The Star Wars Expanded Universe is a wild behemoth that is extremely intimidating to get into. On one side, you’ve got books set thousands of years before the movies even began and on the other side, you’ve got books set well after Luke Skywalker has died (presumably of old age) that involve his ghost harassing his grandson who in turn smokes Star Wars weed to make Luke’s ghost go away. There’s also a massive range of quality, with books such as The Truce At Bakura presenting a thoughtful exploration of what exactly happens after you topple a dictatorship, while books such as Dark Empire explore thoughtful concepts such what would happen if Palpatine kept prolonging his life by jumping into clone bodies (can you image???).
An issue with the sweeping brush that is the Star Wars Expanded Universe is that often writers and artists will explore the same events, or will cover events that feel like they shouldn’t have happened. A prime example of this is the fact there’s an adaptation of a script George Lucas wrote as a sequel to Star Wars in case the original movie didn’t make enough money to justify financing a high-budget sequel, Splinter Of The Mind’s Eye. While you’d think that this book would have been fully excised from canon by virtue of the sheer existence of The Empire Strikes Back, it’s actually considered to be the start of the Expanded Universe as a whole, a move that causes significant problems due to the fact that the content presented just doesn’t line up with anything that’s actually in the movies. It also complicated things by further solidifying Luke and Leia’s romance since the book was published in 1978 and author Alan Dean Foster had only the text of the original film and Lucas’ sequel script to work with.
The thing about Star Wars or any media franchise lucky enough to last over fifty years, is that it becomes necessary to take wilder and wilder swings the longer it lingers in our consciousness. Throwaway lines become core canon elements and have entire wiki sections devoted to them. None have been expanded upon more than the beginning of A New Hope. How exactly did the Rebel Alliance get their hands on the Death Star Plans?
2006’s Star Wars: Lethal Alliance is a game that tackles that exact question. It’s important to note that while the franchise has firmly planted its flag on the topic with 2016’s Rogue One film, Lethal Alliance is only one of several different stories once considered canon within the Expanded Universe (now called Star Wars Legends under Disney ownership). I find it rarely cited or remembered in the general public, but is it worth that fate?
Two different versions of the game were released, one for PSP and one for Nintendo DS, both of which have shockingly drastic differences. A core change between the PSP and DS version is that, since there’s the very notable absence of a touchscreen on the former, that the developers instead took advantage of the amount of different buttons that the PSP had, in addition to the extra processing power the device afforded them. Because of the extra onboard buttons, the PSP version is the only version of the game to contain a stealth mechanic.
It’s a rudimentary approach to stealth, one that very much feels like somebody sketched an idea onto a piece of paper, but the ability to use disguises to confuse enemies and baffle Stormtroopers is surprisingly effective. Maybe it’s the fact that Stormtroopers feel great to mess with (see The Force Unleashed for an example of that taken to its logical extreme), but it also feels really good to use your stealth attack moves on enemies without anyone seeing you.
It’s also worth mentioning that unlike most Star Wars games, you don’t ever pick up a Lightsaber here. Since this is set between the third and fourth installments of the franchise, the Jedi are all but eliminated from the entire galaxy, the Force is but a myth, and it’s all about the shooting. Several other Star Wars games focus on this element of the Star Wars universe (Nintendo 64’s Shadows of the Empire comes primarily to mind when discussing this, especially due to how it was pushed as a fundamentally important narrative set between popular franchise titles), but they often get lost in the shuffle when directly compared to the Lightsaber wielding titles. It’s a fair thing, since Lightsabers are inherently more iconic than guns, but this lack of focus on guns has had a noticeable impact on the quality of shooting in Lethal Alliance.
It’s hard to describe in many ways, but maybe the best way to talk about it would be to call it lackluster. There’s no real flair to it, there’s no pizzazz, it feels like somebody took a look at a Gears of War game and tried to bring it over to a handheld platform without really understanding what worked and what didn’t work about that games mechanics. The ability to use your droid to help fight your enemies is a neat touch, and one that can lead to a wider variety of moves, but at the end of the day you’ll have seen everything the combat has to offer before you’re even halfway through the overall game. But, as previously mentioned, this is only one version of the title.
The DS game takes a different approach entirely. Since there’s a wide gulf in processing power between the PSP and the DS, developer Ubisoft Montreal needed to get creative in exactly how they’re going to tackle the port. In order to do this, they first made the game heavily reliant on the touch screen that the DS is fondly remembered for. Using it you complete several different puzzles and control the droid that protagonist Rianna has, both of which happen in much greater frequency in this version of the game when directly compared to the PSP title.
Per an interview with GameSpot just after the game was announced, the developers wanted to offer similar experiences in both titles without too much compromise, though certain elements, such as the title’s multiplayer, were changed to better suit the platform. For example, the DS version of the game still has multiplayer, but unlike the PSP version, which consists of running around and shooting your enemy, the DS version is limited entirely to droid on droid combat.
“When we started developing the games, wanted to the take advantage of the portability of each platform. On the PSP, we wanted to utilize the powerful hardware by making an action-packed, fun-filled game set in beautiful environments. On the DS, the main focus has been on using the touch screen- the game will be full 3D and contain many elements that require the use of the touch screen. As Wi-Fi is an integral feature on each platforms, the multiplayer portions of both the PSP and DS games will enable you to take on your friends in a Star Wars universe,” senior producer Bertrand Helias stated at the time.
While both versions pushed different gameplay mechanics, they shared a story thread that is fascinating to unpack. Lethal Alliance prominently featured Kyle Katarn, the popular protagonist from 1996’s exquisite Dark Forces shooter. The problem with Katarn existing in Lethal Alliance‘s narrative orbit is he was at one point the canonical Death Star Plans thief. Now, Katarn exists to undo that existing story and help create a new reality. A reality that, of course, was also undone by Rogue One a decade late, but whatever! We can’t let that get in the way!
I think it’s a fine enough story and amendment to the version they decided to tell in the 1990s, but I’m always left wondering why they simply don’t tell the story of the theft of the second set of Death Star plans, since that’s also presumably a yarn in and of itself. For whatever reason, probably its place in the major film series, the Star Wars powers that be have stuck with the original narrative for the second theft: it was swiped by Bothans who were eulogized as heroes by Mon Mothma in Return of the Jedi.
So how do they get away with the discrepancy that there’s now multiple different thefts related to the original Death Star? They don’t! Honestly, I think this is a great approach! Muddy the canon! Burn the boats! I don’t think Star Wars or any narrative tradition has to stick to a specific script. Why not tell the best story in a vacuum, especially if it’s as fun as Lethal Alliance managed to be?
