Star Wars: Republic Commando

"You have been born into dangerous times. A sharp mind can be the key to survival. But as often as not, it will be your inherent physical traits that win the day. And in this regard you will be superior to your more common brethren. For you are a commando, an elite unit, something truly special."

- Taun We to commando-in-training Boss

Star Wars: Republic Commando is a first person shooter Star Wars computer and video game, released in the US on February 28, 2005. It was developed and published by LucasArts for the Windows and Xbox platforms. The game uses the "Unreal Engine" developed by Epic Games. It was designed partly to bridge the gap between Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones and Star Wars: Episode III  Revenge of the Sith. The developers stated that whereas the films and novels are seen from the point of view of the Jedi, Republic Commando is told from the point of view of the troops.

It follows the tale of 'Delta Squad', an elite group of clone commandos, through three missions during the Clone Wars. Trained in squads of four by Mandalorian mercenaries such as Walon Vau and Kal Skirata, the commandos were more capable than their rank-and-file clone brethren, having undergone live-fire training as opposed to mere computerized simulations. All clone commandos were proficient with a large variety of weapons, computer systems, and demolitions equipment. The game covers Delta Squad’s activities in three locations, the planet Geonosis, a derelict Acclamator-class assault ship designated the Prosecutor, and the planet Kashyyyk. In each location, the player leads the squad through a series of objectives while battling against enemy forces ranging from droids to Trandoshans. The player is assisted throughout the game by a clone adviser designated CC-01/425, who regularly updates mission objectives as each level progresses.

Instruction manual
''The hot, quick puffs of breath inside your helmet become indistinguishable from the distant thumps of the AT-TEs walking above on the surface. Minutes ago you were riding a gunship amongst the chaos, fire and smoke blooming in the sky, blaster fire spraying up from Geonosis like fountains of colored light. For most of your clone brothers, the surface battle was the objective, but you are a clone commando. You are now in your element. The walls of the cavern tremble, and orange-red dust floats down from the ceiling, sprinkling the shoulder plates of your suit. You check the clip of your DC-17m modifiable blaster rifle, and give it a good slap to make sure it's set. The dull sound echoes and is followed by a faint chittering &mdash; an insect-like sound. You look back and signal your squadmates to hold back and let you remain on point. They're anxious to get into combat, but the tunnel ahead opens into a chamber, and you can't see what's there. You're not only the leader, but also the most skilled in close quarter confrontations. You step into the chamber as the insect sounds rise to a drowning chorus, and skeletal shapes loom out of the shadows...''

Prologue
In a montage of Clone commando RC-1138 (Boss)'s development and training, Taun We &mdash; a Kaminoan &mdash;  introduces the role and purpose of Clone commandos and the war situation. Boss is then introduced to his Squad &mdash; Delta Squad, and fellow squad members RC-1140 (Fixer), RC-1262 (Scorch) and RC-1207 (Sev).

Geonosis campaign
"Delta Lead, it is absolutely vital that Sun Fac not escape."

- Clone Advisor CC-01/425

Delta Squad's first campaign is on Geonosis. Deployed from Kamino in separate LAAT/i gunships, they are sent to the war-torn Petranaki arena. En route to the insertion point, Boss meets the squad's direct Commander and advisor CC-01/425 through a holocomm unit. The clone advisor gives Boss information about his first mission &mdash; to find and eliminate the geonosian Separatist, Chief Lieutenant Sun Fac. As the gunship hovered to allow Boss and a clone trooper to rappel to the ground, a flying geonosian grabs and pulls out the trooper, killing him with a drop to the ground. Just a couple of meters after exiting gunship, Boss and two clone troopers are hit by an anti-infantry round. The nearby troopers are killed, while Boss' health scan shows 50 percent vitality. The advisor thus recommends healing procedures by using a nearby bacta dispenser. After doing so, Boss is ordered to secure the area around a nearby crashed gunship, where three clone troopers are under attack from B1 battle droids. After the droids are disposed of, Boss comes across a squad of clone troopers &mdash; 17, 35 and two others&mdash;who are defending a barricade against battle droids. Shortly after Boss' arrival, the droids blow through the barricade, killing one of the clones by the explosion. Despite this, Boss, 17, 35, and the other surviving trooper manage to push the droid lines back to an armored gun emplacement, which is preventing Republic troops from advancing. Boss is then assigned to take the gun position out with thermal detonators, allowing the troops to advance as well as clearing his own path. After pushing through debris from the destroyed gun position, Boss meets with the squad's demolition expert, Scorch. Another bunker is blocking the squad's way, so Boss assigns Scorch destroy it with a detonation pack. However an OG-9 homing spider droid blocks their path. The commandos call for assistance, and the LAAT/i gunship Harken responds, destroying the droid and allowing the clones to access the spire.

