I’m not sure how I missed this story initially given that I visit their website daily and thoroughly enjoy their in-depth articles, but last week Game Informer posted an exclusive feature on the cancelled Darth Maul-centered video game that includes photos of rendered in-game scenes as well as an interview with Red Fly Studio’s founder Dan Borth.
After suffering a fatal lightsaber wound against Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Maul plummeted to his death. No sane-minded theatergoer thought for a second that he may still be alive. With Maul’s torso separated from his legs, George Lucas made it abundantly clear that Obi-Wan exacted revenge on this Sith Lord.
Seeing the coolest character in The Phantom Menace die angered fans. Their roar of disapproval was apparently heard loud and clear by Lucasfilm. Darth Maul didn’t return in any of the sequel films, but he was resurrected in The Clone Wars cartoon. Much like Boba Fett surviving the Sarlaac Pit in Return of the Jedi, Darth Maul’s return was clearly driven more by fan-demand than fiction that makes any lick of sense.
Nothing Darth Maul touches apparently stays dead. Years after LucasArts pulled the plug on a video game that would have placed the darkly tattooed Sith Lord in the spotlight (you can read about it here), game creator Red Fly Studio is still working on the project in secret, which was recently outed in a Reddit AMA by the studio’s founder, Dan Borth. Much of Red Fly’s continued work ties in with other projects that cannibalize gameplay mechanics and systems from Darth Maul, but from time to time, people on staff add a little something to the Sith Lord’s adventure. The team even ported the project to Unreal 4 to see what the game would look like on modern consoles. The pictures in this article are all taken from the new-gen port.
In October, I talked to Borth about the studio’s continued work on Maul, but ended up sitting on the interview when I learned that he would soon be talking to Lucasfilm. Rather than scrapping the interview, which illuminates the team’s passion for a project they can’t let go of, I’ve included it here. Following this chat, I caught up with Borth again in December, where he spoke about his conversation with Lucasfilm and the fate of the project.
