Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader

Rogue Leader's levels include Star Wars movie moments, such as Return of the Jedi's Battle of Endor.

Similar to its predecessor, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, Rogue Leader is a fast-paced, flight action game. Each of the game's ten levels introduces mission objectives such as search and destroy or protection that must be completed to progress to the next level.[2] Enemy aircraft are primarily composed of TIE fighters, Imperial shuttles and Star Destroyers. Ground defenses are more varied and include three different walkers, various laser turrets, probe droids and stormtroopers.

The heads-up display features a health meter, a radar, an ammunition count for secondary weapons and the "command cross" that allows the player to give limited instructions to their wingmen via the GameCube controller's D-pad.[3] The player can control seven craft in the base game: X-wing, A-wing, Y-wing, B-wing, Snowspeeder, the T-16 Skyhopper and the Millennium Falcon. Each vehicle offers a unique armament arrangement, as well as varying degrees of speed and maneuverability.[4] The game initially restricts the player to a particular craft for each level; however, after a level has been completed, it can be replayed with any available craft.[5] Some levels offer the player the option to change craft mid-level.[6] Eleven bonus power-ups are hidden in different levels throughout the game. These bonuses improve a craft's weapons, durability, and targeting computer and are applied to each eligible craft for the remainder of the game.[7]

The player's performance is measured throughout the game, and performance statistics are checked after each level against three medal benchmarks.[8] Each benchmark contains six categories: completion time, number of enemies destroyed, shot accuracy, number of friendly craft and structures saved, number of lives lost and targeting computer efficiency.[9] If a player's performance meets or exceeds one of the level's three benchmarks in all six categories, a medal—bronze, silver or gold—is awarded on completion. Acquiring these medals promotes the player's rank and helps unlock hidden content.[8] Once the player completes all of the training missions and achieves gold medals on all 15 levels, the opportunity to activate "Ace Mode" is awarded. The player may then achieve one more medal per level by completing them with this mode activated.[10]

Developer Factor 5 decided to create a direct sequel to their most successful game to date—Star Wars: Rogue Squadron—when Nintendo approached them about its upcoming new video game console, the GameCube, in the summer of 2000. When they received the early prototype hardware, Factor 5's development team was working on Star Wars Episode I: Battle for Naboo. With LucasArts' approval, the team immediately began developing a tech demo to exhibit at Space World, a Nintendo-hosted trade show. In 19 days, Factor 5 produced an introductory cutscene that emulated a scene from A New Hope and a playable demo to premier alongside Nintendo's GameCube hardware at the show.[11][26] According to GameSpot, the cutscene "wowed audiences",[26] and IGN described the demo as "drop-dead gorgeous".[27] After the Space World demo, an artist continued working on the 3D models for the player craft in anticipation of the full game's production while the rest of the development team continued to work on Battle for Naboo and Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine until late 2000.[11][28] According to the game's director, Julian Eggebrecht, Rogue Leader's development was in jeopardy after the Space World trailer was unveiled. A LucasArts development team working on Star Wars: Starfighter, unaware of Rogue Leader before the reveal, attempted to stop its development to prevent it from possibly overshadowing Starfighter and Microsoft offered LucasArts incentives to move the game to their new console, Xbox.[29]

In late December, 2000, the core development team met with Eggebrecht and producer Brett Tosti to start planning the game engine.[11] According to Eggebrect, when Factor 5 was developing Rogue Leader, they had access to an early prototype of the GameCube controller that incorporated motion controls. He believed that motion controls worked well for the game's style of gameplay in terms of flight, but when Nintendo decided not to incorporate motion controls into the system, the idea was abandoned.[31] Full-time development of Rogue Leader began in January 2001.[28] The game was scheduled to release simultaneously alongside the GameCube hardware as a launch title in September 2001.[30] The planned nine-month development cycle was extremely short by industry standards,[26] and it has been estimated that a game such as Rogue Leader could typically take 15 to 24 months to produce.[28][11] Because of this abbreviated production schedule, the game required every development resource available during its entire production.[32] According to technical lead engineer Thomas Engel, "it wasn't long into the project before six- or seven-day weeks became the absolute norm for everybody on the team."[28] Software engineer Dean Giberson recalls that the project was "the most hectic nine months of [his] life".[30]

Factor 5's Julian Eggebrecht was the game's director.