As they navigate the Geonosian corridors, Boss and Scorch encounters little resistance, and they meet with RC-1140 (Fixer), the team's slicer, who immediately is called to slice through a security door. They then must pass through several hangars, destroying geonosian starfighters as they proceed until they rendezvous with RC-1207 (Sev), the squad's sniper, on the balcony outside Sun Fac's planning room. Separating the squad from Sun Fac is a large glass wall, and as Boss shoots through it, Sun Fac escapes through a door, heading towards his fighter. While the squad is taking out super battle droids and battle droids, Sun Fac makes his way to his aircraft and warms up its engines. When the Deltas get to the hangar, they find him behind a shield, starting up his fighter and taking off. As Boss assigns Sev to a sniper position, Fac decides turn his fighter's weapons on them. However, Sev is quickly successful in damaging the fighter's critical systems, causing it to crash back into the hangar, killing Sun Fac. "As you already know, 36's squad has been incapacitated. Their mission was to disable a droid factory in this sector. Your squad has been retasked for his purpose."

- Clone Advisor CC-01/425

With this objective accomplished, the Advisor informs Delta squad that another commando's squad has been subdued while attempting to disable the droid foundries deep in the Geonosian hives. Delta squad is reassigned to this task, but they must first take out a nearby signal jammer, which is interfering wih the republic's scanning attempts to find the weaknesses of the foundry. Taking a large elevator into the tunnels, Boss acquires a sniper attachment to his DC-17m blaster rifle. After making their way through a geonosian hatchery, they came across the jamming device. The squad disables its shield and destroys the jammer, repeatedly coming under attack from geonosians and droids. With the destruction of the jamming device, communications are restored, and the Advisor is able to give the squad the exact path to the foundries.

Although Advisor is able to scan the area of the factory, he isn't able to find any weakness Delta squad could hit to destroy it. Therefore Delta is assigned to find and slice the foundry's computer terminal and upload the complete factory schematics. Navigating through ventilation shafts, they find the console, giving the data to Advisor. The squad is informed of two power conduits that have to be destroyed to shut the factory down. Delta Squad continued through the shafts, and after encountering and overcoming more droid resistance, the squad finds the first power conduit. After destroying it, they proceed to the next one and eliminate it as well, after which they are evacuated by a gunship.

Their next objective is to infiltrate a nearby Confederacy Lucrehulk-class core ship which has been disabled, and retrieve the launch codes. These codes will giving the republic an edge against the entire separatist fleet, as they can be used to prevent the droid armies from retreating the Battle of Geonosis. The gunship pilot has to drop Delta in greater distance from the Coreship as planned, due to a large anti-air turret placed near the core ship. They have to get to the core ship on foot through a canyon, encountering some Geonosian resistance and several crashed gunships. As they approach the anti-air turret, en route to the ship, they encounter more and more battle droids. Advisor directs the squad to a loading mechanism for the turret and orders its destruction. Although they put a charge on the loading mechanism and detonate it, it doesn't stop functioning and the Deltas move to the upper level to place another charge, this one obliterating the mechanism completely. After disabling the turret, they proceed to the Core Ship, now with gunship support.

