LucasArts had a nasty habit of leaving their Star Wars gaming franchises behind without tying up loose ends, they are still something that keeps gamers talking all these years later. Last year, I was happy to chat with Haden Blackman about The Force Unleashed and the ideas for what another sequel could have been…and that only made me eager to delve into more Star Wars games we needed answers from.
Brett Douville, the lead dev on Republic Commando was kind enough to talk with me about his time at LucasArts, the process behind the game, and more. I’ll have the full interview live on the site next week, but for today I wanted to share a piece of information he revealed regarding the proposed game sequel (which HAD been in development) and the fate of Sev.
Despite the game’s short length, it does a great job of selling you on the characters and investing you emotionally with your squad-mates. Sev is one of those (who also made appearances in the Republic Commando books at the time), and the story forces you to leave him behind at the end of the game. In the decade since its release, fans have theorized what happened to Sev, whether he survived or not even though his story is no longer part of the ‘canon’.
As a fan of the game, it’s a question I’ve long wondered about myself, and something I had to ask Douville about. Thankfully, he was more than happy to fill me in:
Plans were in place for a sequel the game and ideas were being developed. Can you elaborate on what the next story would have entailed?
There were two competing stories that were being pitched, one being developed by Tim Longo and one by lead level designer Kevin Schmitt. In one, you would have played the side story of Revenge of the Sith and carried out Order 66, hunting down Jedi as a team. In the other, Sev would have been the first man in the Rebellion army — the tagline was something like, “Every Rebellion begins with a single soldier.”
Tim’s plan would have had Sev start the Rebellion army, training a new generation of soldiers to fight the Empire: In my own imagining, I like to believe he’d go after his pod-brothers and counter-program them so they could fight the Empire together. I don’t recall what Kevin Schmitt’s would have entailed, but I like to imagine there would be a mission where you’d rescue him.
What, ultimately, caused the sequel to fall through?
These didn’t happen and maybe were never even formally pitched as a result of the company rebooting itself, as I mentioned. Very few people involved with Republic Commando ended up staying on as LucasArts attempted to find its way forward.
There you have it! While two different ideas for a sequel were pitched (which we’d heard about before), it sounds like the idea for Sev’s character was MUCH bigger, paying off fan loyalty to him in a big way. I really like the idea of him being one of the progenitors of the Rebellion and helping to train people to fight against the Empire that abandoned him. It’s not that crazy of a concept, and ideas like those are even being explored in the Star Wars Rebels cartoon series.
While it’s great to feel like I have some resolution to Sev’s story, I’m bummed that I never got to play it. There’s no telling if the franchise will ever be revived (I wouldn’t count on it), but if it happens, keeping part of this original idea intact would make a lot of fans/gamers happy.
As I said, there’s a TON more information on Republic Commando and LucasArts in my full interview with Brett, so be sure to check back next week when it goes live. Before that, tell me what you think of this idea for Sev? Would you have liked to see that kind of story, or did you envision a different outcome for his character?
