Darth Maul
Darth Maul is probably the hugest fan favorite character in the Star Wars franchise. Despite his relative short appearance in The Phantom Menace from nearly 16 years ago–and I mean short, like 4-7 minutes of screentime tops, and maybe only two lines–his double bladed lightsaber and appearance stuck with viewers who’d written off the prequels by right around the time Jar-Jar showed up. Hell, the guy’s so loved by the fandom that he survived getting sliced in half and falling down a reactor pit and made it to a completely different planet where he got robot spider legs somehow, and that’s just in the continuity that’s actually canon.
Imagine being able to play as Darth Maul himself. You could play as him in some previous Star Wars games–Battlefront II, a skin in Force Unleashed, for instance–but never him in a title specifically for him. In May of last year, Game Informer ran a piece on the Darth Maul game that was in development over at Red Fly Studio. The game was meant to tie into a season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, where Maul made frequent appearances in the fourth and third seasons. The game was said to be like Batman Arkham Asylum, with combos, dodges, and the occasional limb slicing, which is a given when your primary weapon is a doubled ended red glow stick. Red Fly’s goals were ambitious–they wanted to introduce new Sith lords Darths Talon and Krayt, allow the player to build Maul’s own lightsaber and eventually erode the relationship between him and Palpatine to where they’d face off at the end–but their vision was redone twice, with the second vision coming from George Lucas himself. The meeting went about as expected, given that it’s George Lucas, but ultimately went to hell once Lucas sold the company to Disney. There’s prototype footage, but that’s as far as Red Fly had gotten.
Chances of returning: Verrrrrrrrrrry slim.
