“Films are not released. They escape.”
That saying is attributed to Ben Burtt, the legendary sound effects guru who invented how Star Wars sounds. It’s also a sentiment that’s even more true of video games than the movies. Only in the domain of games their escape into the marketplace isn’t the end of their development story. One has to look no further than Fortnite, still the biggest game in the world, to see what’s possible when a team keeps tinkering with a formula that at first blush was written off.
Which brings us around to Star Wars: Tales From The Galaxy’s Edge — Last Call, which for the sake of my poor thumbs I’ll just refer to as Last Call from here on out while referring to the original release as Tales.
When the first Tales was released last year it was the highly anticipated follow up from ILMxLAB to their beloved Vader Immortal series — to this day one of the gold standards of immersive gaming. The reaction was lukewarm, with the original release not quite hitting the highs that the ILMxLAB had set as the bar for itself while still being better than a lot of the VR gaming pack, still in the “figuring it all out” phase.
That first blush with Tales put us in the shoes of an unnamed silent protagonist who works for the owner of the Droid Depot in Black Spire Outpost on the planet Batuu. Which is a real shop at Disneyland and Disney World where you can build your own droids. As a fan of the Theme Park land I was excited at the prospect of getting to play out a virtual adventure in a place I know so well. Although what we got was one that kept us to the side paths and back rooms that you don’t get to visit in the park.
It was a solid enough game, reminiscent at times of Dark Forces, the Star Wars Doom clone that kicked off an entire series of games and some beloved characters in truly ambitious productions. A side story in the game about a Jedi padawan even played into a different style of immersive sim gaming. (Anyway, we wrote a whole review of that release.)
Of course, the original release was also coming after the first six months of the pandemic era, when large gaming projects were either being pushed back (Halo: Infinite) or falling apart on release (Cyberpunk 2077). That the original release of Tales wasn’t note perfect is but still enjoyable was, with hindsight, a miracle of the Force.
Now you might note I keep saying “original release” and say: “But Noah, Last Call is a sequel to the game, yeah?”
Well, sort of. Price wise it is downloadable content: coming in at around ten bucks compared to the original release’s $25. Yet while we do get the next chapter in the stories of the unnamed droid technician and in Jedi Ady Sun’Zee, we also get a boatload of new characters, entirely different types of stories, gameplay improvements and little flourishes here and there that start to fulfill the promise of what a VR game based on a Star Wars Theme Park attraction should be.
Yet the overall effect is that this is now a whole new game. A total package that, while detouring from what seemed to be the original path of treating the first part as a platform for an anthology series, really captures the breadth of the Star Wars fantasy. New stories are woven in with what’s come before, giving first time players (or those who fall prey to the Oculus platform’s obnoxious lack of reliable cloud saves and have to replay the original missions) agency over which order to tackle certain story beats in.
This makes the whole experience more expansive even after the first few missions, and there are some some changes to the core structure of the game that modify what was already built. While nothing is taken away it’s now possible to turn credits earned on missions into equipment that lets you truly customize your build or hold onto your preferred weapons load out a bit longer.
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Some of these changes — like a major alteration to the hover pack which now lets the player navigate in midair — are a direct response from the development team to requests from the original release’s players. While that’s great on its own, it’s also fun to hear enemies complain about your new found abilities while dodging incoming fire from midair and blasting them while dual-wielding heavy blaster pistols like a Mandalorian. Others are grace notes and deep cuts: like the Ronto Wraps, actual sandwiches at the parks, which you can now pick up in the cantina and eat. They even restore a little health.
These alterations are available very early on in the game, but they’re not the only improvements. As the stories unfold the world of the game deepens with a bigger cast, including additions from the park. The cumulative effect is that of a fantasy operating at a higher fidelity than what had come before.
ILMxLAB talks about the immersive experiences they make in terms of storyliving, and in Last Call it feels like we’re starting to get the gist of that approach. The supporting cast have more dynamic interactions with each other, which goes a long way towards making the virtual Black Spire Outpost seem lived in.
There’s also a move by the development team to embrace the anthology nature of the framework they laid in place. Even if it’s all delivered in a go. An additional Tale of Jedi Ady Sun’Zee focuses on the philosophy of the Jedi while challenging the player to master the Force. It is, appropriately, not easy. Then there’s a whole section that upends the core mechanics to put you into the role of the infamous assassin droid IG-88 from The Empire Strikes Back.
This switching of modalities carries through to the missions where the unnamed protagonist goes on a relic hunting job that plays out like Star Wars meets Indiana Jones, all while weaving parts of the various stories together into a broader tapestry.
That’s perhaps the most stunning accomplishment of Last Call: it takes what had been a lightly held together duet of stories and weaves something that is, at points, beautiful out of it. There’s some pathos under the surface of the melodramatic Star Wars riffs, and by the time the credits rolled I was sorry to have to leave this world behind.
Not that everything is flawless. Characters sometimes clipped through the scenery, and to my chagrin the upgrade that added a couple of holster points on the shoulders was glitchy — which could be the fault of the tracking on the Quest 2 when you think about it.
Still: I’m fairly sure that this is the game I was looking for when Tales dropped last year. Which isn’t to damn this with faint praise, as I’m also fairly certain that there’s a lot more material in this expansion pack than in the original release. A. Lot.
There’s a tradition of tinkering with Star Wars things after they escape, and this time it’s paid off quite handsomely.
Check out this SPECIAL EDITION of the podcast where we talk with members of the creative team.
Star Wars: Tales From The Galaxy’s Edge — Last Call is available today for the Oculus Quest for $9.99, or a total for $34.99 for the complete Tales package.
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Updated at 11:41am PDT 9/15/21 with a few formatting notes and one clarifying phrase from the author.
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