Star Wars: Rebel Assault II - The Hidden Empire

Cutscenes

• The Stormtrooper armors, weapons, helmets and suits (and possibly Vader's costume), worn by the actors, were not made for the game, but are the actual props seen in the original movies, taken from the archive storage of Lucasfilm. The rest was done with CGI
• No set pieces were created for the cockpits. As with everything else, the are CGI. The actors sat on a moving prop element nicknamed the "Rig." It was a blue platform mounted on a large truck inner tube. Four operators (grips) manned the Rig, rocking to and fro on cue from the Director. The actors then had realistic flying movements. The CGI cockpits were matched digitally afterwards.

Easter Eggs

There are a lot of easter eggs in Rebel Assault II. For a very comprehensive list of secrets visit Brad Pack's Ultimate Rebel Assault 2 Easter Egg page.

Graphics engine

Rebel Assault II is the first LucasArts game that used INSANE, a proprietary animation engine. INSANE (Interactive Streaming Animation Engine) greatly compresses moving images so that high quality full-screen videos can be displayed even in hi-res graphics modes on the PC. INSANE was later used in other LucasArts titles such as Full Throttle, The Dig, and The Curse of Monkey Island.

Julie Eccles

Julie Eccles, the woman who plays Ru Murleen, can be seen in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure She plays Irene, Indy's secretary.

Milestone

According to Lucasarts' old quarterly magazine The Adventurer, Rebel Assault II: The Hidden Empire was the first media since Return of the Jedi to incorporate live-action actors and footage in the Star Wars universe. Apparently the editors of The Adventurer didn't feel that the "Ewok" movies counted (and by all means they don't, since none of those movies really reference to anything i Star Wars except Ewoks).

References

• The cloaked TIE Fighters appeared in Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance as well.
• The Super Star Destroyer Terror has been referred to in some books and comic books, and its mysterious mission and purpose slightly alluded to.

Information also contributed by Boston Low, James1, and Jason Musgrave