Like all the cool kids are doing, I myself have been watching the new episodes of Star Wars: Andor these past few weeks. I dare say that this series alone, combined with the first 2 seasons of The Mandalorian, literally resurrected the entire Star Wars franchise and lifted it out of the grave it was in once Rise of Skywalker, the final film in what was admittedly a very unsuccessful sequel trilogy, was released. Along with saving the franchise, however, Andor's final season managed to do something else: to reignite my own interest in Star Wars, an interest that had waned to the point of annihilation in recent years.
In this spirit of Star Wars revival, I made the decision to remember my youth and, after 20+ years, attempt a full new playthrough of TIE Fighter, LucasArts' legendary space sim. Words of praise may be unnecessary for a legendary title like this, but damn, I've been having so much fun with this game in the last few days that I feel the need to write another spontaneous tribute to it.
The original TIE Fighter was released back in 1994. A year later a Collector's CD-ROM version was released which included the Defender of the Empire and Enemies of the Empire expansions, while introducing upgraded graphics (raising the game's resolution from 320×200 to... 640×480!) and many voice-overs. In 1998 a Special Edition remastered version was released which incorporated the upgraded 3D graphics of X-Wing vs TIE Fighter that had been released in 1997.
The playthrough I'm currently running is on the Collector's CD-ROM version, for 2 reasons. One, because this is the version I first played in the 90s, and I'm aiming for full immersion through the space-time continuum. Secondly, because the 1998 remastered version unfortunately doesn't implement the awesome iMUSE music system of the original game, but instead just throws in 2 generic Star Wars music tracks from X-Wing vs TIE Fighter. And the music is of PARAMOUNT IMPORTANCE TO THE EXPERIENCE.
For the uninitiated, the game's story takes place between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, with the first mission being about hunting down rebels fleeing the captured base on Hoth, and the last mission of the Enemies of the Empire expansion taking place right before the Battle of Endor. Leaving aside the particularly deep space combat gameplay, TIE Fighter's greatness lies primarily in its story and atmosphere. The game really manages to put the player in the skin of a TIE pilot at that particular point in the Star Wars timeline, with everything that entails in terms of content. But the most interesting realization that comes from playing TIE Fighter while watching Andor is that the 2 titles have a lot in common and that, despite being separated by almost 30 years and an interim radical shake-up of the Star Wars Universe after the Disney acquisition, I'd say they share the same core.
Andor caused a sensation mainly because it broke away from the clichéd Star Wars themes and explored aspects of the SW universe in a way never before seen in a TV or film product, depicting, among other things, morally grey characters, espionage, war crimes, political intrigue and corruption at all levels, both within the Empire and the Rebellion. Likewise, the greatest feature in the plot of TIE Fighter is that it is not the simple “Empire vs. Rebels” cliché one might expect, but goes MUCH deeper.
As I have mentioned in my review of Star Wars: Squadrons five years ago, TIE Fighter was unique for its time in that it manages to portray the Empire as a “living” military organization, with its hierarchy, its problems and shortages of material, its goals and aspirations, its victories and defeats, and even its unexpected moments of heroism. Alongside the above, and as Andor does in its own way and in the timeline it deals with, the game managed to convey in an unprecedented way the corruption and rot within the Empire, as the landscape within it had been shaped in the aftermath of the first Death Star blowing up.
The most striking example of this is the fact that, in most of the game's 13 Battles/campaigns, our main opponents are not the Rebels but corrupt high-ranking officials of the Empire itself. Officers who plan to directly defect to the Rebellion, sell military hardware to pirates and other outlaws, carry out targeted attacks on Imperial stations and ships... or even dethrone Emperor Palpatine himself! Fortunately, to counter these insidious forces, there are loyal allies and servants of the Emperor. From simple pilots of the Imperial Navy or members of the Secret Order of the Emperor attempting to root out corruption within the ranks of the Empire, to familiar figures such as Darth Vader or Admiral Thrawn.
Speaking of Thrawn, there's further proof of how the greatness of the TIE Fighter in Star Wars still resonates today, even after the acquisition by Disney, which completely undid the so-called Expanded Universe (which TIE Fighter was a part of) but selectively kept some parts of it to reintroduce it in its own way into the new Star Wars canon. One of those parts is, obviously, Thrawn, who is portrayed in the new Disney ventures as having EXACTLY the same personality as originally written by the character's creator, author Timothy Zahn, for the purposes of the novel "Heir to the Empire" back in 1991 (Zahn, by the way, now has a consultant role on all Disney products where Thrawn appears to ensure his “correct” portrayal).
Another one of these parts is the TIE Defender, the awesome experimental TIE craft created for and first featured in TIE Fighter. The TIE Defender's appearance in the game was so iconic that it prompted Disney to introduce the ship in its own canon (mostly in the Star Wars Rebels series so far, which also stars Thrawn quite coincidentally), with the exact same look and qualities as it had in TIE Fighter (speed, agility, lasers and ion canons, hyperdrive engine).
At the time of writing, I have 3 Battles left to complete the current playthrough of TIE Fighter campaign, and three episodes to complete the 2nd and final season of Andor (all three are released the day after tomorrow). Here, too, TIE Fighter sort of parallels Andor, since I know what will happen in TIE Fighter obviously, but also in Andor, since the fate of the protagonists has already been predetermined by what we've seen in Rogue One and A New Hope. That doesn't stop me/us from enjoying the journey even so, which I'm doing to the fullest extent.
In fact, in TIE Fighter I managed in 2025 to fulfill a 30 years long pending task: in the current playthrough, playing on Hard and chasing all Secondary and Secret Objectives, I managed for the first time in my career as a pilot to reach the highest rank of Emperor's Reach in the Secret Order of the Emperor! Once a TIE pilot, always aTIE pilot...
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