8 Times Star Wars Games Went Darker than the Movies

Star Wars is generally a pretty lighthearted franchise aimed for family-friendly viewing, which makes any darker themes or events stand out all the more. The Star Wars movies have their share of dark moments, and it’s pretty hard to top Anakin killing the younglings at the Jedi Temple.

Star Wars games have more room to explore darker themes than the movies, particularly as they tend to let you choose between the dark and the light side. Dark side playthroughs are rarely canon, but they do exist, and the stories they tell are often some of the darkest in Star Wars. Here are some of them.

8

Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy

Kill Your Friend and Create a New Sith Threat

The Jedi Knight games took a turn when they allowed you to create a new character, Jaden. This was the first Star Wars game that I ever played, so it has a special place in my heart. What I vividly recall was Rosh’s turn to the dark side, then being given the option to kill or spare him. I always spared him like a good Jedi, but I once killed him simply because he was annoying, and I wanted to see him get some kind of consequence for betraying me.

It turns out that killing your friend in cold blood sets you on a dark path. Jaden goes on to kill the cult that was trying to resurrect Marka Ragnos, and becomes something of a Sith Lord in their own right, though the dark side ending ends on a cliffhanger.

7

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

Haunted by the Memories of a Dead Man

Stories about fighting Darth Vader are always doomed to be depressing because we know how he dies. This one is a little better because it’s not canon and has a happy ending, but it’s the beginning of this story that’s pretty dark.

You play as a clone of Starkiller and are plagued by visions of his predecessor. Subject 1138 gets all the identity angst and questioning his worth that inevitably befalls all clones, but Darth Vader and a loved one in the mix make it even more complicated. Being compared to a powerhouse like Galen Marek is already a bad deal, and Subject 1138 feels pressured to live up to his predecessor as well as forge his own identity and path with the people who think they know him.

6

Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II

The Consequences of Falling

Kyle Katarn shows up as your teacher in Jedi Academy, but he’s better known for his own games. Kyle led an interesting and unusual life, coming to the Force only as an adult after serving in the Empire, Rebellion, and then New Republic as a Jedi. Dark Forces II goes to some pretty dark places even without falling to the dark side, but the dark side path here is basically a journey of leaving a trail of bodies in your wake.

Mysteries of the Sith, an expansion pack for Dark Forces II, goes even further as it shows Kyle actually succumbing to the dark side. This fall is canonical, albeit short-lived. Seeing Kyle wrestle with his failure, cutting himself off from the Force, and renouncing his role as a Jedi, is dealt with a gravity that isn’t seen in the movies, and is a major point of character development in Jedi Outcast.

5

Star Wars: Battlefront II

See the Empire’s Actions First Hand

Star Wars: Battlefront II follows an Imperial unit in the years between The Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. Stories about the Empire are generally darker than what we see in the movies, giving us a firsthand look into the atrocities the Empire committed and the people who carried out those orders.

This is very much the case here with Inferno Squad. Because of the nature of Star Wars, we know how things will end, but the writers use that dramatic irony rather than having the story become predictable. Already knowing where The Force Awakens starts, the story becomes a tragedy as we watch the characters hurtle towards their doom. One thing I really liked about this story was the split between the team and the jump at the end decades later, and how it shows just how different the people in Squad Inferno became because of their choices.

4

Star Wars: Republic Commando

The Tragedy of the Clones

The only game exclusively about being a clone trooper in the Clone Wars, this gem explored the experiences of the clones years before The Clone Wars aired. You play as a clone who leads a group of elite commandos and takes on special missions across the galaxy.

Anything that takes the clones seriously for more than ten minutes is going to go to a dark place, and Republic Commando does just that. In the final minutes of the game, you’re forced to leave behind Sev, one of the most beloved members of the unit. It’s an awful moment of failure as you’re forced to abandon someone who you were in charge of keeping safe, and Republic Commando gives it the gravitas that Sev deserves rather than as expendable cannon fodder.

3

Star Wars: The Old Republic

Cipher Nine is Locked in Their Head

Most of the storylines in Star Wars: The Old Republic hit that lighthearted banter of the Star Wars movies without much darkness to counterbalance them. This is fine for the most part, but sometimes I want more angst in my Star Wars.

Enter the Imperial Agent storyline. The Imperial Agent is a non-Force user and works as a spy and infiltrator for Imperial Intelligence. This comes with the usual assassination and espionage, but the story takes a dark turn in Act 2, where the Agent discovers they have a switch implanted in their brain that removes their free will with a code word. The Republic acquires this code word, and you’re forced to wrangle with the loss of free will, hallucinations, and being trapped inside your own head.

2

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

Cal Reaches His Breaking Point

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor follows the usual Star Wars formula for much of its story, but takes a dark turn in its final act that involves betrayal, slaughtering everyone in an ISB base in a dark side-fueled rage, and killing a child’s last parent in front of them.

Cal’s journey is one that’s taken a dark turn because of his losses, betrayal from someone he deeply cared about, oppression from the Empire, and the deaths of Cere and Cordova. Jedi Survivor ends with three burning pyres, and its final shot is Cere’s lightsaber lying in the ashes of her pyre. There’s very little room for hope at the end of Jedi Survivor, and even Cal says he doesn’t know where to go from here.

1

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords

Star Wars’ Darkest Tale

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords was such a dramatic departure from its predecessor that it’s hard to imagine it as from the same series at all, and yet it still feels like its natural progression. KotOR 2 is a story of what happens after the villains are defeated, and the heroes go home, and the picture is bleak. The consequences of war echo for decades, and make way for something worse than what was.

Rather than triumphant, the Republic in KotOR 2 is on the verge of collapse. The Jedi Order no longer exists because of the threat striking from the shadows, one that rose in the ashes of the Jedi Civil War. And yet, despite the bleak setting, KotOR 2 is inherently a story about healing in the Star Wars galaxy, and is a love letter written to Star Wars that interrogates its most beloved tropes in a way that, ultimately, makes Star Wars better.