Through several more canyons, Delta squad finds its way to the Core Ship entrance, but it's shielded. Since the door itself is deep in the landscape, the squad can't call in gunship support to punch through it's shielding. Therefore they go through another canyon passage to reach the next entrance. After reaching it, Deltas encounter an A-DSD advanced dwarf spider droid. As they fight it, the Advisor informs the squad about its only weakness, the red optical cluster in the middle of the droid's frame. After defeating it, they finally get to the entrance, discovering it's shielded as well, but in position suitable for air support. Shortly after Advisor calling it in, Delta 42's gunship appears above player's head and fires several rockets at the shield, warning the Delta squad to stand back in cover. The shield is now down and the squad is able to enter the hallway to the ship itself. The hallway leads Deltas to an extendable bridge, connecting the ship's hull with planet's surface. Since the bridge isn't extended, they have to slice a nearby console to extend it, while eliminating several droids guarding the entrance. When the bridge is extended, squad is ready to infiltrate the ship by entering its ventilation system. They are now assigned to two objectives. First to disable the ship for good and the second, to retrieve the important launch codes. The advisor reminds the player several times, how important these codes are. Since each squad member is tasked disabling different critical systems (Boss is assigned to disable the super battle droid storage racks, Scorch to detonating coolant intake valve, Sev to disabling the repulsorlift controls and Fixer to destroying the primary power conduit), the squad splits off and enter the ventilation shafts separately, to reach their objectives directly. This is the Republic's first breach of an enemy capital ship in the Clone Wars.

After player enters the ventilation shaft's elevator, he's taken to the Super battle droid storage racks. As he navigates through the racks full of droids on standby, other Delta squad members report reaching their objectives and successfully disabling the ship's systems. The squad's presence is no longer secret, as Boss runs into a Geonosian elite warrior that sounds an alarm, before Boss is able to kill him. As he finds his way to the next elevator, he encounters several Super Battle Droids activated. The second elevator takes Boss to a level where the storage racks controls are located. On his approach, Advisor uploads disabling protocols to him, tasking him with locating the control mainframe and inserting these protocols. Boss does this, causing explosions and short circuits in the racks, and destroying the mechanism's functionality. Now he's ready to meet up with Sev and the rest of the squad at level 1157. Encountering destroyer droids and droid dispensers for the first time, Delta squad makes its way through the ship's hallways to its command bridge. The ship's many systems are already malfunctioning, as a chain reaction started by disabling the four critical systems on the ship occurs. Encountering heavier and heavier resistance with every meter they get closer to their objective, they enter the bridge. Under heavy fire from wall turrets and droids, they retrieve the launch codes from the mainframe console. The Deltas escape the core ship with help from Delta 42 and his gunship, who leads them to a hallway leading to the ship's hull surface, blasted the hull door open and evacuated Delta Squad shortly before the Core Ship's total destruction.

Prosecutor campaign
Almost a year after the Battle of Geonosis, an Acclamator-class assault ship &mdash; the Prosecutor, under the command of Captain Martz&mdash;goes missing whilst on patrol in the Corellian sector. After two weeks of no contact, the Prosecutor, Delta Squad's first home, appears in the Chaykin cluster near the Corbantis system, but doesn't respond to any contact attempts. Three hundred sixty-seven days after the start of the Clone Wars, Delta Squad is dispatched to investigate, and after a briefing in a CR25 troop carrier, enter the ship via a zero-gravity jump to proton torpedo tubes. Each squad member was individually sent to each of the four ship's data cores to retrieve critical information. Advisor notifies Boss that his primary objective is to retrieve the flight recorder data from the aft data core, then rendezvous with the squad, but as squad leader, he's to assist the other members of the squad if necessary. Sev is tasked with retrieving the sensor logs from the starboard data core, Fixer is to retrieve certain data from the port core. As Advisor finishes telling Boss of Fixer's objective, a static jamming interferes with the transmission, and contact is lost with command. Delta Squad decides to press on with their objectives, without the assistance of Advisor. Because the airlock to the ship has been destroyed, Boss must manually open the torpedo bay hatch to gain access to the ship.

