the skies was simply too compelling to pass up, especially given the mathematical simplicity of flight and the expensive nature of flight as a hobby. You could get into the seat of anything from a small Cessna to a fully-armed F-15 and take to the skies to do whatever you pleased without fear of imminent death. As the years go on, we find fewer and fewer of these gems floating around the market as we move from joysticks to joypads.
Star Wars: TIE Fighter, the sequel to the even lesser known Star Wars: X-Wing, is an ideal example of the even rarer genre of science-fiction flight simulators. One of the only flight simulators that takes place in zero-gravity, you play the part of a pilot flying missions for the Imperial Navy, piloting everything from the iconic TIE Fighter to the hulking Imperial Gunship in your duties to the Emperor. You rise through the ranks as you begin with lowly customs duties and work your way up to squad leader and even the personal guard of Darth Vader. You sit through simulator flights, briefings, liftoff protocol, systems management, combat, debriefing, and covert operations. I’d place it as the best example of a space flight simulator without second thought, easily surpassing the likes of Rogue Squadron and Freelancer in terms of how a space navy would operate both in and out of combat.
You play a nameless pilot in the Imperial Navy, a feature of the game that comes as an unexpected relief. No one really cares who you are. Mission briefings and debriefings are professional and impersonal, cutting right to the heart of the matter at hand. You’re not a hero. You don’t have some mystical destiny. You’re just another number on an always-changing laundry list of other numbers. You play no significant part in the central plot other than that you’re a pawn present at the various machinations of the galactic powers-that-be, trying to live one more day as you fight pirates, slavers, traitorous Imperials, and the Rebellion.
What the game really captures the best is in the scale of it all, a factor that’s often lost in non-historical shooters. With as fast as everything moves, ships are usually little blips in the distance. Torpedoes, while deadly, travel over large enough distances that you can shoot them out of space with either some careful gunning or another torpedo to intercept. Factor that in with the complete lack of ground as a frame of reference, and you’ve got a mind-bender of an experience.
The controls are pretty straightforward, but combining these with efficiently multitasking adds its own challenges while the horizon-less perspective makes things especially disorienting. The physics of flight are quite plausible, following principles of Newtonian motion rather than the arcade-like feel of the Rogue Squadron series. Energy reserves must be managed as you divert them to shields (if you have them) and recharging the batteries for weapon systems. Your bomb bay (if you have one) will hold several different payloads that imperial clearances and regulations allow. Scanners let you analyze any ships that pass through, letting you scan their cargo for contraband or run diagnostics on the condition of the ship’s systems. The overall scope gives you a lot more to work with and plan around than most games like it, giving you a rather unique perspective of the battlefield as you carry out your mission.
To me, the coolest part of the game is the wide variety in the missions with open-ended strategy and an elastic difficulty curve. You start off with routine tasks such like managing customs checkpoints, some in which the whole mission will pass without a single shot fired (after all, you want to avoid “imperial entanglements” just as much as any two-bit smuggler). As you prove yourself, you work your way up rank by rank, eventually taking command of your own squad. You issue orders to your wingmen as you proceed, meaning you can focus on key objectives while your squad does the dog-fighting or vice versa. Members of a Sith secret society will give you special objectives in some missions, adding an extra layer of involvement in the plot without actually developing any character. If any game captures the quintessence of the “silent protagonist”, it’s this one.
In the scope of the whole franchise, this is one of the very few LucasArts games that plays with the moral relativism of the Galactic Empire. It lets you explore the galaxy through the lens of the Imperial Navy, which really gives everything a different spin as your milk run gets interrupted by terrorists seeking to overthrow the one unifying power over the core worlds. It generally frames the Sith as the evil of an otherwise average empire. Sure, the Empire has a few bad eggs, but what nation hasn’t had some level of corruption in the bureaucracy? The Empire is being covertly used as a puppet of the few remaining Sith, which is what causes the more unambiguous morality in the films. Regardless of whether you support the “benevolent Empire” hypothesis, it’s some pretty good food for though; that much is for certain.
The space-sim opens up so many narrative doors in gaming. Think of all the concepts, the feelings that we can evoke with this kind of game that we can achieve with this medium in space. The sublime horror of dark, infinite nothingness. The dizzying lack of visual reference that our brains rely on for spatial awareness. The new dogfighting tactics that arise from the removal of such troubling forces as air resistance and gravity. Feeling the eerie reality of a soundless, combustion-less vacuum. We have games like Freelancer and Shattered Horizon , but these are only the beginning of a whole new world for games that remains almost entirely untapped. Maybe this game could be your inspiration.
Doc Watson is a writer and editor for the RedShirt Crew Blog. He has been a fan of Star Wars for most of his life and an play Cantina Band on both clarinet and saxophone (although not at the same time, unfortunately). If you have any questions, comments, or anything at all to add, post a comment below or send him a tweet at @DocWatsonMD
The controls are pretty straightforward, but combining these with efficiently multitasking adds its own challenges while the horizon-less perspective makes things especially disorienting. The physics of flight are quite plausible, following principles of Newtonian motion rather than the arcade-like feel of the Rogue Squadron series. Energy reserves must be managed as you divert them to shields (if you have them) and recharging the batteries for weapon systems. Your bomb bay (if you have one) will hold several different payloads that imperial clearances and regulations allow. Scanners let you analyze any ships that pass through, letting you scan their cargo for contraband or run diagnostics on the condition of the ship’s systems. The overall scope gives you a lot more to work with and plan around than most games like it, giving you a rather unique perspective of the battlefield as you carry out your mission. 
The Red Shirt Crew Blog and Podcast Network 