“Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire” was Lucasfilm’s 1996 transmedia effort to fill in the story gap between “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi.”
The gang at the Full of the Sith podcast (myself included) revisited the property on the latest episode to take a look back at the book and entire media experiment. We went back to see what worked about the entire “Shadows of the Empire” phenomenon.
Going back to revisit the book, one of the last to come out before the “Star Wars: Special Editions” began to transform the Star Wars universe into the era spanning saga we know today, was a bit of a shock. Not having read the book since its release and basing most of my memories of the story on the video game for the N64, going back to the literary source material was surprising. Although today it’s talked about as a beloved property, I think all of the goodwill fans attach to this story stems solely from the game and the toys and the soundtrack.
The discussion we had was easily one of my favorite we’ve ever had on Full of Sith. We delved into a review of the book and the troubling gender issues it raises, as well as how successful or unsuccessful the entire “We’ll sell them a movie without the movie” experiment was.
If you want to listen to the entire soundtrack on Youtube, you can do it here. And this run through video will give you a sense of what the Shadows of the Empire game was like. And if you want to go back and read the book, you can get it here in any format.