Delta Squad agrees to press on to their objectives without the assistance of Advisor. Boss's way into the ship has been destroyed earlier, so he manually opens the torpedo bay hatch. After manually opening the torpedo bay hatch, he enters the ship, where he encounters mynocks. As he walks through the torpedo bay's corridors, Delta 62 reports strange static on his visor, then being attacked by a droid. After that, he doesn't respond to any of squad members. As players continues, he meets one confused clone trooper, hiding in the torpedo bay, which is killed by a scavenger droid. Continuing through ship's maintenance hatches, Boss experiences an attack by one of the scavenger droids himself. He realizes what happened to Scorch and warns the other squad members to stay out of static and be aware of these droids. When he reaches a hallway leading to his objective, he finds it blocked by debris. Sev informs him the only way around is through the droid maintenance hatch, passing nearby the starboard data core. While Boss overrides the entrance, he's attacked by three more scavenger droids. As he exits the maintenance hatch by Sev's position in the core, he watches his squad-mate being attacked and knocked unconscious by a Trandoshan slaver, while he's getting ambushed by the Trandoshans as well. Then he enters another maintenance hatch and moves through the hallways to do Sev's work first, encountering Trandoshans equipped with Accelerated Charged Particle Array Guns, but mistakes them for projectile weapons. He enters the core, but is unable to locate Sev. He slices a console while being under enemy fire. After downloading the data he enters a hallway connecting two data cores and heads to the aft data core, his previous task.

On his way to his objective, the Boss comes across a clone trooper and two other clones successfully fighting the Trandoshans with help of the defense autoturrets. As he reaches the entrance to the data core, he's attacked by a sliced pair of turrets, however another two turrets are inactive and he uses them to cover his back and enters the aft data core. After a successful slice, he heads to the rendezvous point through the ship's landing gear section. As he navigates a variety of corridors and hallways, Boss encounters a heavily armed Trandoshan, a Trandoshan Elite, carrying a LS-150 Heavy Accelerated Charged Particle Repeater Gun. Reaching the rendezvous point, player finds a junction door he needs to pass locked. However, Delta 40 appears on the other side of this door and unlocks the door. While Fixer is slicing, a Trandoshan slaver breaches a wall behind Boss and brings in a droid dispenser. When Fixer unlocks the door and Boss is good to go, he advises to player to leave the dispenser alone and escape, however it's players choice whether to blow the dispenser up or not.

Now in two, Deltas 38 and 40 go to find their incapacitated squad-mates and complete their objectives. As they navigate the hallways, they find Sev being held by a group of Trandoshan slavers and brutally interrogated. Then they enter the room, killing all enemies and revive Sev with the field bacta dispenser. After Delta 07 acknowledges squad about Scorch probably being held in the detention area, they head there to rescue him. When they get there, they get ambushed and after killing all the enemies in their area, they locate Delta 62 in one of the detention cells. After reviving him, the enemy battle droids blow up a barricade on the other side of the detention block, clearing the way which delta squad uses to advance to the ship's bridge. Navigating the hallways, deltas encounter more reprogrammed turrets. As they reach the bridge, they find it well defended by super battle droids and Trandoshans. After eliminating the droid presence, they locate and destroy a jamming device, blocking their communications with command and re-establishing the link with Advisor. Deltas sending him the data, Advisor is surprised by the amount of data retrieved by commandos, as they contain many Trandoshan and Separatist sensitive information, like tactics and so, so many that it could take months of analyzing to process them all. After receiving the data, Advisor finds out the Trandoshans stole the ship to sell it to the Confederacy of Independent Systems and get some of their battle droids in return. Since the jamming device is offline, Advisor is able to provide a full scan of the ship that indicates a Trandoshan dropship located in hangar A. Delta Squad is now tasked to destroy that ship to wipe out Trandoshan presence in the ship. On a booby trapped elevator on their way to the hangars, Delta Squad gets stuck in the detention area and ambushed by Trandoshans. Their only hope surviving in the detention block full of Trandoshan slavers and mercenaries is now the automated lockdown system, but it has been damaged by Trandoshans. To make it functioning, Deltas navigate the detention block and fix four damaged circuits, encountering a Trandoshan Rocket Turret. While they fight the Trandoshans, Fixer picks up multiple clone trooper signatures coming from below their position. Advisor tells them not to be distracted and investigates it himself. Shortly after the lockdown kicked in, a poison gas started to flow in the hallways, dealing with all remaining Trandoshans in this level instantly. Then Delta Squad moves through a maintenance hatch to a room full of dead clone trooper bodies that have apparently been carried here by scavenger droids. As they leave the room, they get past Trandoshan mines and reprogrammed autoturrets (whether by destroying them or by reprogramming them back on the player's side). Then they proceed to the hangar and the Trandoshan dropship.