As with Rogue Squadron and Battle for Naboo, Rogue Leader was again co-developed by Factor 5 and LucasArts, however this time the bulk of the game's development was done by Factor 5. Their in-house development team consisted of 25 people plus two freelance employees.[32] One level designer as well as the game's lead artist were employed by LucasArts.[6] The art team was unable to use the computer generated film models from visual effects studio Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) as they were constructed using NURBS and it was not practical to convert them to the polygonal models necessary for game development. Instead, high-polygon models of the playable craft were created using Maya, in-house tools, and usable art pulled from archives.[11] During the early stages of development, the new and highly detailed 3D model of the X-Wing was created and perfected in approximately a month. However, toward the end of the project, new ship models were being produced in about a week because of the time constraints. The team's artists referenced Star Wars movies, reference books, and kids' toys in the effort to make the ship models look as realistic as possible.[26] Landscapes were created by applying multiple textures to heightmaps plus bump mapping to add additional detail.[28] The game has three levels of detail; the closer the player comes to objects, the more detailed they become. Draw distance, much improved over the first Rogue Squadron and Battle for Naboo, was drawn out as far as possible. A small amount of haze was deliberately added to create a sense of distance, but not to actually hide the drawing.[6] Additionally, the GameCube's increased processing power allowed the development team to give Rogue Leader's computer-controlled fighters the artificial intelligence (AI) needed to allow them to chase and fly in different formations, unlike the first game, which largely had enemy fighters fly in a predetermined path.[33] AI-controlled flight had to be balanced with creating some predetermined paths, however, to keep the gameplay fun and to not overwhelm the player.[29] By utilizing the GameCube's graphics processing unit's TEV pipeline, Factor 5 was able to create the shader needed to produce the visual effect employed by the game's targeting computer.[34]

Unlike the first Rogue Squadron game that was almost completely set in the Star Wars Expanded Universe, Rogue Leader more closely follows the narrative of the films.[34] Level designers used the trademark battles from the original trilogy as narrative anchors in the game which allowed them to focus on mission design and content creation. To create mission ideas, level designer Albert Chen researched obscure Star Wars lore. By looking "at everything from the Star Wars role-playing books to the radio dramas and even the Marvel comic books and expanded universe stuff", Chen increased his chances of getting missions approved by LucasArts.[30] An in-house level editing tool called L3D was used to design missions. Around since the development of the first Rogue Squadron game, L3D was outdated but Factor 5 did not have the time to program a new level editing tool. It proved instrumental in Rogue Leader's development, however, despite its flaws.[28]

The theme music from Rogue Squadron was re-arranged and used for Rogue Leader. Roughly half of the music featured in the game is John Williams' film score with the other half being new, original music from Factor 5.[35] Sound designers also had access to the LucasArts and Lucasfilm archives, which helped keep the game's audio sound authentic.[28] The developers tried to make the game as close to the movies as possible, studying ILM's special effects, using some of the same sound effects, music and voice acting from the films. The original actor, Denis Lawson, was also hired to record new lines for Wedge Antilles.[36] Having developed the GameCube's MusyX audio system in-house, Factor 5 played an important role in the development of the console's audio hardware and were therefore able to build Rogue Leader's audio on tools they were intimately familiar with.[28] MusyX allowed for seamless blending between streamed and real-time music, giving dynamic sound that could change according to the gameplay.[35] Late in the development process, the team added five-channel surround sound to the game by introducing Dolby Pro Logic II (DPLII) technology into the MusyX system.[11] Rogue Leader was the first game on any platform to use DPLII.[37]

The game was met with critical acclaim, as GameRankings gave it a score of 90.04%,[40] while the Metacritic score was 90 out of 100.[41] David Trammell of Nintendo World Report gave it nine out of ten and called it "a visual and aural masterpiece. The game has all the bells and whistles you'd expect from a next-generation game including bump mapping and 480p support on the visual end, and five channel surround sound via Dolby Pro Logic II on the aural end."[56] Marc Saltzman of Playboy gave it a score of 90% and stated that, "The combined package of beautiful graphics, intense action (including force-feedback rumble support in the controller!) and familiar Star Wars ditties all work together to create an immersive, outstanding experience from beginning to end."[54] In The Cincinnati Enquirer, he gave the game four stars out of five and stated that, "If there was ever a reason to purchase this compact new console, this is it... [but] there's no multiplayer mode. It would have been fun to fly alongside or against another player in some of the missions."[53] Alex Porter of Maxim gave it a similar score of eight out of ten and said: "More than a Jedi mind trick to make you buy Nintendo's new whiz-bang console, this is the closest a video game has come to recreating a Star Wars movie."[57]

Rogue Leader was among the highest rated GameCube launch titles, and praised for its gameplay and graphics.[58] Official Nintendo Magazine ranked it the 100th best game available on Nintendo platforms. The staff called it an essential launch title for the GameCube.[59] It was a runner-up for GameSpot's annual "Best GameCube Game" and, among console games, "Best Shooting Game" awards. These went respectively to Super Smash Bros. Melee and Halo: Combat Evolved.[60]

Rogue Leader won the E3 2001 Game Critics Award for Best Action Game.

During the 5th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, Rogue Leader received a nomination for the "Art Direction" award by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences.[61]

• Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader at MobyGames