It’s all there in its first mission, a scenario formed from the blandest of situations and the pickiest of requirements, but one that unravels into something frenetic and even grand, the start of journey that takes you through a meticulous and individual vision of the Star Wars universe. It begins with five cargo freighters. It’s during the aftermath of the Empire’s successful attack on the Rebel base on Hoth, and your superiors suspect that escaping Rebel soldiers have been smuggled aboard one of the freighters. As a rookie member of a TIE Fighter squadron attached to the space station to which these freighters are cruising, you must fly in close to each one before identifying its contents.

Though one, of course, is indeed filled with the scum and a tense dogfight quickly ensues, these opening moments of TIE Fighter nevertheless provide a candid look at what must surely be the everyday experience of an Imperial TIE Fighter pilot. Foodstuffs, Rebel officers, weapons – you’ll scan them all: you’ll come across a lot of craft that need identifying during your career and, even in this first skirmish, it’s mission over should you miss one. After all, with the immense bureaucratic weight of the Empire hanging above all your actions, failure is rarely far away. Go off for a cathartic fight with the Rebel shuttles that come to defend their men and a second batch of transports will likely sail past before you can get to them.



It’s also a mission that brutally reveals the perilous existence of a TIE Fighter pilot. After all, you’re strapped in to a nimble but horribly fragile craft that’s capable of taking no more than a couple of hits before being destroyed. Not that the attacking shuttles are particularly dangerous: your wingmen can ably distract them from you as you zip from ship to ship. More dangerous, in fact, is the madly spiralling wreckage of a shot-down foe, which can take you out in an instant. It’s all just as it was in the films but, with the concept of being a small, vulnerable cog in the Imperial fleet now brought into sharp focus, a reversal of that familiar thrill of seeing a TIE sent into oblivion.