As members of Delta Squad arrive to the hangar A, they encounter the Trandoshan dropship barricaded by debris and guarded heavily by remaining Trandoshans, mines and two rocket turrets. As the dropship is heavily shielded, Advisor informs Deltas that they have to control both turrets to destroy the dropship. While they fight, Advisor picks up a Confederacy Lucrehulk-class battleship on long range sensors and contacts the Coruscant command for backup. After a tough fight, they take over the turrets and blow up the dropship, destroying the Trandoshan base on the ship and wiping out their presence. In the time while they recover from the fight with Trandoshans, the Lucrehulk-class battleship jumps out of hyperspace and starts to send battle droid dispensers to the other three hangars to take over the ship. Advisor realizes they can't wait for help from Coruscant and starts sending an emergency signal to any Republic ship near the Corbantis system. After few moments of no response, when the hope seems to be lost, Captain Talbot of the RAS Arrestor responds and sets his ship's course to Delta Squad's position to help. Delta Squad therefore proceeds to the hangar B to fend off the dispensers.

As they enter the hangar, they acquire defensive positions and await incoming attack. When the first two dispensers land on the hangar's floor and start to deploy battle droids, Advisor finds a way to seal the hangar and stop the incoming dispensers by blowing up the hangar's force field regulator. As the squad members do so, they continue to the next hangar via the maintenance tunnels, where two dispensers are already deployed and more on their way. After defending this hangar and destroying its force field,the Deltas proceed to the last hangar, hangar D, where the droids are fully deployed and start to spread out throughout the ship.

As they arrive to the hangar, Advisor acknowledges the squad of useful ordnance that he can get to them via the lift in back of the hangar and commands them to set up defensive positions and since he can't remotely manipulate the lift, one of Deltas has to override the nearby console. As they do so, an AT-TE walker comes up on the lift. Boss then mounts the walker's main turret and takes out the force field regulator and all the droids with their dispensers in the hangar as well. As the commander of the Lucrehulk-class battleship realizes there's no hope taking over the ship by sending battle droids and the force fields are up, he decides to take aim and fire.

When Delta Squad realizes the ship won't stand long defenseless against the larger Separatist battleship, Advisor leads them to the turbolaser control room to return the fire. Fighting countless hordes of battle droids and their own reprogrammed defense turrets, Delta Squad arrives to the designated control room and is tasked slicing three terminals to program all turbolaser batteries to attack the largest enemy target in range. While the Deltas are slicing and fending off many droids, Captain Talbot with his ship, RAS Arrestor arrives at the location and opens fire on the separatist ship. Shortly after that, Deltas manage to turn on their own weapon systems and together, with the firepower of two Acclamators they defeat the Separatist battleship. As the droid remote controls are destroyed with the ship, all enemy droids within the Prosecutor are deactivated and the ship is finally secure

Kashyyyk campaign
As the war drags onward, Delta Squad participates in increasingly dangerous missions. A cry for help is heard by the Republic from the Wookiee homeworld of Kashyyyk, where Trandoshan slavers have established their camps and are enslaving the Wookiees with the help of Separatist weaponry. Delta Squad is sent to rescue the Wookiee chieftain Tarfful, which has been captured by the Trandoshan presence on this planet weeks before the beginning of Delta Squad's mission. Delta is secretly inserted in the deep jungle of Kashyyyk near one of the Trandoshan slaver camps and proceeds through the main entrance. After entering with some difficulties with a trap set by the slavers, the squad infiltrates the camp and releases few imprisoned Wookiees. Moving through the camp, they spot a starfighter that looks familiar to the Advisor. He then tasks them finding the ship and letting the command get a closer look to identify it. As they proceed to the designated landing pad, they spot the ship and it's owner, General Grievous himself. As the General realizes he's seen, he warms up his fighter to escape. Deltas are now tasked to quickly get to him and stop him. On the way to the landing pad, they finally meet Tarfful, the captured Wookiee chieftain. When they spot him behind a force field, he is being held by two IG-100 MagnaGuards and dragged to Grievous's ship, but shortly after they get out of Deltas' sight, the Wookiee defeats the droids, returns and awaits Delta Squad, which is placing a charge to breach the force field and prevent General Grievous from escaping. In the time Deltas get to Tarfful and breach the door leading to the landing pad, Grievous's fighter is already taking off and two of his bodyguard droids attack Deltas. They're ordered to protect Tarfful at all costs as he has information vital to the Republic, however the Wookiee refuses to stand back and fights the tough droids himself, making it even harder to defeat them for the player.

After that, Delta Squad sabotages a vital Trandoshan supply depot and proceeds to the key battle of Kachirho, the beginning of the Battle of Kashyyyk. There, they move through the Wookiee tree city, securing important objectives and battling against hordes of advanced battle droids. They destroy the Bridge at Kachirho, cutting the droid army off from its reinforcements, and proceed to secure the Citadel. Soldiering through the most elite CIS forces and weaponry, Delta Squad once again splits up to man four Heavy AA turrets in order to assist in the destruction of a Recusant-class light destroyer. Once the ship is destroyed, Advisor orders the Deltas to regroup at 38's position. However, Sev does not make the rendezvous and the squad manages to grab a last transmission from him, in which it's clear that he is under heavy attack and is possibly injured or killed. Delta Squad prepares to rescue Sev, but the commander orders them to pull back. As they head out on the gunship, devastated by the loss of their comrade, they are debriefed by Jedi Master Yoda. A huge Republic fleet is seen deploying outside the gunship, as Delta Squad prepares for another assignment in the battle.

RC-1138 (Boss)
RC-1138, who goes by the name "Boss", is the character the player controls throughout Republic Commando. A clone commando, he was trained by the Mandalorian Walon Vau and placed in charge of Delta Squad. First seeing action on Geonosis at the start of the Clone Wars, he participated in several covert missions for the Republic, including the investigation (and defense) of a seemingly abandoned assault ship, the Prosecutor, and the liberation of the Wookiee leader Tarfful. Through these missions, he strives against the armies of the CIS, not just droids but also Geonosian soldiers and Trandoshan mercenaries. He also receives side-missions en route to his main objectives, including the destruction of weapon emplacements, enemy ships and bunkers. His commando armor has distinctive orange markings on the helmet and across the chest and right shoulder.

RC-1262 (Scorch)
RC-1262, also known as "Scorch", is a clone commando also trained by Walon Vau. Delta Squad's munitions expert, he was the first Boss rejoins with on their deployment on Geonosis. Often making witty comments, he has an inflated sense of irony which some mistook as fatalism. He often verbally spars with fellow squad member Sev. Scorch's unique armor has yellow patches on the wrists and legs.

RC-1140 (Fixer)
RC-1140 is a clone commando who prefers to do things by the book, even calling his squad members by their numerical designation. Given the nickname "Fixer", he often takes it on himself to chastise clone brothers Scorch and Sev when they start to banter. Proficient in computer slicing, he is often quiet, usually speaking only when he is asked for his opinion. His armor has green stripes and markings, making it very distinctive.

RC-1207 (Sev)
RC-1207, known to others as "Sev", he is a fierce warrior and expert sniper. Having a grim sense of humor, he often bantered with Scorch. Painting his armor blood red, it often caused confusion as to whether paint was used or actual blood. The wrists and lower legs were red, and a red hand print covered the front of his helmet.

Gameplay
The game is played from a first person perspective – the player sees through Boss's helmet Heads-up display and controls Boss's actions. You may also choose to take off the Heads-up display but will still be shown all the things to get your character. Health and shield bars indicate percentage of health and rechargeable shields remaining. Orders can be issued to the rest of Delta squad through squad commands, such as "secure area" and "search and destroy". Certain objects open up special commands &mdash; doors can sometimes be either breached (noisily blown open) or sliced (quietly hacked) and squad members can be ordered to man fixed weapons positions.

The player's primary weapon is the DC-17m Interchangeable Weapon System, which has rifle, sniper and grenade launcher attachments. The DC-15S is the player's secondary weapon, and a retractable Knuckle plate vibro blade is available for melee combat. Some weapons are dropped by enemies, and can be picked up and used by the player, such as the Geonosian Elite Beam Weapon, Accelerated Charged Particle Array Gun or Wookiee Bowcaster. These weapons are in an additional slot, and only one of these can be held at any one time.

If a squad member or the player's health reaches zero, instead of dying they are incapacitated and can be revived back to half health by another squad member if possible. However, if the player cannot be revived due to all squad members being incapacitated when the player is incapacitated, or the player dies out of reach of the squad (such as falling off a bottomless drop), then the squad dies and play may be resumed from a previous save.

Soundtrack
Republic Commando is notable for being the first official Star Wars game to feature licensed music. The song "Clones," performed by the band Ash, is played during the credits roll at the end of the game but does not feature on the game's soundtrack. Ash are known for their Star Wars fandom; their debut album was entitled "1977", and contained numerous Star Wars references.

The game's music takes on a high-paced, gritty, and vocal theme compared to the traditional Star Wars score, helping to immerse the player even further in the game. It features the Mandalorian battle song Vode An (Brothers All), heard throughout the game, including the main menu and several battle sequences. Other Mandalorian battle songs also appear: Gra'tua Cuun, Kote Darasuum, Rage of the Shadow Warriors and Ka'rta Tor

Development
The game features uncharacteristically high levels of violence, such as blood spatters with melee knife kills, Geonosian exploding when enough damage is dealt and head removal via sniper head shots. Infanticide is possible when the player journeys through a geonosian hatchery and there are instances of dismembered bodies and blood stains. As such it as given an USK 16 rating in Germany. This was all done to give the player a different view of Star Wars universe, through the eyes of "A hardened Clone Commando", as most other games had the player play as a jedi.

A map editor was released with one of the patches to Republic Commando. It uses the Unreal engine, UnrealEd.

Reception
"Somebody deserves credit for making a gritty, Jedi-free Star Wars game without any fruity Force powers or lightsabers."

- 1UP staff reviewer

Overall, the game received mostly positive reviews from critics and fans, often receiving scores between 80 and 90%. Several aspects of the game were negatively received, some of this focused on level architecture, specifically a seemingly linear level design. The game was criticized for problems with squad members taking their time to catch up to the player and problems issuing commands, and short time to play-through the campaign. Multiplayer mode in the game was often critized as inadequate, with only 10 maps and limited replayability due to no co-operative campaign mode, which features in other squad-based games.

The game's positive aspects were most identified as it's fast-paced gritty action, and the audio and visual environment praised. It was also praised for a lack of "fruity Force powers or lightsabers".

Legacy
During development a sequel was already being planned but was canceled in 2004 with only as far as concept art and sketches made.

Tie-in books were written by Karen Traviss to the game, starting with Republic Commando: Hard Contact. Radio chatter heard in the game relating to Theta Squad relates directly to the opening of the book, whose main character Darman is the lone survivor of Theta.

Collections

 * Star Wars: The Best of PC